 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-03-07 18:22
Has proficiency in the instrument improved in post WW II society?
If so, is it for better equipment, more insight on what teaching methods work best, starting kids younger, working them harder, etc.?
What do YOU think?
Do you think some of the principal players in major orchestras of days gone, held by us in such high esteem, ouldn't have even made it to quarter final rounds of auditions had they been playing today?
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Author: TomS
Date: 2015-03-07 20:56
Despite, IMHO, the decline of other things on this planet, I think the best of the best clarinetists has improved over the last 75 years.
Instrument acoustics have improved and teachers have improved. I think pedagogy has benefited from exchange .and refinement of ideas, mostly due to better communication and a more scientific attitude.
Techniques such as circular breathing was just a myth 50 years ago when I first started playing. Double tonging wasn't taught or expected back then. Extended range above super C was just folly. Now, all of these are commonly taught. The envelope has been pushed ...
I suspect that our best players today (using modern instruments) would highly impress the best players 75 years ago.
However, I believe the average quality of players in primary education has declined. But, the very best are in a league by themselves.
Tom
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Author: kdk
Date: 2015-03-07 21:49
It's hard to know what has improved over those 75 years. Because our immediate impressions to compare are of live and recorded performers of today and either remembered or recorded performances of the past. My memory is almost certainly colored by the near hero-worship I felt toward many of the major players when I was growing up. Recording technique and fidelity have certainly improved over the methods that were in use when the players of the 1940s and even '50s were at their greatest. And earlier than that (which goes beyond the 75 years of your question) we have only anecdotal reports. Most of us here on the BB weren't around or old enough to be aware in the '30s or earlier - that's my parents' generation.
I do think repertoire has become more demanding both technically and aesthetically. Players of today need a much larger bag of techniques and a wider view of musical style. The really good players of today meet those newer demands. Could the players of the past era have met those same demands if they were playing today? My gut says they could have, but we'll never know.
We also tend today to accept commercially recorded performances as our standard of excellence. Recordings can be made error-free and technically perfect through a number of modern electronic techniques. Even in the '50s and '60s recordings composed of many takes, spliced together and discarding the imperfect ones, could give a more polished impression than a typical live performance of the same music. So it's hard to know, in trying to answer your question, what should be compared to what and who to whom.
Karl
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Author: TomS
Date: 2015-03-07 23:39
Yeah ... but Stanley Drucker recorded the Nielsen Concerto in one take. No tricks there ... which is rare.
True, we can massage so much with modern recording techniques, even when all we could do was razor blade edit. With digital, the sky is the limit.
But listening through the recording technology, it still sounds to me that the present best of the best have progressed in 75 years.
Tom
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2015-03-08 00:23
I am sure that at a technical level the average capability of clarinettists has progressed from 75 years ago, I have certainly been listening to clarinettists with great personal interest for more than 65 of those years, (not so sure of the musical level has changed though).
However the outstanding clarinetists of those earlier years were the finest of their generation and I am sure that transposing those same players into our modern times with all the advantages of improved equipment, training and knowledge those same players would still be at the top of the tree.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2015-03-08 05:11
Quote:
I am sure that at a technical level the average capability of clarinettists has progressed from 75 years ago, I have certainly been listening to clarinettists with great personal interest for more than 65 of those years, (not so sure of the musical level has changed though).
Yesterday's technical feats have certainly become commonplace (as evidenced, for example, by good high school students and mediocre college students routinely playing the Nielsen Concerto). I wonder though if our collective technical abilities, like those of professional baseball pitchers, are approaching their limits.
With regard to "musicality", there's a fascinating essay in Richard Taruskin's book Text and Act that explores this topic in the context of conductors. Taruskin traces two "schools" of conducting: the German (Wagnerian) and the Italian/French (Toscanini). By comparing contemporary recordings to those of Furtwangler and Toscanini, Taruskin shows that most modern conductors stick closely to what Toscanini did before them; the German school is, in essence, disappearing.
When listening to older recordings of Kreisler and Ysaye (among others), we can hear that a similar disappearance has occurred in the instrumental realm (it's especially stark if we take into account contemporary American wind playing). I'm not sure what's responsible for these trends, but I suspect the recording industry and a fetishizing of the composer's markings are partially responsible.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2015-03-09 05:33
I don't trust my ability to judge old performers (on the whole) against new ones. Too many variables that seem to be differences in the performances depend heavily on changes in recording technology. If I hear a great new recording, my immediate cynical thought is, "Yeah, but maybe it's a miracle of modern engineering, tricked out with Auto-Tune and splices. Can s/he do it live?" I'll believe it after I hear it in a concert hall.
But vintage recordings can deceive, too, in the opposite way. By all accounts, Joseph Joachim was a great violinist, yet his few existing recordings make me cringe. (Some are on YouTube. I dare you to sit all the way through.) He made all of those recordings near the end of his life, years after concert reviewers had begun to complain wistfully that his dexterity and his intonation had deteriorated. He made no recordings at all during his peak years when he earned the respect of his fellow-musicians. The end of Joachim's music career was the beginning of the history of recording technology -- with nowhere near the fidelity we expect today. Because he was old when recording technology was new, if we listen to those fuzzy wax cylinders and think we know that Joachim wasn't as good a violinist as any particular modern one, then we're not being fair to Joachim.
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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