Thomas Piercy

Thomas Piercy’s teachers

Gervase de Peyer

TP: My main teacher was Gervase de Peyer, who is obviously an English clarinetist, but he went to Paris to study with Cahuzac.

HM: He was student of Louis Cahuzac, one of the most important representatives of the “old French School” of clarinet. Gervase de Peyer had a very flexible sound. Do you think it is due to his embouchure technique? Did he play double lip?’’

TP: No, he played single lip.

’’HM: He learned with Cahuzac, who was a double lip player.’’

TP: I don’t know if he ever played double lip, we never discussed that when I was studying with him. He was like my childhood hero. I wanted to study with him ever since I was a kid and I studied with him for many years.
Actually, in November I’m going to London for a week. He died last year and his widow, has asked me to come to London to go through his music and his papers with her. She’s not a musician. His papers have been given to the Royal College of Music. She wants me to go and pick out what should go to the College and what could just be trashed, and what do I want to keep, but we never discussed that.
I started playing with vibrato. No one ever told me not to. It was very funny: Gervase and I never discussed how to produce vibrato, because I was already doing it. We would discuss how to use it; like adding a little here or less here but never the physical aspects. De Peyer almost never talked about the approach to the instrument.

HM: He talked more about music. TP: Always about music! And if I would ask him, eventually, after years and years. But you know like the run at the end of Shepard on the rock. E’’ to E’’’ (sings) and if that wouldn’t consistently come out, I’d say: “What can I do?” He would always turn his back on you and go: “why didn’t it happen?”

Voicing? Not in the teaching vocbulary

Gervase in lessons never talked about embouchure. Now, I hear so many clarinet teachers and clarinetists younger than I am, who always talk about voicing. So my three main teachers, de Peyer, Opperman and Leon Russianoff never ever used the word “voicing” Suddenly when I started hearing that about 20 years ago, I was like… I know what they’re talking about, but I’m not sure, was this fashion, or was that emphasis on voicing to get like high note or whatever didn’t come out well justified? These three teachers who were great teachers and players, never ever used the word “voicing”. They may have say: “Push the air faster”. Opperman was very much about “put more mouthpiece in” or “pull in [the mouthpiece]” and sometimes he would talk about raising your tongue, but he never used the word “voicing”. So, I thought that was very interesting.

Kalmen Opperman

HM: You said you were forty when you were ready to start to study with new a teacher.

TP: With Kalmen Opperman, yes! I felt, that I had a little bit on tension in my jaw and the muscles back here. I went to Kal and said: “I’m curious about double lip”.

Changing from single to double lip embouchure

HM: My idea is that when you play double lip, the shape of the oral cavity is changing. Throat, tongue and soft palate feel different than in single lip playing. And I think, if you try to transmit the constellations given in double lip playing to single lip, you’re changing your sound. Do you think I’m right?

TP: Kal said to me: “you can play double lip today, but you won’t know what it really means: you need to take several months off from work and follow my instructions. If you are not willing to follow my instructions, I’ll kick your ass out.”. He was very brutal. I would go and sit in his lessons with other people; most of his students were older working professionals who came to him. I would take three months and after then, I would decide yes or no, I will see what works what doesn’t work, what was the benefit. I really followed his instructions, as frustrating it was for those three months. But, even after one week, I sort of knew, it is going to work. It felt good, more natural for me. My students can choose, I don’t make them play double lip, I will them try to experience it, but I don’t force anyone to switch. I am not of those people who think dogmatically: double lip is better than single lip. It depends on the player. If for me it works, I am the only one I have to live with.

Practice double lip in an upright position

HM: I heard about Harold Wright, he played double lip in a sitting position sitzend and used to put the clarinet on his knee while playing.

TP: And because he did that, a lot of American clarinetists say: ”Oh, if you play double lip, you have to sit”. I stand most of the time, because to me, if I’m moving, it’s kind of weird, maybe it obviously worked for Harold Wright, he can do what he wants, but for me I feel physically constricted and also many of the notes that are coming out of the bell or the lower part, I feel the difference, like [the sound waves are] coming back at me. I don’t think the audience hears it but I do and I react to it; so I want it here.

HM: I think there must be a difference. Sometimes I understand that for double lip players it can be more stable, playing in a sit-in g position. Standing upright the most difficult note is the C’’’, because you don’t have so much stability holding the clarinet.

TP: Yes, you have nothing, but Opperman would have me, playing that or whatever, he would always say that most clarinetists think they play the c’’’ [only with the left thumb]. But he said: with double lip, you also use your right thumb, to push the instrument up.

HM: Yes, as part of the embouchure building.

Transfer all the advantages of double lip to single lip

HM: If somebody tries, can he transfer all the advantages of double lip to single lip?

TP: Yes. Maybe younger players with not much experience and playing single lip don’t realize the advantages of these muscles here (points to his upper lip and the corners of his mouth). They think they have to pull back the corners of the mouth their whole life, forming the vowel “E”. But in double lip you naturally use all these upper muscles and you see how much it helps. And so, they derive some of the advantages of double lip just by being aware of the muscles in their upper lip and also the flexibility that you have, instead of being so obsessed with pulling back and having that flat chin, and nothing moves. I think it’s good for them to experience that.
I know now, I mean before I switched to double lip, when I am playing single lip, I rarely thought of my tongue, except for tonguing. And I just rarely thought about airflow in the context of the tongue position. But after switching to double lip, when I now would switch back to single lip, I would realize: Oh, my tongue is in a different place! And if I want to get it back up, I’m consciously manipulating my tongue, which I find hard to when playing. Whereas when I play double lip, I don’t have to think about my tongue.

HM: It changes naturally the position, as it should be. I teach my students not to play every time double lip, just learn these positions of tonguing, by playing sustained notes.

TP: Yes, and feel the muscles that form the oral cavity. Playing single lip, maybe you never get aware of that but playing double lip, they are there.

Double lip evokes sensibility all around

HM: So, you would say, all these muscles, and also the whole mask of your face is involved in the embouchure?

TP: Yes, because the upper lip is so much involved that suddenly it feels as your nose is being involved too. When you’re pushing down your upper lip, you are feeling that your cheeks are also engaged. With single lip I’m not feeling much in my cheeks. And I try, for me, to play with as little tension as possible and I find double lip forces you to not play with tension, or if you do play with tension, immediately you know it, because you’re going to feel it here (the contact with the instrument at the upper lip) or if your fingers are slamming, you’re going to feel as well With single lip, you can slam your fingers around; you don't feel so much of it. Double lip, if you start slamming it, you also start feeling it this way: the clarinet would fall out of your mouth!

HM: Because holding a clarinet becomes part of the embouchure.

TP: It does, yes! You feel more; it’s from the air all the way through and through your fingers and enters the instrument. I am playing a Luis Rossi instrument, a copy of Boosey and Hawks 1010. With double lip because my fingers are lighter, I feel more vibration in the horn and sometimes I think, maybe it’s in my head, but I think I feel the vibrations of the air; but I certainly feel the vibrations of the horn, because I’m not gripping it.

HM: Also, the danger of biting doesn’t exist.

TP: You will feel it.

Consider the shape of the lips and teeth

HM: I see your lips are quite thin. I have a colleague he has small lips like you, and he had an Italian teacher. There were two teachers; I think the other teacher was English. He was afraid to go to the Italian because he wanted everybody to play double lip and he wouldn’t make the career he does now. But would you say the form of the lips doesn’t matter?

TP: I know some people that wanted to study with Kalmen Opperman and one just switched to double lip but either their lips were too short, or their teeth were too long! And there was just no way: there’s nothing you can do about that.

HM: I read in the book from Carol Anne Kycia about Daniel Bonade, that he had long teeth. As he studied with Prosper Mimart . A he writes in his method, he wanted his students Too play with double lip embouchure. When Bonade came to New York and Philadelphia, he might have switched on single lip because of his quite long teeth.

TP: I have a typical overbite of clarinetists, I found that switching to double lip – you know my mouth was open more – and so the position was better for me than with single lip, the position with the over bite and where my teeth would hit on the reed. So just the fact that I opened up made it, so the overbite did not matter.

Influence of double lip on the articulation

HM: And the line where you touch the reed, did it change from single to double lip?

TP: No, more mouthpiece went in on the top [the embouchure line changed a bit downwards], but the bottom stayed the same.
But where my tongue would touch the reed for articulation changed. It became closer to the tip, not tip to tip, but just behind the tip and also became much lighter. But I don’t know if it was double lip or because Kalmen was very strict about having a very relaxed, non-aggressive tongue. So, you could be very fast.
Exercise getting a conscious feeling for tongue activity This exercise by Kalmen Opperman can take five minutes.

• Do articulate in the following way:
• Put the [tip of] your tongue on or near the [tip of] the reed.
• Start the air
• Slowly, consciously pull away the tongue
• Start to feel the reed vibrate, but there’s no sound, almost tickling [on the tongue]
• Remain with the tongue at the reed, slightly enough that you would hear sound, but you could also still sort of feel vibrate it.
• And pull the tongue back and then stop.
• Do not come back [do not pull the tongue] any further.

So, this was a very minute movement of the tongue and I don’t know if he did that with other students, but it’s what he did it with me. But I do know from other students, because we would be in lessons or I’d be working on his books. [It is very important, not to pull the tongue further than necessary back.]

Changing the angle instrument-body or leaning back with the head

Sometimes [we would experiment with the angel clarinet-Body] and pull the horn in. If you don’t want to pull it in, lean your head back, because it’s the same thing, but also changing the angle. I can be more comfortable [for the embouchure]. You know, Richard Stoltzman, he often plays with the clarinet very closed to the body. Obviously, that works for him, for his mouth and the position of his teeth. For me, I want to be more out, so when I need to achieve that, especially playing a C’’’ with double lip embouchure, I would lean my head back. You will see there are pictures or videos of me where I’m leaning back. People may think:” Oh! He’s feeling the music!” No, I am especially sustaining a high note, playing a diminuendo al niente. It is just a physical technique to achieve an effect.

Kalmen Opperman teaching methods

TP: Kalmen would call his students, because he had students all over the world, so he would say: ”Play me a chromatic, single tongue, [sixteen notes, tempo quarter] 144: go!” He would listen and he would be able to hear over the phone and says:” No, your tongue is coming too far off and you’re hitting to hard. Ok, I talk to you tomorrow” and he hang up!
It was so funny because you could get a phone call from him at 7 in the morning. He loved making those phone calls! I was by train maybe 5 minutes away from his apartment: he would call me ”What are you doing? Nothing? Grab your horn and come on up”. He was incredibly generous with his time.
He was very analytical about how to play the clarinet, but he almost never talked about how to play music. We wouldn’t work on Weber or Bernstein or orchestra excerpts or anything. It was all the physical approach to the instrument. I was an older musician by that time, and he’d go: “you’re going be musical”. He firmly believed that you cannot teach musicality. “You’re either musical or you’re not! So, you’re gone do what you’re gone to do!” And I sort of agree with him, from my teaching, you can teach elements of musicality, you can say, crescendo here, ritardando there but those are just elements. If it is not really intuitively in you, it gets a little more difficult. You can teach style: Weber is different than Brahms, Mozart is different than Copland.

Finger technique

Keep your fingers close to where you will use them

But it was all about a physical approach. For a longest time, he was happening to play scales and all sort of stuff. When I came to him, my little finger was too far up and I had to have my little finger doing the exercises, actually touching the E and the [F] key, not when I was performing, but for him to watch me and he said “every day, ten or twenty minutes, you have to put a piece of tape, because your little finger is not there to look at me [but he has to operate these keys]. Put it there, so you feel the tension and there were times where he would say: “it’s too far: stop”. And we’re talking about millimeters away from where the fingers touch [the key]. He always said: “keep your fingers close to where you will use them”. So, these need to be here. If you’re getting ready to play A B and you’re getting ready to play an A, why is your finger [index] up here? You know, he said “keep them close and light and just push that air.” He would sit there sometimes with a pencil [near my fingers]. I had to play like a chromatic scale, and if I hit the pencil with one of my fingers, I could feel it hit. And so, you would just remember sort of try not to come up and he’d say: “now go and play the way you want to play” He didn’t want you to feel like a straight jacket either but the hand position really did help! And I was forty years old when I went already playing a lot. But he took me to another lever of playing.

Mimart Etudes

TP: Speaking about the old French School and methods, I was thinking: Opperman was having me and another student work on Mimart Etudes for smoothness of fingers and smoothness of sound over all registers. Not that every register has to sound the same, but smoothness and that legato. Whereas de Peyer never ever gave me an etude. It was all repertoire and he would make me do technical exercises within that piece. Going back and forth or playing it backwards, or stretching it out or beat to beat, but never ever gave me an etude.

HM: Are these etudes in the method of Mimart or separate?

TP: Yes, this really big book that is so difficult to find.

HM: I have it TP: And there were two books, Mimart Etudes I and II but they were different than this thick book.

HM: And what you worked both?

TP: The two small books and the big book. The two small were paperback, the thick he had, he would make a copy of it. But I never ever found that book itself. I wanted to have it for myself, but he always Xerox several pages (15, 32). And then there were, I believe, it must have been Mimart [? ] It felt more like music, you would have these melodies, famous melodies but unbelievably difficult. Because, he would just take these classical pieces, orchestra or piano pieces, and turn them into clarinet etudes.

Tonguing HM: Doe Your tongue, as your fingers, move also as little as possible? TP: Yes.

HM: That means, that sustaining a note, the tongue stays as close to the reed as possible.

TP: The next time you use it, it should be close. [Do not pull it back to the throat when releasing from the reed].

Movements of the tongue Depending on the type of articulation and depending on the piece, if there are some crazy contemporary playing that needs a harsher tonguing or a very quickly lighter, in the way that I would move the tongue. In Brahms I would even be different than the way I tongue in Debussy. On [Brahms] the tongue would maybe touch the reed with more body. On Debussy, it would be very, very light. With Mozart I would be a little crisper with it, you know in the faster stuff. I’m always changing what I do with the tongue depending what I think the music is asking of me. Use the musical possibilities of different articulation I never say, the tongue must be here always, because I don’t think that’s how it works. The music has to tell you how to articulate.

HM: Do you use this technique as you described it before, to make like an echo, letting the reed vibrate as the tongue is touching it?

The sound changes but my tongue is still on the reed TP: There are times in certain pieces, especially if it’s something very soft, I don’t want anyone to hear the tongue when I am a changing note. In a way I don’t want them to hear the articulation. What I want, like a new sentence or a new word to start, but I don’t want them to be so harsh. There are times when I can hear it and I’m thinking” ok: the sound changes but my tongue is still on the reed”. And obviously, it’s vibrating enough to make the sound.

Touching the bottom lip And there is also something that Opperman had me do: if it was like the middle range of the instrument and down, so the vibrations aren’t so fast, instead of touching the reed, he would have me touch my bottom lip, which would [damp] the vibrations of the reed, so you would hear this like “aah-aah”, but not “ta ta” or “da da”. And first it was a little difficult to control that, because you’re touching your lip, [and not the reed]. But eventually