 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Bb R13 greenline
Date: 2011-11-23 01:18
Is there a difference between how band music and orchestra music generally should be phrased?? My band director sais as pitches get lower we should increase our volume so they can be heard so if a line is ascending we start it loud and back off, but in orchestra it's the exact opposite we crescendo ascending lines. Is this just the two different directors opinions or standard or what? Many thanx
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2011-11-23 01:57
Your band director's directions fall in line with the "pyramid of sound" concept, in which a richer, warmer, preferable band sound is achieved by balancing the higher frequency sounds with more lower frequency sounds.
Your orchestra director's directions fall within a simplistic phrasing direction (crescendo up, diminuendo down) that works in some places, but which I call "phrasing for dummies". It will make some music sound like music, but it will make a lot of music sound like crap.
Neither is true in and of itself. Obeying either axiomatically will help some portions of pieces sound great, and others sounding ridiculous.
Music is far too subtle, even in the large ensemble forms, to fall into either category. They are starting points to begin phrasing concepts, and they may significantly aid each director to achieve the ensemble sound that they prefer, but neither unto itself is music or germane to either ensemble.
James
Gnothi Seauton
Post Edited (2011-11-23 02:07)
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Author: Bb R13 greenline
Date: 2011-11-23 02:38
ohh ok that helps alot, thanks! so how do you decide how to phrase a line than if you do not have a score or any reference besides your part? and what if other people in your section/other sections do not agree with you?
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2011-11-23 02:42
To know what works, you try it and see what works.
To decide between you and other players, it depends on what sort of mutual agreement the ensemble reaches. Ideally, you'll listen and respond to what others are doing.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2011-11-23 03:00
Listening to a lot of music, large ensemble, chamber, solo, clarinet and otherwise, helps you to develop a vocabulary of musical expression that helps you phrase the music as you would like when the music (or the director) doesn't explicitly tell you what they would like.
I'm sorry that my first response wasn't more helpful -- and EEEbaum is excatly correct as well. It is a very fluid process!
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: Bb R13 greenline
Date: 2011-11-23 03:15
on the contrary your first response was very helpful:).did you perhaps take "oh ok that helps alot, thanks!" as sarcasm? because i didnt mean it sarcastically.
anyway I do listen to alot of music especially solos from frost, bliss, sabine meyer, drucker, eddie daniels, ricardo morales. Frost is my favorite though:). earlier today i tried listening to his mozart adagio recording on youtube to see how he does things so i can do my adagio in a similar way but it was very hard to tell whether he was crescendoing and decrescendoing in places. it all sounds very complex like instead of crescendoing one line and than decrescdoing once a resolution is hit, he crescendoes alittle than alittle decr. but more cres. then alitt decr. than more cres. and decr. into nothing all in one line
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Author: Buster
Date: 2011-11-23 03:41
Bb Green.......,
The dynamic prescribed, as suggested earlier, is more up to the discretion of the director. I cannot say in an abstract context that what is being prescribed is "correct", or "band/orchestral style" phrasing.
Also, dynamics are just one "tool" that are applied in the phrasing of any given line. Many other options are available; in fact the usage of solely dynamics in the stating of any phrase is quite limiting.
As for listening to well-known players, it can be helpful to hear how they choose to play any particular piece, however emulation, even if well done, is simply that.
You'd be best served discovering how/why any particular phrase can be played (and this may require reading beyond that of just the musical score) and why said player made their decisions.... in so much as you can discern.
Recordings are always welcome, and to be enjoyed when apt. But as a performer it is essential that you go back to the source and not follow the practitioner.
-Jason
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Author: kdk
Date: 2011-11-23 17:40
Keep in mind as well that there are often stylistic differences between what you may typically play in a school orchestra and the meat of the band repertoire (not counting transcriptions of 18th and 19th century orchestra or piano pieces). Most of the non-transcribed band music is of 20th or 21st century origin, much of it from the 1950s on, when school bands started to become a popular part of American education. There can be very real differences in the way you approach phrasing even between *orchestral* composers of the last 75 years or so and 19th century Romantics or between those Romantics and the works of earlier Baroque or Classical periods. Phrasing, of course, includes much more than just how to handle an ascending or descending melodic line, but in the end all of it depends a great deal on an understanding of the stylistic idiom the composer was part of.
As far as what to do in a specific ensemble situation is concerned, it's usually best to go with the flow (listen to your surroundings) and let the conductor react to it by either accepting or correcting it. And once the conductor has made a decision, it's done, whether it's musically well-informed or not.
Karl
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2011-11-24 13:05
Just wanted to make sure the discussion includes something I'm pretty sure everybody here already knows (but, "One never knows, do one?"): The ideas above apply to passages where the composer hasn't written in a crescendo or a decrescendo. If the composer *does* write a dynamic instruction, then we should follow the score.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2011-11-24 18:33
Of course you follow the score, though there are myriad ways to interpret score dynamics as well. Don't for a moment think you're off the hook for everything else because there's a crescendo on the page.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2011-11-24 23:12
"so how do you decide how to phrase a line than if you do not have a score or any reference besides your part?"
If you don't have any reference except your part, and you're playing ensemble music, then you are failing to do your job properly. You absolutely need to know what is going on in the other parts in order to play in a group. Otherwise you might as well all sit in different rooms. You can use the score, you ears, a recording device, or even an external listener to help you figure out what the other people are playing.
In terms of generalising how to phrase- it really depends on context, and can't be simplified into a band vs orchestra system. If your directors aren't capable of judging ensemble balance in context, then they shouldn't really be directors. Perhaps they were trying to give some general advice which you misunderstood? Or if they were trying to simplify things for the players to understand, then they are not really doing anybody any favours. I think it is a mistake to underestimate the intelligence of amateur players.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2011-11-25 14:54
Liquorice wrote, in part:
>> You absolutely need to know what is going on in the other parts in order to play in a group.>>
This is absolutely true. And in classical music -- Mozart, say -- it's true in rather a surprising way.
Take the example of the second Trio of the Minuet movement of the clarinet quintet. Anyone asked to sing the tune is liable to put quite a strong accent on the barline: "diddle DIDdle-um; diddle DIDdle-um; diddle DIDdle-iddle-iddle Dooh-da...etc etc. But actually, though they're singing the MUSIC, they're not singing what's actually written in the clarinet part. Rather, they're singing a combination of what's written in the the clarinet part and what's written in the 'cello part.
See, the phrasing in the clarinet line SUPPRESSES the barline -- phrases kill barlines in this style -- and it's left to the 'cello to PROVIDE it.
So, you have to play the clarinet line in a way that 'sounds unmusical' alone, in order for it to contribute properly to the music when everyone else is playing.
Of course, that's one of the reasons that people have difficulty following the norms of classical phrasing -- they're unable to see that the music is completed by everyone else's contribution BECAUSE THEY DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT THE OTHERS ARE PLAYING.
Gustav Leonhardt stopped the OAE mid-rehearsal a few years ago.
"Someone in the violas is playing 'musically'", he said.
"I don't like it."
Tony
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