 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-03-29 22:00
Dear Board,
I ask specifically because I am recalling a seminar from many years ago in which he spoke of disciplining dynamics 'by-the-numbers,' ala Marcel Tabuteau (that is, he assigned the number 1 to the softest you can play a note and the number 8 to the loudest you can play a note with corresponding numbers to the other volumes in between).
The reason I ask is because I was wondering how then he applied this in lessons (particularly with regard to phrasing).
Any help would be appreciated.
.....................Paul Aviles
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2012-03-30 06:20
I studied with him for several years. I need a bit more info. As a rule he was really into playing very musically, yet he was strict about proper techinque. You pretty much didn't get away with much at his lessons and sometimes I left his house pretty pissed off with my playing!
He didn't use this numbering system when I was there and to my knowledge his other students didn't say anything about it. There were only 4 of us at Peabody, but he did teach members of the DC military bands. Maybe they worked with Iggie then.
Interesting though now that I think about it, when auditioning he wanted
to hear me play scales, by starting off at PP and at the top of the scale you were at FF, then back down to PP. he asked for all sorts of scales, including hole tones. Is it whole or hole? Also with articulation.
I'm not sure if this helps answer your question.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-03-30 10:05
To clarify a bit, I recall that he played a series of about 6 diatonic notes and then asked the audience to identify the numbers. The first shout out was a guy who identified the notes within the scale (as if 1 was tonic 5 was dominant, etc.). He was deemed wrong. Someone actually came pretty close to the volume numbers that Iggy had in mind and he proceeded.
His explanation as to how Tabuteau got 8 degrees of volume was that it merely reflected the numbers of notes in the scale.
I am looking more deeply into phrasing verses the "hard numbers" of volume myself and just wondered if Mr. Gennusa had been more clear in lessons about the application to phrases.
...............Paul Aviles
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Author: Alseg
Date: 2012-03-30 12:59
Another person to ask is Ben Redwine.
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Former creator of CUSTOM CLARINET TUNING BARRELS by DR. ALLAN SEGAL
-Where the Sound Matters Most(tm)-
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Author: LarryBocaner ★2017
Date: 2012-03-30 19:58
I took some lessons with Iggy when he was in the Chicago Symphony (1950-51) and a few more later in Baltimore, when I was in the US Army Field Band (1953-56). He might have mentioned the Tabuteau number system in passing a time or two, but I don't remember him systematizing it at all in my lessons!
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2012-03-31 01:54
I never studied with Iggy but I play with him for several years in the BSO. I heard many details of his "teaching" technique which appeared to be very different from everyones point of view. I did hear him give several lecture - master classes but never heard him ever mention numbers with any thing he talked about or did. Iggy had many "strange" ideas, many which I've heard him say to people but I knew he didn't do himself. He often seem to come up with a "new" idea on the spot when asked a question. Once at a class on how he choose a good reed he opened a box of them and proceeded to "bounce" one at a time on the table and declare which one's were good by the sound they made when hitting the table. I've never seen or heard of him ever do anything like that when he would open a new box of reeds before rehearsal and go through them. Iggy was a great player with a beautiful tone but I don't believe he really knew who to teach that to most of his students. Many of them told me that they learned more about tone from listening to him play at their lessons then anything he could explain. Several of his students took some lessons with me behind his back because they didn't know how to solve a problem they were having and he couldn't explain it to them. Some complained to me that he would often play too much at their lessons, not as an example of how to play what they were working on but just playing things he was playing in the BSO that week. He sure had a beautiful tone though. ESP eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: duxburyclarinetguy
Date: 2012-03-31 14:37
In the five years I studied with Harold Wright, he only mentioned the Tabuteau numbering system once. He may have mentioned it to other students, but they (Bill Hudgins and Julie Vaverka among others) never mentioned it to me.
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Author: Tom Puwalski
Date: 2012-03-31 21:36
I studied with Iggy since I was 16 and he talked many times about the Tabeteau's numbering system. He probably talked about it because I remember asking he questions about it. I was also studying ear training with Asher Zlotnic a he was very fluent in Tabeteau's system, to the point of having me ask Gennusa very specific questions.
Though one of my most exciting lesson's was when Iggy let me look through his trunk of stuff from his curtis days and he found Tabeteau's spaghetti sauce recipe which Iggy said was even better than his mother's. So I drove up to York from his farm and we purchased everything to make the sauce. and I had one of the best spaghetti dinners ever. It was after that dinner and a half bottle of Schmirnoff that I got the "lesson" on the Basic tabeteau concept.
Iggy walked me to his work room that was off the the kitchen, there he pointed to a 2x4 with a nail sticking in it. He said " I want you to hammer the nail into the board" just as I raised the hammer he said no, " I want you to rest the hammer on the nail, and drive it into the board without lifting the hammer" I stared at the board and nail, and the hammer thought really hard about it and finally said "that you can't do it" to which he said, "you can't do it with a hammer and nail and you can't do it with a clarinet, there has to be an up before there can be a down". Then he waxed on about Tabeteau's system being more complicated than it needed to be. That knowing how to play Up/downs could make you sound really good. I wasn't sober enough to drive back from Glenn Rock PA, so I spent the night. The next day Iggy showed me how to play up moving to down, then 2 ups to a down then 3. I now knew how to listen to him and anyone else I was grooving to.
That was the single best music lesson I ever had. The best lessons were when you could get him to play for you. I could get him to play at every lesson. I'm one of those people that believe you can only really learn to play music by ear anyway, so that was a good thing for me.
Tom Puwalski, Backun Artist, and former Clarinet Soloist and Principal clarinetist with US. Army Field Band and clarinetist the "The Atonement"
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-03-31 23:13
Ya know, that was REALLY funny ....... and insightful !!!
I am starting to approach this from the Tabuteau side of the house and found several things on the web including a PDF from Ohio that outlines the thoughts of Tabuteau's students. It also referenced a tome called Kincaidiana (1997) by John Krell and an article by Goll-Wilson.
I'll try a bit more reading ..........then get hammered and have some spaghetti.
Thank you sooooo much Tom !!!!
...........Paul Aviles
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Author: Tom Puwalski
Date: 2012-03-31 23:33
Paul there is a Cd with Tabeteau explaining the whole system, It's available through amazon. Well worth having. I want the spaghetti sauce recipe!
Tom Puwalski, Backun Artist, and former Clarinet Soloist and Principal clarinetist with US. Army Field Band and clarinetist the "The Atonement"
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Author: Alseg
Date: 2012-04-01 01:23
There is a book by one of "Tabby"s" students (his first female student)
--really a bio--the title is something on the order of "You cannot play oboe if you can not peel a mushroom"
It is good reading, insightful, and fun.
I think I got my copy from that amazonian-sized seller online, whose name will not be mentioned except in adjectival form.
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Former creator of CUSTOM CLARINET TUNING BARRELS by DR. ALLAN SEGAL
-Where the Sound Matters Most(tm)-
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2012-04-01 12:28
The book Mr Segal is referring to is by Laila Storch, former oboe prof at the University of WA. I would recommend it highly as it gives a very thorough biography of Tabuteau and his training and career in America.
One take away that I got from the book was that the whole number system has been very overblown and taken as a form of Gospel when Tabuteau really developed it to help students at the very beginning of their training.
Tabuteau only taught 53 students in all his years at Curtis and only about half of them ended up playing professionally!
He would often take students based on their potential and training in America in the first half of the 20th Century was quite crude. Tabuteau took several students into Curtis who had never actually even had lessons on oboe.
The number system was developed to help these students understand dynamics and control as well as airflow and to explain these concepts in an easy to grasp and methodical manner.
That it has now become some sort of "system" for phrasing etc is really not the intent. And that may be why master musicians such as Wright or Gennusa did not spend an inordinate amount of time using this teaching technique.
Post Edited (2012-04-01 12:29)
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2012-04-01 20:15
Iggy and his spaghetti sauce. Yes, this is off topic but it's cute. After a concert one night we went out to Little Italy in Baltimore and went to his favorite reasturant, Vellegios, SP? He odered Spaghetti in Marinara sauce with sausage and the waiter said they were out of Marinara sauce so Iggy said you have tomatoes don't you? The waiter said yes so Iggy got up, went into the kitchen and in half an hour we sat and ate a Spaghetti and sausage in Marinara sauce dinner. I was delighted, we laughed, we at and of course, we drank. He was a character to say the least. Our former 2nd clarinet player, Gordon Miller, who played with Iggy from the time Iggy was hired to his retiring used to say about Iggy "If he had half a brain he's be dangrous". You have to use your imagination to know what he meant by that statement but he said it often. Gordy was a bit like Yogy, coming up with cute saying. My favorate was about our conductor at the time, Peter Hermann Adler, he used to say he should be arrested for impersonating a conductor, cracked me up. Adler was terrible. ESP
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2012-04-02 01:21
Perhaps Iggy was ahead of his time and would now be seen performing on Top Chef, Chopped, or Iron Chef rather than on stage playing clarinet with the CSO, BSO, etc.
Every time I have attempted to teach a chef cooking at their restaurant, they have called 911.
Which is unfortunate, as they would have learned something.
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