Author: Markael
Date: 2005-06-30 11:33
Well, I feel the need to make one more post on the vibrato – chocolate –strawberry issue, and then I won’t say any more about it.
I do this with great trepidation. In the first place, perhaps I should not have contributed to this thread at all, because I added nothing to the understanding of vibrato. I merely responded to what you said to Sue; it hit me wrong. Perhaps I misunderstood you completely. If so, I’m sorry for muddying the waters. Then again, maybe I was not the only one who took it that way.
Secondly, I’m talking with someone who knows much more about these matters than I do, and it seems that I gave you the impression that I was saying, “Well, let’s not bother to carry this study of vibrato too far.” Surely this must be maddening to one who has devoted his live to plumbing the depths of music.
Third, I spent a long time last night working on this post and went to bed unsatisfied with what I had written. I wondered if the time had been well spent, and whether posting again would end up as endless hair splitting and perpetuation of misunderstanding.
Threads on this board are basically conversations, and like oral conversations, they take many twists and turns. It just sounded to me as if you were insisting that the conversation remain on an academic level, marking an answer wrong any time someone simply said, “I like vibrato” or “I don’t like vibrato.”
Also, I think you are too quick to dismiss the taste metaphors. I stand by what I said: Music is sensual. Perhaps I should have included the term “visceral.” To understand how musical devices “work” we can’t forget or minimize this.
“Does it not occur to you that there is an analogy between 'the taste of strawberry' and 'the sound of a clarinet'? And that that analogy makes it clear that 'the sound of the clarinet' is on a more superficial level than 'what the sound of the clarinet *does*, in detail, in a passage of the Schubert Octet'?”
My taste metaphor was not about the flavor of the clarinet in general, (clarinet = strawberry) but rather its use in the rendition of a piece of music. I was comparing chocolate versus strawberry to vibrato versus non vibrato. It wasn’t particularly a good metaphor, nor was it the first taste metaphor in this thread.
Synomomous Botch used a much better metaphor, comparing vibrato with curry. A little goes a long way. Composers and arrangers write the recipes, players and conductors tweak and adapt them.
Maybe even that is not the best metaphor, but don’t knock it until you can offer something better. For my money, it makes sense to describe vibrato as a seasoning—perhaps one that works well in passage A but not passage B.
And by the way, I would never describe the tone of a clarinet as “strawberry.” It is definitely black cherry. I’m not saying this to be flip; I made the connection when I read your post, and black cherry is my favorite flavor. Perhaps that partially explains why I chose clarinet as my instrument.
Well, that sounds like an individual and personal thing. But what about this: Sometimes when I hear certain types of jazz clarinet passages, it makes me think of an ice cream cone. And then I read Tom Ridenour’s description of the tone of a clarinet, which he describes as a combination of oh and eee. He further describes the shape of the tone as like an ice cream cone. This type of unconscious associations, some of which sound crude or simple, may be the keys to understanding music on a deeper level.
As for personal preference: True, if we are going to study music, teach music, learn how to use all the expressive tools at our disposal, we have to say more than “I like this; I don’t like that.” But you go to such lengths in making this point that it seems almost as if you are dismissing the whole idea of personal taste, even your own. It makes me wonder what you pop into the CD player at the end of a hard day when you just want to relax.
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