Eli Eban

The interview with Eli Eban Eli Eban. [1] orchestral soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and professor at Bloomington School of Music was held on 22 June with a telephone call from Zug, Switzerland, to Baltimore, USA and was edited by Heinrich Mätzener.

On the tracks of the old French School

HM: After the Interviews with colleagues in Switzerland, France, Germany and Austria, I now want to focus on the traces of the old French School in the USA. In the beginning of the 20th century, important French clarinet teachers came to the States and had big influence on the clarinet playing of the of the following generations. Interestingly, the development of the French school in Europe took a significantly different course.

EE: Right.

Eli Ebans Teachers

HM: I asked you to participate in the project because your teachers can be assigned to the tradition of the Old French School. I saw that your teacher was a student of Louis Cahuzac.

EE: Yes, one of my teachers was Yona Ettlinger , a student of Cahuzac, and my other teachers came from the Bonade side, Anthony Gigliotti from Curtis, and Richard Lesser, who was principal in Israel and who had studied with Mitchell Lurie and Anthony Gigliotti, so I had in me both of these French influences.

HM: Having students of Louis Cahuzac and Daniel Bonade as your teachers, I hope in this interview it will make it possible, to understand certain aspects of the development that the French School has undergone in the States.
There is a story, when Bonade came back from France in the 50th, where he was invited to a competition of a class in the Paris Conservatory. He was disappointed of the sound of the new French school . He couldn’t believe it. He went back to the States and followed what he had developed. I met Richard Stoltzman in New York, David Shifrin in Yale, I made an interview also with John Moses, with Steve Hartman from the New York City Ballet Orchestra, as well as with the soloist Sunny Kang, a former student of David.

EE: Oh, yes, I taught her at Eastman for a year. Also, a wonderful player.

HM: All of these clarinetists are still near the tradition of the old French School.

EE: Yes.

Describing sound quality

HM: How should a clarinet sound today, what would you say, must it be especially beautiful, what is your ideal of sound?

EE: So, I think first of all, a centered sound, meaning something that has a definite shape to it, and for me personally that means beauty of sound. Thinking of Mozart’s letter to his father Leopold, the sound was the first thing that attracted his ear: „Ach wenn wir nur auch clarinetti hätten! – sie glauben gar nicht was eine sinfonie mit flauten, oboen und clari- netten einen herrlichen Effect macht“ ["Oh, if only we had clarinetti too! - you wouldn't believe what a symphony with flutes, oboes and clarinetti can do for a magnificent effect!]" , I think, the great composers were attracted to the clarinet’s vocal aspect than its agility and facility. So, for me, always sound has been the most important thing.

The beginning of the sound as part oft the aesthetic concept

I took some notes as per your emailed questions and what I think is important, other than a center so that a well-defined shape to the sound, is dynamic control and that the attack, that the beginning of the sound be part of the aesthetic of the sound. Not like: here is the attack and here is the sound.

HM: I think, making attack can be high artistry. You can do with the beginning of the sound different colors. Do you see it in the same way? Do you use different ways to attack a sound?

EE. Yes, like different textures to the tongue, different contact but mostly something different in the ear, different consonant/vowel combination- like a vocalist. I mean I try to do that or share with you that I find this is the hardest thing to do, just to get an even attack in fall dynamics and all registers.

HM. Of course. And then it depends from the reed, from the mouthpiece, from the day. I would like to speak more about the (technique of doing) an attack. I thought going from “outside” (embouchure) to “inside” (voicing).

Embouchure

Playing with double lip embouchure

HM: Embouchure building and embouchure developing It is a big chapter. Which embouchure did your first teacher teach you? And what do you teach to your students?

EE: Well my very first teacher was Giora Feidman. He was a double lip player and he taught me double lip. I played double lip on an open Pomarico mouthpiece, just played for a while. After Feidman then I went on to Richard Lesser who was principal in the Israel Philharmonic, also a double lip player. And I played double lip all through my army service, where you know on a marching band, playing standing, that’s not supposed to be feasible with double lip, but I had little advantage, because I had part of the two front incisors chipped, and I just folded the upper lip into the little gap where material had broken. It enabled me to play standing up double lip and marching in the marching band. It may sound rather strange, but it proved to be a viable, well-functioning embouchure, and the “proof” is that I used it through my three years in the band, during which time I also substituted with the Israel Philharmonic and won the solo competition with that orchestra, four years at Curtis - Gigliotti saw no reason to change it - and my first two major jobs, the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic. So, I learned from this a principle that has accompanied as a teacher as well - if something unconventional is proven to work, don’t try to “fix” it to fit some dogma…

Imitation double lip

EE: Then my dental arch changed a little bit and I felt that I needed just more… a different approach to the mouthpiece. So, I went to Robert Marcellus and he switched me to single lip (9.08) I was already in the Israel Philharmonic. And now I use a combination, I would say it’s a combination actually, as Marcellus and Gigliotti advocated (for his single-lip students), the “imitation double lip”, in single lip of the double lip embouchure with a downward pressure of the upper lip and a little bit of curling in of the center of the upper lip pushing down the mouthpiece. Gently! The word gently was often stressed when describing the degree of downward pressure. Ettlinger talked about this in very general terms, suggesting a “horseshoe“ shape to the upper lip wrapping down and around the top of the mouthpiece.

Use double lip therapeutically

And sometimes, if I get very, very fatigued, or if I just want to re-establish a good embouchure, then I play “therapeutically” double lip, ten or fifteen minutes, or even in a tutti part in the orchestra, just for a minute, I find it snaps (9:45 ) my muscles back into shape. And as a teacher that’s also what I advise to the students.

HM: Is it mainly for the muscles of the lips and the face or also to form the inner constellation tongue, with the gorge and palate? Would you say, that it also helps to find a good voicing, finally?

EE: Absolutely! Because I think everything is connected, so the double lip seems to be a trigger also for getting the tongue in the position I want. For me also it helps to keep the jaws open and it engages the side walls, so everything participates in the muscular balances of the embouchure.

Playing high C

HM: To play a sustained c where the clarinet rests on the left thumb as if on a pivot point. The weight of the lower joint of the clarinet is diverted "unbraked" to the upper part of the embouchure. The fingering of the c' gives us no possibility to reduce this torque. That seems to me the difficulty.

EE: That’s the disadvantage. I guess the hands do more holding there, than I thought. That’s the hard part. I know some double lips players advise attacking the high C, pressing down on the body of the instrument near the left hand g-hole, [with a finger of the left hand] to have more control.

HM: But for you, the reason to chance was to have no pain in the upper lip or are there other reasons than more comfort for the lips.

More power with single lip

EE: It was more comfort and you know, my wisdom teeth started to move when I was around 28, and kind of push the other teeth forward a little bit and I was not as comfortable in the front of the mouth. I had them taken out, and the mouth changed a bit. But also, I must say that there is more tonal power and endurance to be had with the single lip embouchure. So, for all of these reasons I have decided to change.

HM: I had the interview with Richard Stoltzman and he told me how painful it was, because he changed in the other way, from single lip to double lip, after his master’s degree in Yale.

Embouchure line

HM: I think it is important, playing double or single lip embouchure, is to find the good embouchure placement on the reed, that determines finally the position of the jaw. It depends on the position of the teeth also. Do you agree that there should be the most possible surface of the reed vibrating, so the embouchure line shouldn’t be too near to the top?

EE: No, I believe we don’t want just a narrow bar across the reed, you know, that horizontal line across the reed in a way that divides the reed in two. That makes [that] we don’t get enough cushion and power in the sound.

Consideration of the individual anatomy

HM: I think that it is part of the embouchure to deliver just enough pressure on the reed, so that we do not only get a noise of air going through the bore. Bonade suggested to push the instrument a little bit towards the embouchure, so that the bottom lip is shoved over the bottom teeth . Do you also practice this technique? Or do you just create a certain pressure on the reed by finding the right angle holding the clarinet?

EE: This is, where I think – you know my education with my wife who is a physical therapist and a great anatomist has helped me define this in ways that are more custom-made to each individual’s anatomy. Not like a rigid dogma for everyone, but I think it depends on the player. I know that Bonade had a very long jaw – Marcellus talked about this – and quite a pronounced overbite so he had to bring in the clarinet. But I think if someone has an equal bite and tries to bring down the angle of the clarinet to create an artificial overbite, it will strain their jaw. It’s like size of shoes, you know not everyone wears the same size of shoes.

Finding the firm lower lip cushion

EE: So, in terms on your question, what do I advise, and what do I do myself? I experiment with the angle and trying to find the point, you know, where is it natural to get a firm lower lip cushion gathered under the reed, where is the jaw placed that offers that gentle pressure, stability and comfort, that’s the embouchure. Of course, as you know, for all of us it’s different.

HM: And the certain pressure that we need to make the reed vibrate, that we do not only hear an air noise passing through the instrument, do you create this with the muscles of the lips? Or do you push the clarinet a little bit against the embouchure?

Two cog wheels in a fine Swiss watch

EE: I believe that the pressure we need, is very, very light, hopefully, but that it should come more from the jaw placement than gripping with the lips. So, for me the circular shape of the lips is gently wrapped around the mouthpiece and held in place with minimum tightness. The pressure of jaw into reed and the reed into the embouchure [by pushing the instrument lightly towards the embouchure] is almost like two cog wheels in a fine Swiss watch, you know, so there are two rotational forces opposing each other. Again, then the mouthpiece comes in and up a little bit into the natural hinge or “hang” of the jaw, so that when we lower the angle of the clarinet, we [are] turning [the mouthpiece against the jaw counter-pressure. Again, this is a very subtle, delicate balance.
Thinking of these two wheels, the pressure on the reed it’s not like a biting pressure, opposite top to bottom. It’s kind of rotating, it’s oblique or indirect pressure. And Ettlinger talked a lot about that: he always said “get indirect pressure on the mouthpiece”, but he never told me how, but I think what he meant was this kind of miniscule rotating of the jaw. And it’s so tiny. If I tell the students to do that, they’d probably do too much! By no means does this imply thrusting the jaw out to even top and bottom teeth!!!! I think that is a recipe for problems.

HM: You are right! Mostly the students exaggerate the movements that they have been told to do. In this context, a passage in Keith Stein's “The art of Clarinet Playing” comes to my mind.

Be conscious about all details, but don’t forget to relax

HM: He writes a chapter “Embouchure” and explains it in all details, I think very well. And then follows directly the chapter “Relaxation”. I think it’s first of all, basically important to know all positions of the jaw, the tongue, the throat, and the very small tensions that sometimes are necessary also. But only if we know about them, then we can have over all a relaxed position. I think to arrive there with any musical instrument takes a lot of time. We always have to work and try to improve it.

EE: Exactly. I mean every element that you mentioned: it is important at a certain point to analyze that and give that each element to a student as a tool. But an analogy I heard once about some sequences of physical action, it might have been embouchure or not: first you do the components, it’s like the melodic triad (sings do, mi, sol) each one separate and then after each one becomes natural, you do just a vertical harmonic, “all at the same time” chord do-mi-so, all together. And that the inner embouchure, the lips, the jaw, everything is coordinated like a chord.

HM: Very good picture!

EE: That takes time and takes the awareness of not doing too much as well as you know, it is a very sensitive operation.

Chaining of muscle activations

HM: As Keith Stein describes it, the chin is not relaxed, but there is some tension downwards.

EE: For me the tension is more into the [jaw]bone. If I do that, it goes down, and that’s synonymous with the tongue position. I don’t think that I can stretch the chin without raising the tongue. I think it’s physiologically impossible, I’ll have to ask my wife again.

HM: That’s right! EE: If I try to stretch the chin without raising the tongue, I get in trouble, it doesn’t work. It’s again one of those chords, a simultaneous happening: when go to the whistling position, the tongue comes up and then the chin stretched. So, I just hold it there.

HM: And, as I mean, it stabilizes also the bottom of the mouth.

EE: I agree, this is after all the bottom of the jaws: it’s the tongue so it [tongue, chin and bottom of the jaw] kind of flexes together. I think a “relaxed” tongue can be overdone, it’s more like a gently poised feeling of the tongue flexing like you are lengthening it a bit in the oral cavity.

HM: I think it’s important to have the back of the tongue a little bit, let me say fixed, in the same time the tip of the tongue is very flexible, very near the reed.

EE: Yes.

HM: Also, if I have just to play a sustained note, the tongue never should fall back to the throat. In this way the esthetic of the sound would go in another direction, like a Russian, big dark sound.

EE: Exactly.

Voicing

HM: How would you describe the term voicing in connection with the sound production on the clarinet? When we go inside the mouth, we talk about position of tongue, but voicing is differently understood. Does it only concern the position and shape of the tongue, or also the entire mouth cavity and the vocal apparatus?

Always i y, i u, ɯ u, but never æ ʌ

EE: I think when all is said and done, it’s the overall shape and size of the oral cavity, that determines what vowel shapes the sound, is what is coming out of the clarinet what I’m trying to put into the clarinet? So, for me, voicing, a well voiced clarinet sound is always i y, i u, ɯ u but, for me at least, never æ or ʌ (Forming our lips to a clarinet embouchure around the mouthpiece, we still can bring the tongue into positions of different vowels. (Vowels and the position of the tongue)

HM: Do you use different voicings if you play very high notes, middle range or low notes? Do you change the vowel, the tongue position, when you change the registers?

Use your ear for changing registers

EE: Yes, I don’t know if it is very conscious or if it just happens when I’m able to go to a high register with a legato good sound, then I know there is some small changes. I would hope that it would happen naturally, from the ear, looking for a certain color or “magic” in the sound.

HM: Every melody we play, we have to sing along inside as well. But I think it is very hard to describe what happens inside the voice tract. Maybe your wife knows more about these mechanisms?

Proprioception

EE: Well, I know from her, and from my work with the great wind teacher Arnold Jacobs, that we don’t have many nerves inside the mouth that give us sensory feedback about placement in space, which is called proprioception. We are equipped with nerves there that tell us about taste or pain. So, when we flex the tongue, we can’t really go by feeling alone to perceive accurately if we are raising the tongue or doing something else. That’s where it is important to always engage the ear, which is like the “flight recorder” to tell us if we are achieving the results we want.

HM: I never thought about this, maybe the proprioception of the tongue is also different from our hands or arms, because in the movement of the tongue and in our oral cavity there are no joints involved. Proprioception is highly developed in our extremities or in our torso, but less clear in the tongue.

EE: Exactly.

HM: To divine the tongues position in the mouth, we have to hear the sound we produce, then make the connection between the tongue-position and -form and the ear.
So, we can modulate the color of the sound, its core, ring, and even the intonation. I think also for changing between different registers we need this sensibility.

EE: Precisely

HM: This is difficult for beginners, even for professional students, it takes a long time to appropriate that! EE: You said it!

Articulation

Where does the tongue touch the reed?

HM: We talked a little bit about the tongue positions and its form. Articulation, as Bonade wrote, should happen always by the tip of the tongue on the top of the reed. A technique, that the gives good results, so I guess. But when I play lower notes or bass clarinet, I go towards the middle of the reed. How do you usually touch the reed, and how did you learn it with Yona Ettlinger?

EE: Yes [the tip of the tongue to the tip of the reed], but then through Marcellus, I learnt to come down a little bit from the tip, may be two three millimeters down. Touching the tip of the tongue or the front of the tongue towards the very beginning of the “heart” of the reed instead of the extreme tip, it gives the tonal vibrations a cleaner “stop”. With tip-to-tip, especially if the reed is a little bit too light, then sometimes when we touch the tip, we get that kind of left over in the sound, as if not all of the reed stops vibrating immediately. So, I do go a little lower on the reed. When tonguing gets too extremely fast, I do whatever is necessary for survival (laughs). I don’t know, I think it does change from sometime even side to side and I found that’s it’s possible to get a very, very delicate attack sometimes when I touch a small corner of the reed.

HM: Yes! That’s a good thing.

EE: Do you also do that?

HM: Yes, but I only learnt about it in the interview with Pascal Moraguès. He told me about this technique.

EE: Ah!

HM: But for doing a delicate attack on a high register, let’s say between G’’ and C’’’, or as an example the four repeated eight notes in a’’ in Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, it’s a really a good technique to touch a corner of the reed on the high a’’ in pianissimo.

Finding the right pressure of the tongue against the reed

Exercises HM: My teacher Hans-Rudolf Stalder, also student of Louis Cahuzac during his summer vacations, showed me this exercise: You form your embouchure and touch the tip of the reed with the tip of the tongue, then you start blowing. Only after the vibration of the reed has been produced, you release the tongue to get the articulation of a sound with a free vibrating reed. It’s like articulating a sound in slow motion. Do you also use this technique, as you studied with Yona Ettlinger, who was a student of Louis Cahuzac?

EE: Yes, something similar to that from. Yona would be let’s say play a high D, mezzo forte and then to approach the tongue to the reed very gently and then just kind of feel the “tickle”of the reed’s vibration. And not to stop the vibration all together completely, but it is almost like nuance tonguing within a continuous sound. And that forms base of a good tonguing, of not overusing the tongue muscle. So, this is a sort of variation of what you describe, but-yes!

HM: Do you use also this technique, let’s say may be in Mozart or classical style to make a special effect of détaché, so that you don’t really stop the sound but just dump the ending.

EE: Definitely.

HM: Did you learn it by yourself or… sorry, did Bonade, Yona Ettlinger or Robert Marcellus teach this technique?

EE: I think all of them, also Gigliotti at Curtis, who was a Bonade student, and Marcellus later and Yona they all talked about something similar and you had to get a very good détaché, I had to play an F major scale, mezzo piano, third octave, make all the notes sound very clear but very smooth. So that was something that was really a project, to do a lot of that deep study. All of my teachers had me do variations on that, in different ways.

HM: And now, you use different staccatos when you play, I suppose. There is not just one way, it can be shorter, or with each note having a ring? In the piano, just a non-legato. It’s nice!