Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2017-11-01 15:41
Robert wrote:
>> I have several questions. >>
I will answer your questions briefly below; but I want to say at the outset that those questions – and the answers – are very tangential to my motives for posting the link.
Actually, I surprised myself. It's very out of character for me to tout my wares about the place, and I normally refrain from criticising my colleagues' performances. But sometimes, after description hasn't worked, demonstration is the only remaining way to bring musical differences into focus. If that doesn't work in its turn of course, then we're lost.
What I notice most about what you write is how technocentric it is, like so much of what we see here. It's 'the clarinet' that has this character, it's 'the type of instrument' that plays like that, it's 'the tonguing technique' that gives this result, it's 'whether or not you have the reed uppermost', it's...
Whereas, how I approach the matter is to ask myself, what does the music seem to want? Then I try to do that with whatever I have at my disposal.
An obvious thing that the Crusell seems to want is varying phrase lengths. That involves being able to create legato groups involving varying numbers of notes, and requires tonal control that the instrument sometimes resists. My criticism of Casale is that he pays little or no attention to this requirement. On the other hand, I think you can hear me paying attention to it.
There are ways of giving the music 'what it wants' that can benefit from some knowledge of 'what they did routinely', as I tried to describe for example in 'Phrasing in Contention'. And the notion that you can bring out a note by slightly lengthening it and shortening its subsequent, putting the third note in the sequence in its correct place whilst maintaining the timbre constant, is also useful.
But I don't start from that. These instruments, those techniques, are tools for me to generate musical expression. "Tools, not rules" might be an appropriate mantra.
Your questions:
The pitch is A=430Hz; I don't find the chalumeau to be 'at best mf' – in fact, many modern players underplay the importance of the chalumeau, and I don't myself hold back; I try to do the same thing on a modern instrument as I try to do on a period instrument (but see 'Phrasing in Contention', which is about how we read the musical notation of the period); I do use varieties of tongue and glottal action in articulation; I don't regard ubersichblasen as representing any serious option for myself: it's taken long enough for me to get where I am and my upper teeth are too long for it anyway; there are no techniques in particular that apply only to the period instrument.
Tony
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The Clarinet BBoard
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