 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Eric
Date: 2003-11-07 03:34
Hello everyone, I'm playing this piece with a chamber orchestra (harp, flute, clarinet, and full strings) and I'm having a very hard time tonguing all the notes (for instance, the very beginning 32nd triplets and later on the succession of 16th note runs). I am considering double tonguing the 16th note runs but I'm not sure if I can do the intro. What is your advice for very fast (16ths at 150+) tonguing in the middle clarion register? Has anyone ever played this piece? Thanks.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2003-11-07 14:24
There's a wonderful recording of the Ravel by Alice Chalifoux, the Cleveland Orchestra harpist, with Robert Marcellus playing the clarinet part. It's on a super-cheap Sony Classical Essential Classics CD #63056.
I heard the same people play it live in around 1962 and was amazed by Marcellus's precision and tongue speed.
It helps with the repeated pairs at the beginning to practice just brushing the very tip of your tongue past the tip of the reed -- as much luh-luh as tuh-tuh. Try it without touching the reed at all -- having your tongue tip just miss the reed -- and slowly move it in to where it just grazes the reed.
Good luck. Let us know how the performance goes. It's a wonderful piece, even if there aren't many clarinet solos :-)
Ken Shaw
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2010-01-22 16:45
Hi,
I just got a call to play this for a local university harp student's senior recital. For those that have played it, how did the group handle the many tempo changes? Was there a conductor or did one of the violins do some serious head nods?
There are some very thick parts that could get away from all but the most experienced ensembles.
HRL
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-01-23 20:35
Eric wrote:
>> ...I'm having a very hard time tonguing all the notes (for instance, the very beginning 32nd triplets and later on the succession of 16th note runs).>>
It helps to see that the context is not a very demanding one at the beginning. You're playing '2nd flute'; and the two wind instruments form a little quartet with the first and second violins as an accompaniment to the 'cello tune. When it gets faster, the harp and then the viola come in too, so it's totally covered as it gets impossible:-)
I remember doing a workshop at Nottingham University in the 70s in which I thought it would be interesting for the students to see how the ear could be misled. I first demonstrated that I wasn't 'really' playing the passage -- I put all the fingerings in the right places, but 'fudged' the single articulation -- and then we added the flute, who of course had no problem with a clean double staccato. It really wasn't then possible to hear that we weren't both playing exactly what was written. And when we added the second violin pizzicato sextuplets, and finally the first violin arpeggios, the illusion was total.
Finally, we added the most important line -- namely the 'cello solo -- at which point the whole issue became a non-issue. (In fact, I suggest that this sort of thing is an issue only to people who are clarinet-technique oriented rather than musically oriented.)
Given all that, I would be very surprised if a musically intelligent performance were to make clear exactly what the clarinet player does in this passage. If indeed, as Ken Shaw claims of his favoured recording, Marcellus's precision and tongue speed is 'amazing', then I suggest that too much attention was being drawn to it.
Or, that Ken Shaw's ear, as on other occasions, has been misled.
The later passage in semiquavers is more audible; but it's slower, and most people can single tongue that. Moreover, even that is 'quite' covered: flute, clarinet and lower strings all have similar material.
Tony
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2010-01-23 23:19
While I agree with Tony that no special attention should be drawn to the clarinet part in this passage, I do think it is at least worth TRYING to find a way to do what Ravel wrote.
I only started systematically practicing double-tonguing last year. I have already used it successfully in some low register stuff, but I don't think I'd be able to do it well yet for the effect required in this passage (With my current double-staccato ability, it would surely stick out). But I'm sure some clarinetists could do it well with double-tonguing.
When I played this piece recently I used an articulation that I'd read about in Quantz's old flute tutor. I made a kind of "tuttle-uttle" sound with my tongue. This involved tonguing the "tuh" on the palate rather than the reed, and making the "tle" by replacing the tip of the tongue against the palate and dropping the sides of the tongue. It sounds complicated, but it really isn't more complicated than saying "tuttle"! The effect was not a clear double-staccato, but rather an unclear "atmospheric" articulation, which I thought fit in more or less with the general character of this accompaniment. I started the passage with normal tonguing, but then moved into this way of tonguing as it sped up. The result isn't perfect, but is at least "a solution".
I have a low-quality recording of our concert which I could let you hear if I could figure out how to attach it??
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-01-24 04:32
Liquorice wrote:
>> While I agree with Tony that no special attention should be drawn to the clarinet part in this passage, I do think it is at least worth TRYING to find a way to do what Ravel wrote.>>
As the remainder of your post implies, we have to make a decision about 'what Ravel wrote'.
The danger is that some technique-oriented nitwit, looking at their part, will take 'what Ravel wrote' as 'some clarinet double-tonguing', and then DO IT, hoping thereby perhaps to be congratulated on their amazing speed and precision.
The score tells a very different story.
Tony
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2010-01-24 11:33
Tony,
You hit the nail on the head with the clarinet being the 2nd flute in many places particularly harmonically. I must admit that I am hopeful that the flute is a prodigious double tongue player so that I am able to relax.
The passage at #1 is marked pp and the later tonguing section is ppp so looking at the accompaniment context that the clarinet part provides, perhaps what Ravel wanted was what some call "a wall of sound" in a very subdued way. At least that's what I have heard in several recordings I have found.
But this is a lovely piece with the just the tonguing issue that main conceptual trouble spot (aka what did Ravel intend).
HRL
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2010-01-25 00:33
Interesting post. I have a recording from the Montreal Symphony players "Autour de la harpe" where the clarinet in the opening notes sounds like an alto flute. It is amazing how well the two players blend.
I am in a community wind ensemble where we often struggle with technical transcriptions of symphony works. The conductor has always been very good at enlightening us with what matters, what can be fudged and what needs to be clean.
We try hard to get everything right, but when we can't, we know how to prioritize to try to preserve most of the musical content.
--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>
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Author: salzo
Date: 2010-01-25 00:44
" If indeed, as Ken Shaw claims of his favoured recording, Marcellus's precision and tongue speed is 'amazing', then I suggest that too much attention was being drawn to it."
That is quite an astounding comment. Because Marcellus played it articulated as was intended (see score, Ravel, Into et Allegro), we are to infer that somehow it wasnt what was intended, because the articulation was noticeable?
Perhaps you might LISTEN to the recording yourself, before making such an absurd comment.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-01-26 22:16
Salzo wrote:
>> Perhaps you might LISTEN to the recording yourself, before making such an absurd comment.>>
I had made an effort to do so; but since I found that the price new at amazon.co.uk was UKP49, I thought I might give it a miss.
What I DID learn from the exercise of finding out that information, though, was that the recording is not of Ravel's original, but of a version for full strings; which for me was a further reason for not buying it.
And I suppose, now that I look back, the initial question was about (again) not Ravel's original, but an orchestral version.
I find it hard to see why an orchestral version can be anything but a travesty of this wonderful piece. Obviously I live in a different musical climate from the one that produces such monsters. But certainly playing it with any degree of success in that version would demand a very different attitude to the (falsely interpreted) 'score'; and it may well be that Marcellus in that context was both audible and appropriate.
However, I assert that that would not be true of a performance of the original.
You also wrote, apropos my suggestion that IF Marcellus sounded 'amazing' then either he was drawing too much attention to himself, or the recording was drawing too much attention to him:
>> That is quite an astounding comment. Because Marcellus played it articulated as was intended (see score, Ravel, Into et Allegro), we are to infer that somehow it wasnt what was intended, because the articulation was noticeable?>>
The comment is not absurd or astounding in the context of the agenda I set myself here. I regard my primary audience as that group of people who are capable of lauding performances of, say, the Rose Etudes -- yes, even some 'demonstration' ones -- simply on the basis that the mere notes are played with some minor degree of expertise. The accolades quite ignore the fact that most of those performances are complete travesties, musically.
So when I encounter praise that is couched in merely technical terms, I tend to make the opposite argument.
But in this case, the matter is quite clear: in the 'Ravel Septet', it is not necessary to be frightened of the passage that begins at figure 1, for musical reasons. The flute, clarinet and first and second violins are producing a delicate shimmer of sound that demands, above all, an exquisite sensitivity to balance and tone-colour, rather than an attention to prescriptive technical detail. So though it might be necessary to be frightened of it if you imagine that you are playing to an audience of technomaniacs, I want to assure someone like Eric that I at least am not one of them.
THAT'S what it's useful for a student to hear, because it places the emphasis on the PURPOSE of technique, and therefore constitutes a REAL stimulus to acquire whatever technique may be appropriate to the demands of different bits of music.
So, all of this was just about the articulation in that passage in the Ravel Septet. Of course, if we had been talking about, for example, double-staccato in the Magnus Lindberg clarinet quintet, which makes different musical demands on its player, I would have said something different.
Tony
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2010-01-27 14:02
I am repeating myself, but I highly recommend the recording of his piece by the Montreal Chamber Players called "Autour de la Harpe". I'd love to get Tony's opinion on it and it's only UKP6.99
--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>
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