 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: rkclarinet
Date: 2012-08-28 22:26
I need to know what is the best clarinet orchestral book? The one with the most excerpts, advice, and possible recordings! I am soon to be a graduate student and I need to get the ball rolling with orchestra works.
Thanks!!
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2012-08-28 22:45
The Working Clarinetist, by Peter Hadcock is what you're asking for.
There are other books, but it combines the excerpt with a lot of great advice.
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2012-08-29 00:57
Start here: http://www.vcisinc.com/clarinetmusicexcerpts.htm.
Most people have the International and Bonade books, but these have *many* errors and offer only "bleeding chunks." The best book is none at all, but rather the complete parts contained in the Orchestral Musician's CD ROM Library http://www.vcisinc.com/omcdrom.htm.
Knowing the big solos and having them under your fingers is not enough. You must also know everything else that's going on as you play and how the solo fits into the context. For example, is the bassoon playing a countermelody beneath you? Is material in the solo played beforehand or afterward by other instruments? How does the solo fit into the entire composition? For example, the finale of the Brahms 4th is a passacaglia, and you need to know where you are in each cycle and what happened in earlier cycles. For much more, see http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=20&i=768&t=768.
A Drucker student (Steve Girko) told me that a large part of his coaching consisted of tips like "You're in octaves with the first flute here, and most flutists play this note sharp, so you need to go along." Following the parts along with a recording is the most thorough way of getting to know solos in context.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Gregory Williams
Date: 2012-08-29 00:57
Hi RK,
There is NO SUBSTITUTE for having the actual complete parts to the pieces you could be asked to play. Frequently, students bring parts from excerpt books that are incomplete, or incorrect. Try to find parts to the works you need on imslp.org or order them from lucks music library or Eble Music. If you need music that is rental only, there are places to find that music for your own study...start with your teacher. Most of the excerpt books you'll find only have the major solos, but lack difficult tutti sections, etc.
Even the Hadcock books...which are absolutely fantastic (I still check the Hadcock Eb book when I have to perform the Eb parts) don't have some of the difficult passages in them. When you play at an audition, frequently you'll be required to perform off of the orchestra's music. Practicing from the actual parts will help you make that instant adjustment. Also, some orchestras don't bother to list measure numbers on their audition lists. Technically, you should know the whole part, not just the solos. When we took the MN Orchestra Associate Principal Clarinet Audition, the book was about 1.5 inches thick. There were no trick questions, so to speak, but I did look at most of the difficult tutti passages in the weeks leading up to the audition.
My advice: Find all the parts for the major works that could be asked on an audition and keep a loose photocopy of each part in a separate location. Keep a relatively clean copy of your concertos in the same place. Don't mark them up, and treat them like gold. Anytime you need to prepare for a new audition, grab the parts on the audition list from the loose sheets, photocopy them and make a bound audition book at kinkos (or similar). I usually coil bind the books and staple all my travel printouts to the first or last pages.
NB...I am not, nor have I ever been, an employee of Kinkos or Fedex Office. Full Disclosure...I stocked shelves at Office Max...overnights while in Grad School.
My approach might even be "old fashioned". I'm sure there is a way to save these parts digitally and assemble them fresh off the printer when an audition comes up.
Best of Luck,
Greg Williams
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2012-08-30 12:02
>>There is NO SUBSTITUTE for having the actual complete parts to the pieces you could be asked to play.>>
While I agree with that advice in general, let's be practical: How quickly can rkclarinet, or anybody else, assemble all those parts and learn the subtle nuances of playing them? The process takes a long time; and you never know what a conductor or an audition opportunity might throw at you while you're in progress. (And does anybody, ever, know it all?) By all means, start that process, but meanwhile, having a good excerpt book handy *now* and learning those most treacherous bits of the common repertory (by adding one excerpt at a time to the regular practice schedule, for instance) is a wise idea.
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: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2012-08-30 13:15
Greg,
I enjoyed the level of organization - beyond just practicing - that went into your audition preparation.
It must have had a good part in your success in recent auditions.
Thanks for the advice in this regard.
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Author: C.Elizabeth07
Date: 2012-08-30 13:18
I agree with the people above who recommended Hadcock's Working Clarinetist. I own his Eb excerpts too. I have made it a project to collect full parts of those works (for both 1st, 2nd Eb and Bass) and many are available on IMSLP.
I
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2012-08-30 13:30
If you're going the excerpt route, one or more of the annotated ones would be better than the older International or Bonade collections - any real value is in the commentary. And, as has already been noted, the International and Bonade books are replete with errors. They were valuable when they were all that was available, but they've become outdated.
As for collecting parts, the excerpt books are limited to public domain music anyway, and much of that repertoire is available for download at IMSLP (Petrucci Music Library). The complete parts are there for the taking. Start with the obvious - the symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak (7,8,9), Tchaikovsky (4,5,6), and work out from there. Some audition standards that aren't PD may be harder to find and will cost money to buy, but at that point you're only filling gaps in what's readily available at IMSLP.
The OMCDRL series is an excellent collection that, fortunately for Hal Leonard, pre-dated the IMSLP site by a few years. It saves a lot of collection time and effort, but nearly everything (maybe everything - I've certainly not done a piece-by-piece search) on the CDs is now available from Petrucci, and the OMCDRL volumes are each about $20 compared to $0 (unless you donate to support it) at IMSLP.
Karl
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Author: Ed
Date: 2012-08-30 21:08
Quote:
There is NO SUBSTITUTE for having the actual complete parts to the pieces you could be asked to play.
I agree completely. I stopped using excerpt books when I realized that it gave so little info compared to what one really needs to know to play the part. With the excerpt one does not have any sense on continuity or context.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2012-09-02 01:09
Lots of very good advise here. I've always thought that a student should first learn as many of the "audition" soloes as possible and that's where many of these books come in handy. Especially the Hancock and the Block books but I learned them all from the McGinnis books, the French Repertoire and Strauss books because the others were not in print yet. Once you've learned the important soloes so that you can play them in tempo with a good tone, good intonation and musicially then you can advance to getting the parts and really learning how they fit into the ensemple. If you can't play the soloes properly it won't make a heck of a lot of difference if you know that the flute may be sharp over here for the bassoon can't play that as softly as you can. I always advise listening to several recordings while learning the solo material and to take the "medium" tempos as a recommendation. You will find that one recording of an orchestral solo is faster than the mm marking and one is much slower, one may actually be the correct marking. Remember too, the interpretation and tempo may not be the way the player thought it should be played, the conductor always has the last word. Think Szell and Reiner.
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: Sean.Perrin
Date: 2012-09-04 15:19
Honestly, I now use IMSLP.org combined with great recordings and youtube combined with the bonade and hadcock books. You can get FULL scores AND parts for most pieces that we have to learn (unless it's still copyright protected) ad it's FREE just like it should be.
You know what I can't stand? The bonade book doesn't have bar numbers marked in and just has the little double bars between sections that can be, at times, hundreds of bars apart. Would it have really been that hard to mark in bar numbers? Especially on a piece I'm not familiar with this can be extremely frustrating!
Founder and host of the Clarineat Podcast: http://www.clarineat.com
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