Too easy

Continuing on with last month's musical theme, I've been practicing my C clarinet, and getting better. Many thanks to Forbes and Yola Christie and Windward Flutes, who made my B-flat clarinet look as pretty as it plays! Pit Band is not as challenging for me now as it was at my first rehearsal, but I'm still working to get my embouchure back in shape, and also coaxing my fingers to keep up with my brain ... or is it the other way around?

I assembled both clarinets and put them side-by-side. Given that they're only a half-step apart, I'm surprised by the size difference:

That's the C clarinet on our left, the B-flat on our right. Both are brands I'd never heard of before. The C is an Amati-Kraslice ACL 351 Series II, manufactured by a Czech company. It plays sharp, which is a first for me. The Buffet my parents bought me for my birthday, back in high school, tended to play flat. (Sharp is better, because at least you can lengthen the instrument by pulling out the barrel and bell, thus lowering your pitch. If you're playing flat, then there's nowhere to go except to tighten your embouchure and try to lip the pitch up.)

The B-flat clarinet is an Artley 72S, manufactured by Selmer. It has a surprisingly warm, resonant sound, not what I would have expected from a beginner's instrument. I'm hoping it will play better in tune than the Amati. The Amati was in pristine condition, while the Artley had some cosmetic damage to its black finish, which Forbes and Yola fixed. Both play beautifully; any sound problems are due to the player, not the instrument! Many thanks to Robbie Smith, whose late Uncle Robert played these clarinets. It was through Robbie that I acquired them, and it has been a joy to return to playing music again.

Last month, while Rick and I were visiting my parents in Evansville, Indiana, we walked to H&H Music and picked up a couple of boxes of clarinet reeds, two Rubank "Advanced Method" books and, after much hemming and hawing, sheet music for the last solo I played as a university student: Paul Hindemith's Sonata for Clarinet and Piano. I have been slogging through it, slowly ... very slowly. I still marvel that I mastered its first two movements all those years ago:

I also searched for the sheet music for my first solo, back in eighth grade at Clark Junior High School: "Polovstian Dance" from Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin. No, not the hard one. This melody was reworked for the song "Stranger in Paradise" from the 1953 musical, Kismet:

During my eighth-grade year, we were in our second year in Vincennes, Indiana. My father had been a junior high/high school band director for most of his professional life, but decided to take a different career path: university-level teacher education and counseling. This meant big changes for our entire family. "Home" was in flux for three years. First we moved to Terre Haute so that Dad could attend Indiana State University. Then we moved back to Columbus for a year, then back to Terre Haute for another year.

After that last year in Terre Haute, we moved to Vincennes, where Dad taught at Vincennes University. But he still had more of his own schoolwork to do. He'd completed his master's degree and was now writing his dissertation so that he could earn his doctorate. This meant lots of weekend trips to Terre Haute.

On one of those trips, Dad took me to the music store in Terre Haute, to pick out my clarinet solo for solo/ensemble competition. (This might have been the time he, Mom and Janet surprised me by taking me to a Carpenters' concert at Indiana State University. The timing would fit: Oct. 28, 1972.) Dad thumbed through the sheet music, paused, flipped through pages, frowned and kept going, paused, flipped pages again, frowned, and so on. Finally he stopped, didn't frown, and seemed satisfied that he'd found the perfect piece for me.

"What do you think? Do you like it?"

I nodded. What else could I say? I saw that I could play it, and that was all that mattered to me. I didn't say so, but I felt happy that Dad had picked out this piece of music especially for me.

The following Monday, I took the sheet music to my eighth-grade band director, Don Barnes. Mr. Barnes hadn't yet taken on the iconic status he would assume in high school. (At that point it was Walt Anslinger, head band director at Vincennes Lincoln High School, who still loomed so large.)

I proudly presented Mr. Barnes with my sheet music, expecting him to be pleased that I already had my solo/ensemble piece chosen and ready to go. Instead, he asked, "Where did this come from?"

"My dad picked it out," I replied.

"Well ... why would you want to play this? It's too easy for you!" he exclaimed, then added, "It's my job to choose your solo/ensemble music."

Oh. This was my first encounter with the clash of egos that can erupt in the performing arts.

If I hadn't been a shy, nervous little eighth-grader, I might have said, "Tough. Get over it. He's my dad!"

I didn't, of course. But I didn't appreciate him putting me in the middle. Or casting a shadow over a good experience with my father. Or taking a lovely piece of music and turning it into something I questioned the rightness of, from that moment on.

I don't question it now. Dad's experience as a band director told him I needed a confidence-builder, and he was right. Anything more challenging would have improved me in practice ... but performance was a whole nother story. As I was to discover later on, stage fright robbed me of my technical proficiency, and sometimes of my ability to play altogether. Not exactly a growth experience for a young musician.

I'm going to find that sheet music, even if I have to order it online. It's not "too easy" for me now.