 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kdk
Date: 2020-01-29 12:47
A student asked me a simple question today and I didn't know the answer. Do Italian clarinetists, or for that matter clarinetists anywhere, still play clarinet with the reed on top of the mouthpiece?
Karl
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Author: nellsonic
Date: 2020-01-29 13:04
I remember reading somewhere that Aurelio Magnani was responsible for popularizing the modern reed-down method in Italy during the later nineteenth century. All the very fine Italian clarinetists I've had the pleasure of observing (Allesandro Carbonare, Antonio Tinelli, and others) play in the modern style.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-01-29 23:37
Karl: answer: nobody does that; whether it be in Italy or anywhere else. Maybe in Outer Mongolia. I've never even seen "historically informed" players do this on their period instruments. If they did, it would require a different mouthpiece. Unfortunately-in my opinion- Italians have moved away from double-lip too. That's how I played when I studied there and the teacher required this.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-01-29 23:39
The only time I ever saw a clarinetist play with the reed on top was in a wind band in Oaxaca, Mexico. He didn't sound too good, I'm afraid.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Kaos
Date: 2020-01-30 00:57
I'm from Italy, I can confirm that no one plays with the reed on top now. I never saw one doing that but I'm just a young conservatory student, I heard they used to do that in popular music many many years ago.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2020-01-30 01:10
When I've experimented with reed-up, the vibration to my upper lip and teeth was too intense to endure. I don't know if that's inherent in the technique, or due to the modern equpment, or what.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2020-01-30 01:18
Thanks, everyone. That's what I expected to find.
Karl
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2020-01-30 18:49
I think the last person in the USA who arrived from Italy was Gino Cioffi. I think he converted to the reed being down when he arrived to the USA. So my question is are there others after him?
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: kdk
Date: 2020-01-30 19:44
Bob Bernardo wrote:
> I think the last person in the USA who arrived from Italy was
> Gino Cioffi.
Well, that's what I've always understood. I was still a little too young to have been aware of it when he first arrived and made the change. I've never seen first-hand anyone play that way, only read about it.
I'm curious, too, if there were others who came here playing reed-on-top (from anywhere) and changed here.
Karl
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-01-30 20:34
Cioffi's favorite etude book was the Labanchi Method, and Labanchi advocated playing with the reed up against the upper lip as a faster way to articulate. Throughout Europe, for a century, from the earliest days of the chalumeau and clarinet (1690s) till the 1790s, the reed up position was the norm. Crusell began his career playing this way and later learned the new way of playing--advocated by the Baermanns and other virtuosos--with the reed down as we do today. But in Italy, for at least another century, many players, like Labanchi, continued to prefer the reed up position.
That tradition does appear to be dead or moribund today.
Here are the first few pages of the original Italian language edition of the Labanchi method; the drawings on pages 5 and 6 show the reed up position preferred by the older generation of Italian players. https://clarinetcorner.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/mouthpiece-puzzle/
Click on Labanchi-Metodo (in red).
Post Edited (2020-01-30 20:35)
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Author: kdk
Date: 2020-01-30 20:58
seabreeze wrote:
> Cioffi's favorite etude book was the Labanchi Method, and
> Labanchi advocated playing with the reed up against the upper
> lip as a faster way to articulate.
I can't read the Italian and can't cut-and-paste directly from the PDF into a translator, so I'll take the shortcut and just ask - how was articulation done with the reed up (does he describe it here?)? Did the tongue contact the hard palette, as flutists and brass players do?
Karl
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-01-30 21:55
Perhaps the most extensive study on the reed up embouchure to date is the 2001 PhD dissertation of Ingrid Pearson, "Clarinet Embouchure in Theory and Practice: The Forgotten Art of Reed Above," University of Sheffield. Pearson now teaches at the Royal College of Music in London. Karl, if I can get a copy I'd be happy to send one to you.
When researching material on this subject it is useful to know that the reed up position in German is called Ubersichblasen; the reed down position is called Untersichblasen. Kornel Wolack in his book Articulation Types for Clarinet goes a bit into this history. Albert Rice in The Baroque Clarinet, pages 65ff, gives some more perspective (offering evidence that even in the Baroque period there were a few players who played with the reed down),. as does Eric Hoeprich in his study, The Clarinet. Hoeprich translated a segment of the Labanchi text that essentially says Lebanchi believed the upper lip, though weaker than the lower was also more flexible, elastic, and sensitive, and therefore better able to produce a mellower sound, regulate intonation, and give a vocal-like range of delicate shades and expressions. But there is an oral tradition that Labanchi and other players (mostly Italian) who favored Ubersichblasen found that they could articulate more rapidly with less effort, and that is what I have heard from old Italian players (including my first Italian barber back in the 1950s, who had studied from the Lebanchi book with an Ubersichblasen player in his youth). Lebanchi doesn't seem to have written much on the exact mechanism of tonguing he used, but in mouthpiece placement he clearly preferred the reed up position long after the majority of German and French players had switched to Untersichblasen.
Native Italian speakers, please step up and say if I am missing something in the text.
I don't know if Karl Wolack found any contemporary Ubersichblassen players (if such still exist) to test when he used electrodes to measure tongue movement.
Post Edited (2020-01-30 22:30)
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Author: ebonite
Date: 2020-01-30 22:16
The Lebanchi text very briefly mentions the method of articulation:
This is from the second full page of text: "... la punta della lingua viene a battere fra la punta del becco, e quello della linguetta..."
So roughly something like:
"....the tip of the tongue strikes between the tip of the mouthpiece and that of the reed..."
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-01-30 23:29
Thank you, ebonite. That sounds like a technique John Yeh is said to have used in the rapid staccato passage of the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto (but playing with the reed down in the usual position, of course). Reportedly Yeh called it "over the beak" tonguing. Players rediscover techniques that were used in the past and put them to use in different contexts and different ways.
Post Edited (2020-01-31 17:47)
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Author: Paul Globus
Date: 2020-01-31 20:21
My original teachers were Italian and their teachers were Italian. None of them played with the reed on top. However, they all played double lip (not surprisingly, so do I; I also speak Italian).
Just to give you an idea of what era I am talking about, I started playing in 1959 and played by first professional, symphony job a decade later.
Musicians like Gino Cioffi and my teachers, Rafael Masella (whose father, Frank, was also a clarinetist) and Emilio Iacurto, were monster players whose abilities were so far above the norm that I am at a loss to describe it in words.
Paul Globus
Post Edited (2020-01-31 20:23)
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2020-01-31 20:34
So interesting! Like Paul I'm also a double lip player from the very start. John Yeh is also a DL player. I think I need to talk to him about what he did during that performance. I think we all know that Harold Wright and Iggie Genusa also were DL players. Marcellus was for a bit. He could surely play both ways. Steve Barta plays both ways. There's just something special about this sound.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-01-31 21:34
Paul,
Donald Martino, composer of the difficult "Set for Clarinet" (Solo) also held his first Italian clarinet teacher--Francesco Lieto--in awe. Martino said that Lieto's rhythmical articulation was more distinct, neat, and musical than he had ever heard from other clarinetists, then or later. Lieto took Martino through Cavallini, Labanchi, and other Italian classics, and the wide interval passages in their books (which Lieto could play accurately and with perfect legato), such as pages 191 and 207 in Labanchi, and Cavallini's No 5 (mixed with a little Bartok, be-bop, and Benny Goodman) were transformed into the wonderfully extravagant leaps that Martino put into his jazzy, octatonic "Set."
Post Edited (2020-02-01 05:45)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-01-31 22:33
Paul: What brand of instruments did these Italian teachers play, if you can remember? Italian or French instruments? I seem to recall Cioffi played Selmer, possibly Centered Tone. My teacher (Italian) played a handcrafted Enrico Guasti clarinet from Florence whose keywork looked a lot like an oboe's.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Paul Globus
Date: 2020-02-01 02:12
They played Selmers and then, when Buffets become popular starting in the mid 1960s, they switched to Buffets.
But at that time, the instruments were mostly "full system," i.e, with a low D and an articulated C# / G# key. In fact, in orchestra, they rarely used their A clarinets, preferring to transpose whenever possible.
This explains why when I was studying with the Italian masters, I was required to learn every etude as written as well as transposed for both A and C clarinet. I was also required to learn to play almost every A-clarinet orchestral excerpt on my B-flat instrument (except Peter and the Wolf and pieces like that).
On one of my first professional jobs with the orchestra, where I was playing second to my teacher, he showed up with his B-flat instrument in a single case, no A clarinet at all. There was a fair amount of music on the program written for the A clarinet. I used my A clarinet, he transposed.
Paul
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2020-02-01 02:49
Cool story Paul and informative. I kinda remember this about switching to Buffets in the 1960's because the Buffet, the R13's didn't have straight bores anymore. That new design which pretty much every symphony player switched to. Very few went with other companies. Pre R13's had straight bores. And Marcellus played on a pre R13 for years after the R13's came along.
Unlike you Paul, I only had to transpose to C when the music was written for C clarinet. Never during lessons! You poor guy. lol
My very first experience was transposing Beethovens 9th, those notes fly by and every note was pretty much sharped! The tempo is around 138 and up. Pretty hard and every serious clarinetist should practice this.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: Paul Globus
Date: 2020-02-01 03:05
I hated all the transposition, especially since it almost always made the piece more difficult technically.
The Italians were also big about solfeggio -- speaking the pitches (do, re, me, fa, sol, la, si, do) in perfect rhythm and at the finished tempo as part of the routine of learning to play any passage of music. In fact, I had to "solfege" every Rose and Labanchi study in my lessons. I used to (silently) practice it on the bus.
Paul
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2020-02-03 12:08
Wow Paul Globus! What fun that must have been! Do you ever use it now? What I found confusing was the movable DO, based on the key signature. Fixed DO was surely easier. I'm sure you must be a great sight reader.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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Author: Paul Globus
Date: 2020-02-03 18:27
I was a pretty good sight reader but not any more. The reason? As a former professional player, long retired from the business, I never practice sight reading.
I should distinguish between the solfege I did with my clarinet teachers and the solfege I learned in music classes. In the former, we were speaking the pitches in rhythm -- i.e. there was no "singing" involved. In the latter, we were singing and speaking the pitches in rhythm.
I did five years of solfege classes and never ventured into the territory of moveable DO. Never understood how anyone could do that fluently.
Paul
Post Edited (2020-02-03 18:27)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-02-05 00:43
The intrepid clarinet scholar Ingrid Elizabeth Pearson kindly provided me with the following link to her many published papers on the history of the instrument, including one that presents the salient information in her 2001 dissertation on the "reed up" embouchure. The relevant paper is about number 21 in the long list, and is entitled "The Reed-Above Embouchure: Fact or Fallacy?" https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ingrid_Pearson.
She demonstrates just how pervasive the reed up position is in the history of the clarinet and suggests in her concluding remarks that players on period clarinets should try the reed up position when performing such pieces as the Cavallini Caprices or the works of Busoni because that's how they played the instrument. In England, John Mahon (1815) and Thomas Lindsay Willman (1828) were still playing with the reed up, and in Italy (especially Naples) the tradition was alive and well throughout the 19th century in the playing and teaching of Ferdinando Sebastaiani and Gaetano Lebanchi, long after the Germans and French had switched.
She is presently working on another new research paper that further pursues this topic, which I await with considerable interest.
To answer Karl's original question of whether anybody plays that way now, evidently Dr. Pearson's answer would be, well, to be properly adventurous historically, somebody should!
Post Edited (2020-02-05 01:49)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-02-08 19:38
To get a true historical feeling for what the reed up embouchure was, you would need to visualize someone like Martin Frost or Sabine Meyer playing that way today, at the height of their powers and in their best form. Ernesto Cavallini was the Martin Frost of his day, master of circular breathing and multiple tonguing and wowing audiences internationally with his dazzling skill. The early professors at the Paris Conservatory, also known for their voluble technique, played that way. The reed up position was not a sign of ignorance (the players didn't have the mouthpiece "upside down"), regional insularity, or maladroitness; it was compatible with the highest possible skills and the best players in that tradition sparked wonder and envy in their audiences.
Post Edited (2020-12-16 00:26)
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The Clarinet Pages
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