Archive for the 'Technique' Category

Jeanjean, Étude 2

Published
by
dtclarinet
on October 10, 2008
in Clarinet, Mastery, Performances, Technique, The Music and YouTube Perfromances
. 3 Comments

The book of 18 Études, by early 20th century French clarinetist Paul Jeanjean, has always been in my repertoire. I began studying these while in high school, continuing through the first two years of college, discontinuing my study of them when I transfered to Northwestern, where the emphasis was on orchestral repertoire, not solo performing. Though the move ended up being a productive one for me, as it helped me get the orchestral job which carried me through my career, I never gave up on learning all 18 Jeanjean études someday.

A few years ago I started a project to perform them all, over a period of time. (I doubt anyone wants to hear solo clarinet études for an hour and a half) One of the first ones I tacked was #2, which has eluded me for years with its sea of notes in the second part. The awkward technical passages, built on augmented triads, forced me to revisit hand position, finger accuracy, quality of air (to create flowing legato) and steadiness, both physical and mental. The hardest part of this étude is staying free while playing the blur of notes in the second part (second video)

For the record, I recorded this with a Canon Power Shot camera, not intended for long video recordings. I had to record this étude in two parts because the whole 4 minute work wouldn’t record seamlessly on my Canon. I intend to get a better recorder soon.

Eerie Silence in Columbus

Published
by
dtclarinet
on June 5, 2008
in Behind the Scenes, Clarinet, Columbus Cultural Politics, Technique, columbus symphony orchestra, symphony board and symphony management
. 1 Comment

I feel like I’m in a bad dream, and that I’ll wake up tomorrow to make music for Columbus, as I and my colleagues have done for decades.

Minnesota Orchestra HallA friend just returned from an audition trip to Minneapolis, MN. She described the area around the Orchestra Hall as intensely marketed toward the symphony: a huge poster of their Music Director, Osmo Vänskä, Symphony Restaurants, Symphony Apartments. The whole area boasts of and features the symphony.

Here in Columbus, the silence is eerie from those who should know better: our Symphony Board, our Columbus City Council, our Mayor Coleman, our Greater Columbus Arts Council, our Governor Strickland, the Columbus Partnership, the Dispatch “Ohio’s Greatest Newspaper”, and those whose job it is to do what has been done in Minneapolis, make their orchestra everyone’s orchestra.

Organic Rhythm

Published
by
dtclarinet
on December 29, 2006
in Mastery and Technique
. 10 Comments

I used to play in a woodwind quintet, the wind equivalent of a string quartet. It was a pretty decent group made up of successful freelancers from around town in Washington, DC.

During one rehearsal, we had trouble playing some passages together. The oboist complained we needed to practice with a metronome. I countered with the idea that we needed to feel the rhythm together, regardless of the metronome. We were both right. Metronomes help, but “live” rhythm is rarely ever metronomic. Like tuning, “scientific” correctness is not necessarily what sounds best. She never conceded my point.

I know a lot of musicians like her. Their goal is to play more or less like a machine: perfectly in tune with a tuner and in rhythm with the metronome. But music played like that puts me to sleep. Why have humans play at all when a computer program would be more efficient?

Great musicians can play a phrase of music with incredible rhythmic accuracy, and yet never quite match up with a metronome. Great chamber groups and even whole orchestras can do the same. It’s obviously a lot harder for the latter, but with years of experience and trust among players, a larger group can be free and stay together rhythmically.

One form of freedom is called “rubato”, which means “to steal or borrow” time from one part of the phrase to add to another. The total sum of time is the same as the metronomic phrase, but with much greater freedom. That kind of phrasing says keeps the listener interested with its unpredictable freedom. The player can then emphasize the natural tension and relaxation and explore the infinite possibilities with each repeated phrase or section of music.

Played by a great artist, a fairly conservative phrase of music, which may sound completely rhythmic to the listener, will still have subtle freedom. The allure of a great performance is how it floats and flirts with with stodgy rhythm without committing to any predictability.

In the case of chamber music, each player still has the freedom of a soloist, but has to interact conversationally with the other players.

A good orchestra will have a rigorous system of trust and hierarchy, starting with the conductors interpretation and freedom, trickling down through the various leaders of each section and on down to the lower ranks. Unfortunately, this means the lower ranks do have have much freedom at all, and have to be content following their leaders. But even in this case, each player has the responsibility to commit wholeheartedly to recreating the freedom and direction of phrasing set up by the conductor.

Knowing what rhythmic freedom to take and where to take it is the sign of a master musician. It can only be taught to a degree. The rest is experience, talent and intuition.

Music Making versus Playing

Published
by
dtclarinet
on November 13, 2006
in Mastery, Technique and The Music
. 2 Comments

Sometimes your heart is into it, and other times, well, you just go through the motions. We had a tough week for the orchestra last week. Our ex music director was engaged for a guest appearance. A few years ago the orchestra and board were deeply divided over whether to keep him on as music director. Ultimately, one faction won and he was “allowed to move on” in his career.

So when he came back last week, only a week after our new music director whom we LOVE, conducted us, it was an uphill struggle to keep our spirits up. The program consisted of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto and Brahms 3rd Symphony. Brahms 3rd is one of my favorites, not only because it has a gorgeous clarinet solo in the second movement, but it’s also a masterpiece of symphonic composing. So, our ex director, who always explores the limits of every phrase, is leading us through this incredible piece, and half of us are suffering through it while the other half are trying to get into it.

To credit the orchestra, everyone did their best to do make music. This guy, despite his passion, is known for his unpredictable interpretations. And that’s putting it lightly. To him, all music is Italian opera, full of drama. He can swoop down on phrase from the middle of nowhere and wallow in it like a girl in a bubble bath. Meanwhile, we’re turning blue or purple, his least favorite color, waiting for the next beat. And sometimes the next beat is really a beast, which swallows the bubble bath whole, girl and all, moving ahead to the prowl on the next unsuspecting phrase.

Now don’t get me wrong or anything…I like him. He’s a great cook and in love with life, something most Americans know little about. We are a culture of bean counters, note takers, fact checkers, time keepers, rule makers, and on. Making music is not about those things. It’s about being free of the structures which convey its language. It’s about letting time float. Occasionally, he creates a brilliant nuance I could never imagine, which shudders through me like a homogenization beam from another planet, and I realize what music is all about.

Each musician eventually finds a personal balance between subjective and objective interpretations of music. Subjective interpreters seeks the meaning through the emotions, the feeling of the music, while objective ones strive to recreate the composer’s intentions. Both are valid. In my opinion, George Szell maintained the perfect balance between the two.

I lean toward the subjective camp. There are times when I feel I’m only playing the music, not feeling it, not really making music of it. Freshness helps wake me from the blindness of familiarity, especially with pieces I’ve played many times. This week’s Brahms 3rd gave me a chance to see it new, as through a microscope.

Over the years of being under this guy as music director, he has shown me the wonderful nuances and magic which can be pulled from an ordinary phrase of music. Really there are infinite ways to play any piece. The objective camp believes there is one ideal way. I think there are numerous ideal ways. And often you don’t know what might work until you try it. Inspiration is critical to making music.

After the show I argued with some colleagues, many of them string players, about these issues. I have to concede, this guy stretched Brahms way beyond the traditional, North German, stoic interpretation which works best with his music: the latent passion struggling to be free of its shadows, the yearning Bohemian dreaming of a better world.

Yet, from my little island of music making within the group, I relished wallowing in the secret depths of Brahms’ introverted complexities, in the rich density of his tonal language, the Escheresque rhythmic structures. And many of my colleagues in the winds and brass felt similarly. We were “gellin”!

The strings, however, saw it completely differently. They are the sea sprawled around our little windy islands. Spread apart and in much greater numbers, they couldn’t rely on the intimate person to person connections to stay together like the winds and brass did. They were lost at sea, while the guy up front was busy getting signals from outer space. They were not happy. Nope. Not!

This brings me back to making music versus playing. The two are codependent. This week, while some of us were able to make beautiful music within the relative chaos coming from the podium, to flourish within it’s spontaneous freedom and compulsive freshness, others struggled just to play the notes together. Ultimately, if we can’t all enjoy the same spontaneity and freedom while playing together, it lacks the most important feature of a great performance: cohesiveness.

So, here’s to guzzling music raw when ever we can, whether it’s 60 or 100 proof. But the lasting impression comes in the richness of a balanced meal accompanied by an aged wine, when we can actually remember what we did the night before.

Breathing is my Life

Published
by
dtclarinet
on November 1, 2006
in Mastery and Technique
. 1 Comment

…and my career. I cannot afford to breathe incorrectly. Yet I have been, perhaps for years. Habits change and erode over years, imperceptibly. When I went to an Alexander teacher to get some help with posture to relieve neck and shoulder pain, I ended up learning how much tension I was holding in my torso and neck. And you can’t breathe with a tight torso. Nope.

During many, many solo performances in my career, I had to fight my body’s compulsion to breathe in order to finish some phrase or other. (This happens more often when I’m playing solo in front of the orchestra and standing. When sitting in the orchestra, there is more time to recover from each improper breath)

Wind players often suffer from “bad air” remaining in the lungs after they breathe. A breath may be convenient or musically necessary at a place where the lungs are not yet empty, so the new air mixes with the old, stale air. After a few more breaths like this, the air in the lungs is full of carbon dioxide. The body will then being to convulse to try to breathe, even in the middle of a phrase. I have had to overcome this desperate reaction and continue until a more suitable time to breathe.

The solution is to plan proper exhalation at certain times, and to take smaller breaths so as to fully exhale the at the end of a phrase. But proper breathing, where the muscles inhale and exhale much more efficiently, also helps to maintain a better balance of good and bad air. It helps keep un-necessary tension out of the chest, affording more freedom of breath.

Playing What Is

Published
by
dtclarinet
on October 23, 2006
in Mastery, Technique and The Music
. 0 Comments

A musician sits practicing alone in his room, as he has done most of his life. He is a beloved performer, respected and revered by many. He is concentrated and fearless in his focus. Time passes effortlessly here. Time stops.

The light in his room dims. He looks up from the piece he is playing, the solo part from the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. Above his music stand, there hovers a soft violet glow. He hears a chorus murmuring.

(voices of listeners from all time):You play the music in our hearts. You play things we feel. You are deep and wise.

(performer): No, I play what I am told to play. I play what I know you will feel. But I do not feel what you do. I am not wise.

This saddens us. You are not what you seem. Tell us why.

I think and feel as you do, but I am empty. I fill myself with things which give the impression I am full. I show you yourself.

But how can you show us so much knowing so little?

I feel my pain with doubt. I question everything. I challenge reality. But the structure of the music gives me strength. It quells my doubt.

But you do not feel what we feel, if you doubt your pain and question everything.

I feel what you feel in my own way. When I lay my head on the breast of my mother and weep from joy and gratitude at the gift of life she gave me, I feel what you feel when I play the music. But I do not feel the music as you do.

What do you feel when you play?

I see patterns of structure, puzzles laid out by the composer, shapes and form, lines and colors. I see how I must fit into that puzzle. I have many choices, but only a few good ones. I struggle to play effortlessly. I am a machine, a thinking machine, adjusting constantly to fit into the puzzle and become nothing but the composers dream.

But what do you feel?

I do not feel. I calculate, I listen, I sense. But I am not there to feel. If I feel, then I am lost.

Then why do we feel what you do not?

You feel what I do not because I do not allow myself to feel it. I give up my feeling so you may have it.

(the voices recede. the violet light fades above his stand. he is alone. he continues his practice, shaping the perfect phrases of Mozart’s perfect music. he is content.)

Inspired by the poem-
The Man with the Blue Guitar
by Wallace Stevens

The Spirit of Performing

Published
by
dtclarinet
on October 21, 2006
in Mastery, Technique and The Music
. 0 Comments

When performing music, I have to balance a “subjective” interpretation from an “objective” one. This means I need to pay attention to the notes on the page and composer’s markings as much as my own interpretation of them. But both parts of the interpretation are important to good music making. The spirit of the music must be recreated, not just the notes and markings.

This week I had some trouble with my reeds warping. Those little pieces of cane don’t like the dry weather of approaching winter. So it feels like I’m going to squawk all the time. Not a pleasant feeling when you need to be relaxed to phrase beautifully. A squeak on a clarinet is not a pretty thing. EVERYONE hears it. I used to have a giggling fit when ever someone squeaked. Now, as a pro, I look innocent, hoping everyone thinks it’s my stand partner who did it. UGH!

Imagine Playing

Published
by
dtclarinet
on April 27, 2006
in Clarinet, Mastery and Technique
. 2 Comments

When I was learning the Mozart Clarinet Concerto for a performance years ago, I practiced as I jogged. I heard and felt the piece in my body phrase by phrase, back-wards from the end to the beginning. This practice also helped me memorize it. While my body flowed and loosened during jogging, the beautiful music played through me. Without the instrument, I was able to idealize how I wanted it to sound when I played.

If you don’t have the sound and the music in your ear, your body won’t know how to get there, what to do. No teacher can teach a student who doesn’t hear what they want to sound like, who they want to sound like. No teacher can teach a student to love a phrase of music beautifully played by a great musician.

If you want to become a musician, listen to recordings. Fall in love with them, live them, breathe them. Go to concerts and find what you love about the music and the performance. Yearn for the satisfaction of hearing music played beautifully. Let your ear sing and play with the music as you hear it. Feel it in your body as you enjoy it.

Listen carefully. Listen critically. Watch closely, if it’s live. By critically I don’t mean finding mistakes. I mean hearing detail. How does rhythm emphasize the shape of a phrase? How is pitch used? How is vibrato used? How does the body express the music? How is tone used?

Imagine these things with your body. Imagine being that musician as they play. Become them in your mind.

When practicing, let go of your judgments. Keep the ideal in your ear. Let your body flow toward that ideal. Relax into that flow.

Now you are ready for a lesson. Now a teacher can help you learn.

Even for professionals, hearing before playing is essential.