 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: qualitycontrol
Date: 2014-02-26 01:27
Just stumbled upon a copy of 28 Etudes by Guy Lacour, written using the modes of limited transposition described by Messiaen.
Looking quickly, I couldn't find anything that had been written for the clarinet similar to this. These seem fairly playable, but I haven't really sat down and tried them out. I'm not sure if they will present any challenges having being written for saxophone, but they certainly won't help me practice below a low Bb.
Is anyone aware of other clarinet-specific books similar to this that have been written? Messiaen's work is something I'm interested in playing more of, but I suppose I'd be interested in knowing of anything that works through non-diatonic or modal scales.
Thanks,
Paul
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-02-26 01:53
The Lacour saxophone book is worth working through on the clarinet just to get the modal patterns in your ear and under the fingers. They can be transposed to any starting note for more practice in extended registers.
I don't know of any clarinet practice material that specifically covers modes drawn from Messiaen's music. There is, however, a book of etudes by Eugene Bozza on some of the modes used in Hindu Indian music:
Eugene Bozza, 11 Etudes on the Karnatic Modes for Clarinet, published by Alphonse Leduc, and available from several sources online.
William Powell may have more material of this kind, extending the tonal and melodic orbit for the clarinetist beyond the traditional scales and modes of Western art music.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-02-26 11:06
To explore this subject a little more, you can search for guitar books by Masaya Yamaguchi, who has thoroughly explored the ways that Messiaen's modes can be used in jazz (or classical) improvisation, especially in his "Symmetric Scales for Jazz Improvisation." He has written other unconventional scale study and practice books as well, all for sale and reviewed in the "usual places" on the Net.
In the 1950s, jazz composer George Russell made quite a stir with his book,
Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization, which shows how modal patterns (not specifically Messiaen's) can be used to structure jazz melodic improvisation.
Russell's material was picked up by both Miles Davis and John Coltrane (listen, for example to the album Kind of Blue, in which regular blues progressions take unaccustomed modal directions during the improvised solos.)
Unfortunately, the Russell book, now out of print so far as I can see, sells for exorbitantly high prices. Some libraries may have a copy. I'm not aware of any jazz clarinetists who have developed these (or Messiaen's) modal approaches as well as they might be developed, but the potential is surely there.
Post Edited (2014-02-26 06:07)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2014-02-26 12:06
Dear Seabreeze and Quality Control,
What a fascinating and worthwhile subject. I personally compose études and you have given me an excellent idea. I would just like to add the Messiaen HATED jazz!! He went so far as to liken it to military music. If he finds out his modes are being used for jazz improvisation, he will surely turn over in his grave, and far more than once. I never met the man, but I knew some members of his family. Cool, they weren't.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: rc004e
Date: 2014-02-26 17:47
They are arranged for clarinet as well, below is a link to van Cott music:
https://ssl.perfora.net/secure.vcisinc.com/singleitem.html?id=C1447&__utma=1.240042662.1391439355.1393103588.1393421741.3&__utmb=1.3.10.1393421741&__utmc=1&__utmx=-&__utmz=1.1393421741.3.3.utmcsr=google|utmccn=(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=(not%20provided)&__utmv=-&__utmk=85340057
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-02-26 22:21
The famous Sousa band soloist, cornetist Herbert Clark, also is on record as hating jazz. Yet Louis Armstrong reportedly used to listen to Clark's recordings frequently and it is very possible that Armstrong may have had Clark in mind when he played the famous opening cadenza on "West End Blues." Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were listening a lot to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" during the early days of be-bop. Music, like plants, hybridizes easily. Messiaen at his best is entrancing; at his worst, for example in some of his piano works, he sounds like he is composing the blandest kind of cocktail music.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2014-02-27 01:04
Dear Seabreeze,
There is a fascinating interview with Charlie Parker on YouTube done shortly before his death (I seem to recall Paul Desmond was the interviewer!). He expressed his desire to study with Edgard Varese and to spend time in France studying composition. Bird was a very, very articulate man, as was Desmond, whose lifelong ambition was to be a novelist. Messiaen: cocktail music?! The poor man is not only rolling in his grave, he is spinning in it!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-02-27 08:04
Yes, the interview Desmond did with Parker is extremely enjoyable to read. Two great jazz players, about as far removed in style as you can get yet in communion with each other.
If jazz was all right with Gershwin, Ravel, Stravinsky, and even Elliot Carter (or for that matter Mel Powell who played with Benny Goodman yet wrote cerebral 12-tone music), why is it infra dig for Messiaen? Sorry, some people are wonderfully talented yet snobbish still.
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Author: qualitycontrol
Date: 2014-02-27 10:23
Seabreeze, what piano music are you talking about that sounds like cocktail music? I'm pretty familiar with his paino works and can't think of what that would be.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2014-02-27 12:18
Seabreeze: Pierre Boulez has also often voiced his contempt for jazz, which he considers harmonically and rhythmically poor and based on a series of clichés. This was pretty much Messiaen's point of view too, so Boulez must have inherited it, though he is hardly an easily- influenced man. Unconsciously, the very religious Messiaen must have felt that jazz was the devil's music.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-02-27 19:33
Luciano Berio's Sinfornia Eindrucke specifically calls for performance by jazz singers, and Boulez did not recuse himself from directing and recording this work with the New Swingle Singers and performing it with them in radio broadcasts (see Erato B000005ECO).
Messiaen and Boulez give high priority to very tight control over every aspect of music in their compositions so it is not surprising that they might find jazz a bit out of control. Folk music and poetry of any kind is prone to repeat the familiar and employ cliche: How many times does Homer repeat the folkloric formula, "wine dark sea"? Yet people love the cliches and took forward to hearing them and repeating them. I believe the great scholar Jacques Barzun once said that cliches are important because they say something people want to hear and repeat.
Snobs, however talented, think differently.
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The Clarinet Pages
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