Author: seabreeze
Date: 2017-11-23 22:22
Brycon,
Tom Ridenour is a talented clarinet designer, but his opinions--just like those of Daniel Bonade--must always be taken with a grain of salt. Good clarinets can be made of rubber, but it does not follow that rubber is the "best" material and making them out of wood is bad news. Double lip embouchure can bring improvements for some players but it is not necessarily the "best" and certainly not the only effective embouchure. Symmetric facings may be the choice of many top players, but some may prefer skillfully done asymmetric ones. Didn't Dan Johnson make some mouthpieces (the "W" series?) with symmetric facings and others (the "H" series) with asymmetric ones to accommodate the divergence of preference among professionals?
In his retrospective talk at the 2017 ICA Stanley Drucker cautioned that there is never just one right way to play or do anything. When the moderator played some excerpts from Drucker's recording of the Nielsen Concerto, I recalled a teacher who told me that rapid and distinct staccato and good legato were impossible unless the player formed a flat pointed chin with his embouchure. Listening to Drucker absolutely nail those treacherous staccato passages in the Nielsen and play the lyrical ones with a silken, perfectly connected legato, I could only laugh--because of course he's always played with a rather bunched looking embouchure. And there are innumerable numbers of clarinetists who play with a very pointed chin but cannot begin to approach Drucker's staccato and legato skills.
So, by the same token, I would say that players who feel comfortable on asymmetrical facings will chose them even if they are not "supposed to" according to the blanket advice of so many clarinet gurus. The widely-respected mouthpiece maker, Clark Fobes, who even Ridenour calls a "thoughtful" designer, put an asymmetrical facing on his CWF model (which he personally plays) but has symmetrical facings on his other models.
Post Edited (2019-04-01 00:28)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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