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Author: Tom Puwalski
Date: 2006-04-11 18:15
Ok so I'm sitting here looking at the Selmer Paris clarinet catalog, I get to page 10-11 and I'm looking at the awesome centerfold of a Basset Clarinet and and a Basset horn when low and behold I spot that the Basset horn has a fixture to attach a lyre! I think this could be the only production basset horn designed to be used in a parade! My Buffet Basset prestige Basset lacks one of these, I'll bet Dan Leeson's custom built Fox lacks one of these.
I'm feeling a little fermished, If I get the urge to pull out the basset horn parts to some Sousa marches and put on my old uniform, ( it wouldn't fit I bet) I don't have a lyre holder. Oh I forget there aren't any basset horn parts for marches!
To Selmer's defense they did add one of these lyre holders to the alto clarinet. Which if properly used, would have a wooden alto clarinet out on Pennsylvania ave in sub zero weather for an Inaugural parade, where watching it crack could make for a very entertaining morning. This holds true for all makers of alto clarinets, not just Selmer!
Tom Puwalski, former soloist with the US Army Field Band, Clarinetist with Lox&Vodka, and Author of "The Clarinetist's Guide to Klezmer"and most recently by the order of the wizard of Oz, for supreme intelligence, a Masters in Clarinet performance
Post Edited (2006-04-11 18:42)
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Author: donald
Date: 2006-04-11 19:08
Steven Fox is making a pair of Basset horns to be delivered to NZSO in July- i hope they remembered to ask him to put the marching Lyre on!!!!!!
donald
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Author: BassetHorn
Date: 2006-04-11 19:15
Someone had explained to me once that the reason for the lyre on the basset horn is for the player to hang his music when playing Mozart's masonic music, such as the funeral marches, etc.
So it has to do with its genesis and tradition.....
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Author: Tom Puwalski
Date: 2006-04-11 19:27
Since my Basset is in Vancouver having the "works" maybe I should have morrie install an after market Lyre holder. I was thinking that a cup holder would actually be more useful.
I have never seen any of the Masonic music printed in a March/flip folder size. But let me tell you, I already play every bar/bat mitsvah and jewish wedding between I 495 and 695, if I could lock in Masonic funerals. I'd be the workinist clarinetist outside a military band!
Tom Puwalski, former soloist with the US Army Field Band, Clarinetist with Lox&Vodka, and Author of "The Clarinetist's Guide to Klezmer"and most recently by the order of the wizard of Oz, for supreme intelligence, a Masters in Clarinet performance
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Author: larryb
Date: 2006-04-11 19:38
Didn't Stockhausen write a piece that requires the basset horn player to walk/march around the stage?
Perhaps Selmer is marketing its basset horn for performers of this Stockhausen piece - kind of like Fox's marketing of the G Basset Horn for one Mozart Notturno.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2006-04-11 19:50
larryb wrote:
>> Didn't Stockhausen write a piece that requires the basset horn player to walk/march around the stage?>>
Yes, in his as yet uncompleted Magnum Opus 'Licht', that consists of seven operas, one for each day of the week. (I can't remember which one most significantly features the dancing bassethornist.)
Anyhow, they were all given their first performances by the magnificent Suzee Stephens, as Ken has noted elsewhere.
(A carping review took the easy shot and said, "she dances as well as any bassethorn player you've ever seen.")
Tony
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2006-04-11 19:51
Tom - What an interesting discussion [questioning ?] above, it is inducing me to "ramble" along with you. I too have looked in Sel-P catalogs, and hadn't observed until now that my Sel B series Alto cl also has a lyre holder ! Of course I'd never play it in a marching band either, perhaps for an outdoor, standing, patriotic concert number. What was Sel thinking ? You could find-and-play Alto parts on your Basset, if you didn't mind transposing Eb parts onto an F inst., not very tough ! AH, nostalgia, I/we are in the process of downsizing to a "retirement village" possession-size, its difficult, but necessary. Just thots this PM, Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2006-04-11 20:16
Even the Selmer bass clarinets in A have a lyre holder fitted to them!
Shrugs shoulders and says 'Why?'.
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Author: bob49t
Date: 2006-04-11 22:54
It's not a lyre....it's an attachment so the guy in front can carry it via a reverse neck strap, while you finger and blow it.
On a similar note, I witnessed a funeral in Cusco, Peru where the music was "clothes pegged" to the neck band of the player in front. I then understood why the music was so bad, but the slow marching was perfectly in time. I have photos to prove this.....and I might just look'em out again. RT
BobT
Post Edited (2006-04-12 06:22)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2006-04-12 11:27
My 1979 wooden Selmer alto clarinet also has the lyre holder. Did anybody's alto come with a lyre? Since I bought my alto used, I don't know whether the original sale included a lyre; there was none in the case when I bought it.
Alternate uses for the lyre holder.... Let's see. Attach a small bobble-head doll?
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: donald
Date: 2006-04-12 11:32
Jerry Pierce asked this very same question in The Clarinet (why marching lyre on basset horn?), sometime in the 1980s...
donald
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2006-04-12 11:53
I've got two Leblanc alto clarinets - the earlier of the two (43xx) never had a lyre holder fitted, but the later one (78xx) does - .
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2006-04-12 14:44
Tom,
Try carring a shot glass full of rain water in the horn's lyre holder. Your marching bassoonist will be grateful to you --he can keep his spare reed damp.
I was at Bassoonarama at EWU last month and noticed that most of the players had some sort of clever broom clip to keep their reed soaker out of reach of the mice and puppies down on the floor.
Bob Phillips
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2006-04-13 12:32
I have to use a little plastic jar with a tight-fitting lid, to keep Shadow Cat out. She likes to chew reeds. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say she hates reeds and likes to gnaw them useless.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2006-04-13 13:49
I'm playing a show with a bassoonist (or is it basooniste, since it is a she?) who has a nifty little, furniture quality shelf that attaches to the stand riser. There, she keeps her water, reed knife and whatnot. One more thing to carry, in my eyes.
All of those lyre holders were put there for the military bands that often use the A quality instruments. Doesn't explain why they might be found on a basset horn, though.
My Selmer Model 33 bass to low C came both with the attachment point (which still has its securing screw, even after all of these years) and the lyre, a quality piece of work in and of itself. When I got the horn rebuilt in the early 1990's, I took the time to send the lyre along, and it really looks sharp in its silver plating, all wrapped up in preservative paper.
leader of Houston's Sounds Of The South Dance Orchestra
info@sotsdo.com
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Author: Mark G. Simon
Date: 2006-04-13 19:37
The Stockhausen basset horn work is called "Traum-Formel" and is rather too large to fit on a lyre. The lyre might be useful for holding cues to remember the choreography, though. :^)
"Sonntag", the final installment of the "Licht" cycle was completed in 2003.
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana--Mediocrates (2nd cent. BC)
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