 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: DesireeGattis
Date: 2012-03-03 17:48
I would like to get some opinions:
What do you think are the most important orchestral excerpts for the clarinet and why??
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2012-03-03 20:33
several books of these are available. entertaining , and more.
richard smith
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Author: donald
Date: 2012-03-03 20:53
Hmmmm, I going to be sidetracked here and question Alex's post that "out side of auditions, they're wholly unimportant". My first "major teacher" never taught any excerpts at all, while my last teacher taught excerpts almost exclusively- with one teacher in between who taught a healthy mix. Coming from this perspective I would make the following points...
- Excerpts can offer a musical perspective on technical issues (for example, provide context for different articulation styles)
- Provide context for problems of musicality (for example, "here the bassoon has just played a concert G before your entry so your note has to match their pitch, not the tuner" or "match the rhythmic subdivision of the flute solo, even if you don't think it's accurate")
In these two ways an excerpt can be better than, or NOT as effective as, a study or etude. This of course depends on many factors.
But here is my other thought on excerpts....
Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel, Tchaikovsky etc etc etc DID NOT write a huge repertoire for solo clarinet (compared to, say, the piano or violin). Studying these orchestral works, even though the actually solo material might be slight, and you may never or seldom get the chance to perform them with an orchestra, IS providing you the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the works of the great composers, and may edify the performance of the solo and chamber works they HAVE written for clarinet.
A violinist may come to the Beethoven Septet having performed hundreds of pieces by Beethoven, I personally like to take every opportunity I can to catch up even though B didn't write a clarinet sonata or concerto.
dn
Post Edited (2012-03-03 23:41)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-03-04 14:40
Mendelssohn Scherzo to A Midsummer's Night Dream: Fast articulation
Beethoven Symphony Nr. 6, second movement: Lyricism and overall musicality
Stravinsky Firebird Dance of the Firebird (?).....the fast 6/8 thingy: Fast technique, smooth leaps
Ravel Daphnis and Chloe: Fast/smooth technique; dynamic awareness (within context of what's going on orchestrally that is)
Brahms First Symphony, Second Movement: M-U-S-I-C-A-L-I-T-Y
You will see ALL of these on ANY orchestral audition.
................Paul Aviles
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Author: DougR
Date: 2012-03-04 15:03
If you do an internet search using criteria like "orchestral excerpts" or "audition pieces" (or similar terms) plus "clarinet" plus (and this is important) filetype:pdf, you'll find tons of the same kind of thing over and over again. So if by "important" you mean "most commonly asked-for," that's one way to find out.
The only surprises I've found when doing this kind of search are when the audition is for a concert or military band, in which case you might find staples of that repertoire provided.
There seem to be plenty of schools, regional bands and orchestras, etc., using orchestral excerpts as audition/entrance exam tools, and for that reason alone, a younger player should probably be able to play the top 5 or so (see Paul's post above for examples).
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2012-03-04 16:51
donald:
I can see some value in those cases, but just as much value as I'd see in playing any other piece of rep. I agree that spending some focused time dissecting a small piece of music can have a lot of value. Key word being "some".
What I don't dig is the typical approach: learning them because "you're supposed to learn them" or treating them like they're terribly important for some reason. When a person practices the Mendelssohn scherzo for 84 hours, it's typically not for some pedagogical benefit, rather it's to drill it into their fingers so much that they can bust it out to "perfection", at a whim, on an audition, or as some badge of honor or showoffiness. At this point, it turns from a very musical opportunity to a terribly unmusical enterprise, to where often the player has determined the one and only way they will ever play it.
Three highly detrimental effects of this, among others:
- huge amount of time spent on an excerpt that could better be spent elsewhere
- establishing and fostering an approach to practice that distances the player from musicality and emphasizes a perverted sense of perfection without personal involvement
- rigidity toward the segment in question, having established and drilled the one and only way the player will play the passage. I've heard this in a lot of orchestral performances, where the orchestra is doing something a bit different with the piece -- different tempo, articulation, bit of a lilt, whatever -- and the soloist comes in and blasts out their excerpt, that they've drilled for countless years, in a completely inappropriate style to the occasion.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-03-04 19:12
This is about the third thread that has the same elements in it so I think I speak with some experience when I say that it appears that we are community of clarinetists with a WIDE spectrum of purposes.
I went to college with the express purpose of learning how to become an orchestral musician so that is what I could do as a career. If this is YOUR goal too, then having orchestral excerpts at your disposal is very, VERY important.
If this does not fit your profile, and there are many of us for whom it does not (jazzers, part-timers, concert band enthusiasts.......saxophonists etc.), then practicing orchestral excerpts just because it's supposed to be good for you is STUPID !!!!
I firmly believe that most teachers (even the dyed in the wool orchestral ones) would be more than willing to emphasize those things that would be more beneficial for your particular track if only you would express that to them.
But DON'T be critical of those of us who chose this path. Just be satisfied that most of us are dead broke and will never achieve our goal.
.....thank you,
.....................Paul Aviles
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Author: davyd
Date: 2012-03-05 05:09
A long-ago former colleague made it a point to keep up with what the local community orchestras were planning on playing, back in the days when that meant regularly perusing the newspaper. He would spend some time on excerpts from pieces being programmed in the next month or so (subject to availability; this was before IMSLP or even CD-ROM librariies), the idea being that if he got a call to play with one group or another, he had already learned the most important or challenging excerpts from the works to be performed. He didn't get such calls terribly often, but when he did, he was better prepared than he otherwise might have been.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2012-03-05 05:26
I think my real problem with orchestral excerpts is that I feel it has become a peculiar sort of arms race in the orchestral world. Orchestras require excerpts for auditions, so students learn excerpts. Students wanting to get an edge spend a lot more time on excerpts. Orchestras start requiring more excerpts in an attempt to thin the herd and reduce the applicant pool to a more manageable level. The most dedicated applicants put in even more time in order to learn all the excerpts. Plenty of qualified musicians drop out of the mix because it takes a long time to get the excerpts up to arms-race standard, and they're busy making other music. Because there is so much precision involved, orchestras typically disqualify applicants who make even the slightest inaccuracy on an audition.
At this point, excerpts have been thoroughly divorced from the music from which they came, and, imho, you will often hear a much more compelling, if less accurate, performance from someone who only first saw the piece a week before. A big part of the musical experience to me is one of discovery, and if all the "good" solos of my instrument's repertoire have been beaten to death before I ever reach an orchestra, the magic is largely diminished.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: donald
Date: 2012-03-05 08:00
Alex, I'm sure that what you describe happens- though I've never seen anything remotely like it here in NZ or at CCM, despite our teacher being known as an "audition prep specialist". What you describe would be, however, a symptom of bad teaching, rather than an evil inherent in the study of excerpts themselves.
dn
Post Edited (2012-03-05 09:14)
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Author: Lam
Date: 2012-03-05 12:56
it depends on whether you are auditioning for an Opera orchestra or symphony orchestra, but some excerpts appears most of the time for both opera and symphony orchestra audition : Mendelssohn's Scherzo, Stravinsky firebird, Kodaly dance of Ganlanta, Bartok Miriculous madarin, and Ravel's Daphnis. For opera orchestra, most of the time Verdi's La forza destino solo, barber of sevile, wagner gotterdemerung. For symphony orchestra, most of the time include shostakovich 9th, those beethoven and brahms symphony is a must too.
But back to your question, what do you mean "the most important" excerpt ? do you mean the most frequently asked in auditions, or the most beautiful clarinet solo written ?
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2012-03-05 13:35
Alex,
No teacher I've ever had has taught excerpts in the manner you describe.
All of them made flexibility of interpretation and execution a central goal. Case in point: The arpeggios at the end of Beethoven 6, first mvt. I had a prof who required that I listen to as many recordings as I could get my hands on, and play it at a wide range of tempi, even using different styles of articulation. The reason: "You have to be prepared for whatever the conductor wants." He would conduct me at different tempi during lessons. Ame with the rest of the orchestral repertoire.
When I was playing in sections and taking auditions, this was the approach I took to all excerpts.
Anyhow, musical fundamentalism (playing "The One True Way") is not limited to excerpts, but is the symptom of a poor musician, regardless of what repertoire they emphasize.
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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Author: DesireeGattis
Date: 2012-03-05 15:56
the Bonade book went out of print back around 2006 or so (give or take) but i do own it. I also have access to the CD-ROM musicians library and some other excerpt books, just don't know which ones are the most important for the clarinet. The ones that really changed the way we looked at the instrument, the influential, the most asked on auditions, most difficult, etc.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2012-03-05 19:40
DesireeGattis -
The Bonde excerpts book had *many* errors. Fortunately, Larry Guy has corrected them and republished the book as part of The Complete Daniel Bonade http://www.vcisinc.com/clarinetmusicstudies.htm item #C919. The McGinnis books are also full of errors.
More important, you can't play a solo unless you know what else is going on. See http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=20&i=768&t=768. If you're serious about orchestral playing, you simply must get the Orchestral Musician's CD-ROM Libraryhttp://www.vcisinc.com/omcdrom.htm, which has complete scores of the standard repertoire. It will be the best $221.95 you ever spend. If you can't afford the outlay, buy them one at a time at $19.95 or go to your music library and copy the pages of the score from the (public domain) editions.
You learn to be a musician by listening to and learning from other musicians. You don't necessarily copy what they do (though that's a good start). Rather, as Tony Pay says, you make the music your own. Every clarinetist knows the great orchestral solos. They're part of who we are, and you need to know what everyone else knows. You'll probably never perform the famous cadenza in Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana, but if you aren't familiar with it, you're missing something in your clarinet personality. You must master the Midsummer Night's Dream solo licks, simply because they're on 100% of orchestral auditions, but no orchestral solo in the standard repertoire is more important than any other. The important thing is having the sound of all of them in your ear.
donald and alex -
Steve Girko told me that when he studied with Stanley Drucker, all their time was spent on orchestral solos, played from the score. Drucker spent his life as an orchestral player and knew every solo intimately. Steve said he constantly pointed out problems and traps. You're in octaves with the second bassoon here; the first flute will often go sharp on that particular note so you must be ready to go along; the strings will dig in for this passage so you have to play louder.
This sort of listening and knowledge is essential whatever music you play. You can't come close to playing the Brahms Sonatas or the Weber Grand Duo without intimate knowledge of the piano part, which is often more important than your part. And the Reger sonatas and (even more) the Quintet pass the melodic material back and forth constantly, often in the middle of a phrase. The piano part of Shepherd on the Rock is almost all accompaniment, but you can't play your solo without hearing what's happening in the harmony and shaping your line to fit.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2012-03-07 04:57
Frankly, most of the parts in the OMCD are now available for free on IMSLP.
Best regards,
jnk
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Author: davyd
Date: 2012-03-08 03:00
" ... Outside of auditions, they're wholly unimportant ..." until you have to play the pieces from which they come, especially on short notice. I once got a call to play 2nd clarinet on Fingal's Cave with only 2 rehearsals remaining. I already knew the lovely duet towards the end, so I could spend what little prep time I had on the rest of the part.
Similarly, I got a call to play 1st clarinet on short notice in one of the many band transcriptions of the Nutcracker Waltz Of The Flowers. In this transcription, a relatively recent one, the 1st clarinet mostly resembles the orchestral 1st part, especially since the transcription is up a half step from the original, so I was still in F on the Bb clarinet. There again, I already knew the solo passages, which meant I could spend time on the ensemble passages.
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