CHAPTER 4 - Other Resources

Speaking through the Clarinet (with mouthpiece attached)

Works have been written for solo trombone (Robert Erickson - General Speech ) and solo trumpet (Kenneth Gaburo - Mouthpiece ) that have successfully employed speech through instruments.39 Part of the beauty of this technique is the production of ambiguous meanings through different shades of intelligibility of the text. Words begin to sound similar to other words, and take on musical qualities! The listener begins to listen to the rhythm, shape, and inflection of speech with a new awareness. In addition, the theater inherent in this technique reminds one of Liebowitz's comment about sprechstimme :

This new way of treating the voice permits the elaboration of melodramatic scenes according to purely musical principles, which is not the case in classic recitatives.40

In a section from The Black Wall illustrated below, Drake Mabry has the woodwinds (including E-flat clarinet) and brass whisper, in unison, lines from the poem that inspired the work. Even though the text is unintelligible, the unison effect and multiple timbres is mesmerizing.

Example #92 (click on music for mp3)

The following consonant transients are especially effective on the clarinet as short sounds: T, H, W, K, Y, and Th (touch reed). Furthermore, all of the phonemes below are plausible:

Table #8 (click here for mp3)

a as in act front vowel

ng as in bring voiced nasal

a as in ago

o as in odd

ah as in father back vowel

o as in official

ahr as in arm

oh as in oat back vowel

air as in dare

ohr as in board

aw as in walk

oi as in join

ay as in age front vowel

oo as in soon back vowel

d as in dog voiced plosive

oor as in poor

e as in bed voiced plosive

or as in horse

e as in taken front vowel

ow as in now

ee as in see front vowel

r as in red voiced semivowel

eer as in beer

s as in sit unvoiced fricative

g as in get voiced plosive

t as in top unvoiced plosive

h as in hat

th as in thin unvoiced fricative

hw as in wheat unvoiced glide

th as in this voiced fricative

i as in give front vowel

u as in cut mid vowel

i as in pencil

u as in circus

i as in fire

ur as in burn

j as in jam voiced comb. plosive-fricative

uu as in book back vowel

k as in king

y as in yes voiced glide

l as in leg voiced semivowel

n as in no voiced nasal

The few examples below do not work well, primarily because of the invasion by the reed of the oral cavity.

Table #9 (not possible)

b as in boy (voiced plosive)

f as in fat (unvoiced fricative)

p as in pin (unvoiced plosive)

v as in van (voiced fricative)

z as in zebra (voiced fricative)

m as in me (voiced nasal)

sh as in rush (unvoiced fricative)

w as in will (voiced glide)

zh as in vision (voiced fricative)

The Japanese composer Isao Matsushita effectively writes whispered phonemes in his work Kochi for three A clarinets. The players pronounce a variety of toneless ko's and chi's as the work comes to a close "in which sound disappears into the wind." (Example #93)

Example #93 (click on music for mp3)

Isao Matsushita KOCHI

All rights reserved

~back to home page~

for information to see/hear more musical examples of speaking through the clarinet, click here