Historical Clarinet Mouthpieces: An Analysis and Re-creation studyHistorical Clarinet Mouthpieces: An Analysis and 3D Re-creation study
(2023)
author(s): Sergio Sánchez Martín
published in: KC Research Portal
The mouthpiece of a clarinet plays a crucial role in sound formation and tuning, and there is still great potential for research within the field of historical clarinet mouthpieces.
This study explores the relationship between mouthpiece shape and performance practice in the first half of the 19th century when significant changes occurred in clarinet history. The author examines historical mouthpieces from various collections and creates 3D-printed replicas for experimentation. The research investigates how mouthpiece shape relates to changes in reed positioning and national styles, and how 3D printing technology can aid in understanding historical mouthpiece design.
The study finds evidence of a causal relationship between changes in reed positioning and mouthpiece geometry, especially reflected in the dimension of the mouthpiece window. The creation of a functional 3D-printed historical mouthpiece and experimentation with variations in shape shed light on how different parameters of the mouthpiece geometry affect the sound response. The research offers a useful tool for historical clarinet players to choose mouthpieces in a more historically informed way.
The Yellow Folder. A Research on the Periphery of Life
(2019)
author(s): Paolo Giudici
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
During his forty years career as orchestral clarinetist, my teacher Ernesto Olivieri (1905-1985) refaced, revoiced and repaired hundreds of clarinet and saxophone mouthpieces. He began even before he entered Bologna Conservatory with Bianco Bianchini, and continued refacing as a side activity, to meet his professional needs or to make some extra money during hard times (the Great Depression in Italy, World War II across Nazi Germany and occupied Europe, the immediate Post-war in Tito’s Yugoslavia). Often, though, he did the work out of friendship and always for his research and sound experimentation. Soon after he retired from his last position at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, he bought himself a typewriter and started a project he had long been planning: the “Treatise on the Clarinet Mouthpiece”, part memoir part refacing manual for clarinet students, complemented by the “Studies for Research”, a collection of short technical compositions devised to detect problems in mouthpieces and test the progress of the refacing work. When my teacher passed away and his widow entrusted me the yellow folder in which he kept the various drafts of the Treatise and the Studies, I attempted to edit that material for a print publication, guided by what I imagined were his intentions and the recent memory of our friendship. Overwhelmed by the vague structure, elusive content and faltering language of the text, I put the yellow folder in a drawer where it remained for over thirty years, until I recently came to reconsider the Treatise and the Studi in a different perspective.
Not only was his refacing practice marginalised within the conservatory and profession, but also writing remained a secondary practice and in advance excluded from consideration for being carried out autonomously, without formal training and outside the academia and the profession. Accordingly, the knowledge he created through those practices can be easily confused with technical skills, too limited in scope for today’s student and too marginal for the clarinetist, especially now that professional refacing services have become globally available, and that multimedia instructions and expertise are easily accessible over the internet. Thus, it would appear, Signor Olivieri’s knowledge is forever lost, trapped inside his text and irretrievably embedded in his life and practice. Nevertheless, this non-collaborative re-presentation of the Treatise and the Studies shows how his writing succeeds in exposing his refacing practice as research, and why this matters to artistic research today.
Body-Object Intersections: Touch Model
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Barbis Ruder
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The touch model is a first attempt at describing the space between
the body and the object as a new form: their intersection.
The touch is the intersection, and it builds a shape with various
specifications.