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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The Clarinet BBoard
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