 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2025-05-19 21:28
I nominate the clarinet cadenza in Henry Wood's 'Fantasia on British Sea Songs' as it's complete and total guff. What's it got to do with anything in the actual piece?
Besides a few minutes of technical exercises with zero musical merit and hardly anything the audience can engage with or be moved by (and the same from the player's perspective as well as the other orchestral members sitting there twiddling their thumbs waiting for it to finish), it relates to nothing that's gone before nor after it and a better bridge/interlude could've been used in those wasted minutes.
I only know one person that actually rates it and only posted this as I heard a clarinettist absolutely slate it yesterday (as well as the fact the hornpipe is written out n B Major for Bb when it could just be in C Major for A, which most players would do anyway).
There. I said it and I don't care who I upset as a result.
I nominated mine, now it's your turn.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
Post Edited (2025-05-19 21:34)
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Author: kdk
Date: 2025-05-19 23:16
The nice thing about cadenzas (especially bad ones) is that you don't have to play them. The player can write (or improvise) their own or have someone else write one.
I imagine Wood scored the hornpipe for Bb clarinet because the rest of the part is in Bb, but it's an arrangement of (AFAIK) public domain tunes, so I doubt if anyone, including Wood, cared (or cares) what clarinet you use.
Not really worth getting worked up about.
Karl
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Author: Tom H
Date: 2025-05-19 23:57
A great book -- Famous Clarinet Cadenzas by Walter C. Schad. Belwin pub. 1928 if you can still find it. Guy in the band I play in gave it to me. He would be about 107 now.
The Most Advanced Clarinet Book--
tomheimer.ampbk.com/ Sheet Music Plus item A0.1001315, Musicnotes product no. MB0000649.
Boreal Ballad for unaccompanied clarinet-Sheet Music Plus item A0.1001314.
Musicnotes product no. MNO287475
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Author: jim sclater
Date: 2025-05-20 00:24
I second Chris P.'s nomination of the cadenza from the Fantasia on British Sea Songs. Let's just get on with the music...
jsclater@comcast.net
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Author: kilo
Date: 2025-05-20 16:44
Not a dog dirt cadenza, just a funny story. Our band director gave us the music for the Light Cavalry Overture and we were playing through it for the first time. The principal clarinetist was out of town and I was asked to cover the famous cadenza – which I was able to execute, uncharacteristically, with remarkable confidence and skill. It was still in my fingers, forty years after first learning how to play it from page 78 of Langenus II.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2025-05-20 16:53
The Light Cavalry cadenza is hinted to in several works - the Artie Shaw concerto being the one I can immediately think of.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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