I love the picture on the front page here. How lovely is that? Reeds, to me anyway, can be so darn beautiful. Even while they do cause us such grief.
Definition: Reed Rage. An affliction commonly found in double reed players, especially bassoonists. Less serious than Reed Neurosis suffered by oboe players. It involves leaping up and down on reeds that don’t work or stabbing them into music stands.
I found Reed Rage via Jonathan Burton’s blog, and I’m so glad I did. (At Mr. Burton’s page scroll down to find an audio clip!)
But now I want to start an oboe group called Reed Neurosis. I really really really want to. If only I could other oboists as wacky as I, and as willing to just get together to have fun and whine about reeds. (And yes, have neurotic episodes now and again.)
I hope 2010 brings you all good reeds and great music!
Let’s begin with … hmmm … how about Mozart’s Oboe Quartet, played by … you ready? … bassoon and piano. And played by Dr. Jesse Read, the brother of Dr. Vernon Read, my former SJSU band and orchestra conductor.
… but oboe reeds don’t last as long. (At least as far as I’ve heard.)
But here is an article about Barrick Stees and bassoon reed making. Take a look. Then just repeat after me, “Oboe reeds are more difficult to deal with …”. ;-) (No, dk, I don’t expect you to agree with me!)
There is what appears to be a very carefully put together bassoon site called Music and the Bassoon by Kristin Wolfe Jensen. I’m going to guess this took ages to do. I’ve only started to investigate. It includes instructional videos and music. And no, I am not about to do something this extensive. I can’t even imagine how long it took her to do this! Check it out, you bassoon players … tell me what you think!
(Oh … anyone find the mistake on this page? It’s bound to happen with a site like this … but look carefully at the music. I’m going to guess it’ll be corrected quickly, so it might even be gone by the time some of you click on the link.)
Here’s a bit of bassoon music — Famous Bassoon Quartets Through the Ages, actually — for you from Eastman School of Music.
Bassoons are often known as the buffoons of the orchestra. I simply have no idea why!
Okay … let me give you something more serious. Shame on me, eh?
… man I wish I understood what they were saying (especially during the balloon moment). And get a load of the end of the oboist’s performance (at 2:26)! Um. No, you won’t catch me doing that jump!
***WRONG! I was just informed (by two bassoonists!) that the Rufus of the blog is actually the Rufus I performed with in Midsummer Mozart, and that his son is Rufus III. Once these two players wrote to tell me I thought, “DUH!” Silly me. So I’ll leave my error up — just because I feel like it and I am not all that upset about being wrong sometimes — but now you have the real story!
I just found out about Bassoon Talk, a site by Rufus Olivier, Jr., whom I saw on occasion when he was young, but haven’t seen since. His father, Rufus Olivier played (and I believes continues to do so) in Midsummer Mozart when I was playing in the group. Rufus, Sr. is an incredibly nice man, and great fun. He’s one of those musicians who appears relaxed and seems to be having a great time doing what he does.
Sadly, I found the blog due to the death of bassoonist David Bartolotta, who was killed in a car accident on June 13th. David subbed with Symphony Silicon Valley a few times this past year.
Sad times, as there have been several losses (in San Francisco Symphony) in the recent past. I never get used to this.
Do check out Rufus’s site. It looks like he posts infrequently, but I enjoyed what I saw.
“My favourite composers are Shostakovich and Beethoven, and my favourite piece is Sibelius’s Swan Of Tuonela – if that cor anglais solo had been for bassoon everything would have been ideal! The most difficult composer to play would be Tchaikovsky, because as well as the solos you’ve got some technically difficult bits and some very quiet passages, so it’s every aspect of the bassoon in one symphony. That works especially in the last movement of the Pathétique, which nobody likes, but you’ve got to get on with it I suppose!”
Well, Swan is a pretty cool piece, but it simply has to be on English horn (cor anglais). Of that I’m sure you all agree. But I was just so surprised to hear someone name that work as their fave.
You can hear her talk about her experience on Classical Star, a British TV show, on which she came in second:
Here is the final episode of Classical Star (she played Hummel for the first final work. I’d have preferred the concerto. Oh well.):
The grave voice of the oboe is heard from the bassoon, where, without becoming assertive, it gains a quality entirely unknown to the oboe and English horn. It is this quality that makes the bassoon the humorist par excellence of the orchestra. It is a reedy bass, very apt to recall to those who have had a country education the squalling tone of the homely instrument which the farmer’s boy fashions out of the stems of the pumpkin-vine.
The humor of the bassoon is an unconscious humor, and results from the use made of its abysmally solemn voice.
Heh. Ah, that abysmally solemn voice.
This is from the same place I found the oboe description. But I read that it’s from a book called How to Listen to Music by Henry Edward Krehbiel. If you go here you can read it via gutenberg. The book was first published in 1896.
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