John Moses

The Interview with John Moses, woodwind specialist, lecturer and educator took place on June 7th, 2019 at the Gershwin Theatre in New York and was edited by Heinrich Mätzener.

John Moses’ teachers

HM: The purpose of this project is to follow the traces of Daniel Bonade and Ralph McLane, who in turn were educated according to the old French school and were important personalities forming a lot of famous clarinetists in the USA in during the 20th century. I think that you have also partially completed your studies in this tradition.

JM: [I studied] in the Older French School, although they [my teachers] called themselves [representatives of] the American School, which was a combination of a kind of Bonade, and also Kal Opperman. [Also] the German School of playing was very, very popular here. There was also a kind of “Italian School”. That came from Gino Cioffi. He was a kind of leading exponent of this school and I went to Boston to study with him and got a different idea. He played a crystal mouthpiece, and a Selmer clarinet and had a different sound from German or French.

HM: So, you know really…

JM: All the different influences, exactly. Because I was in New York with many of the German School teachers, a lot of them were here.

HM: Was New York more orientated to the German School than in Philadelphia?

JM: No, I think, more French. But there was a strong German influence also in New York, and guys went back and forth to different teachers. So, I went to Harold Wright, he was in Washington DC at that time. He was probably a really great example of the [Old] French School, with a little bit of German mixed in, because his tone was dark, but he had that sparkle of French, which was amazing! We called him “Buddy” but his name was Harold Wright. And then there was Anthony Gigliotti, who was in Philadelphia, who I also studied with.

HM: Gigliotti was a student of Daniel Bonade.

JM: Exactly. And he had more of a French style playing. Although he loved the Italian sound that Cioffi got, he didn’t imitate that Italian School, he was more in the French School. But the best example I had as a teacher was Joe Allard.

HM: Is he still alive?

JM: No, Joe passed away about 10 years ago. I studied with him at Juilliard, for many years, and many of the great players in New York at least studied with Joe Allard or with someone who had been a student of him. So Joe was one of the biggest influences on many of the clarinet players in New York, and I think he was from French Canada, like Quebec. But he was really a very French School Canadian and taught the embouchure of the French and didn’t like the German concept at all! So when you went to Joe, you got the French concept [Joe Allard studied during four years with Gaston Hamelin.

HM: Was he a student of Bonade also?

JM: Yes, he was. And of Augustin Duquès, a very famous teacher here also. Joe and Duques were both at Juilliard when I was there. So they were always talking to each other in French and making sure their students got the French concept.

HM: I see.

JM: But Duquès was also a student of Bonade and they all loved the French School! Sound concept: be flexible!

Flexibility

HM: What would you say, in your point of view, what should be important for a clarinet sound? What is important for the clarinet sound, one should be able to do, artistically?

JM: it must change.

HM: it must be flexible.

JM: It must be flexible. What happens now in many auditions and jobs and places is that playing in auditions making everything sounds the same. It has to sound dark and rich and dramatic, perhaps, although I hate to blame the German sound, I must say so dark and tubby and covered, that there’s really no sparkle, no excitement around sound. It’s all too carefully constructed, so I think if it could stay flexible- in a Brahms symphony, if it needs to be dark and germanic, play that way! But if it is a Poulenc piece or if it is Debussy, we need sparkle, we need to come out as French! So the American way of clarinet playing should be flexible. And I have an article in the union paper which you could look off called “You must be flexible.” Flexibility is the main way to get a job, the main way to play in orchestras. The main way to be kind of right all the time is to be flexible.

HM: You also change B clarinet, E-flat, doubling all the time.

JM: Yes, I play all the levels: I play saxophone, flute, clarinet!

HM: Bravo!

JM: Here [in the Gershwin Theater] I play many different instruments. But I also play in orchestras where I only play clarinet; I played in five major symphony orchestras where I only played first clarinet! There I didn’t have to play saxophone or flute. When I came back to New York, because I went to school there, I found that the orchestral scene was spread out. You had to play many different filling orchestras. I played from Opera orchestras to the ballet orchestra, I played with the philharmonic, but it was not regular. The most regular work was Broadway! So I jumped on a Broadway show that Leonard Bernstein from the Philharmonic asked me to play in the seventies, and I played his Broadway show! So, I got back into Broadway when I came back to New York.

HM: Was Leonard Bernstein conducting at Broadway?

JM: Leonard Bernstein was guest conductor of the Philharmonic. I can’t remember who the actual conductor was, Boulez or Zubin Mehta, someone because I worked for those guys also.

HM: Is there a difference between the old American-French school and the today’s way of playing?

JM: I think there are few of us who play with a French style, as Joe Allard [1] gave us and we’ve maintained that sound. There are some guys, who are very famous and play in the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic who have contained their sound down to a darker, more Germanic sound, so some of them still play with the French-American sound, and others are trying to play more Germanic-American. But I think they all have flexibility. They are just limited in the orchestras to what they can do, whereas when we play films or jingles, or anything in studio, we can play a dozen different ways from day to day and be right what they have to keep in the narrow box of the way they think they have to play for conductors. So, I can be very flexible because I play for many different art forms of the profession.

Embouchure

HM: And what is the secret of your embouchure to be so flexible?

JM: Joe Allard, again. There’s the name! Joe Allard kept stressing flexibility, no biting, no pinching, no pulling back [the corners of the mouth] on a smile, all of that is wrong! Joe said straight up “wrong!” He didn’t say “you shouldn’t do that” He said: “it’s wrong! If you’re smiling, if you’re pulling your teeth back, if you’re squeezing, if you’re biting your lower lip, all those are harmful to your playing, you will never be able to play into your seventies, which I am, and you’ll never be able to continue to play as an older person or sound good; so don’t do that!”

HM: It’s amazing, that you still are playing in the Gershwin Theater at Broadway, congratulations! You continue to play, like Stanley Drucker, who stopped playing as principal clarinetist with the New York Philharmonic at age of eighty years.

JM: Yes! Stanley is amazing and Stanley’s teacher was Leon Russianoff, who was… well, it was German-French. Stanley has both; the Russian school was different. You certainly know the great Russian players [Leon Russianoff himself was a student of Simeon Bellison, and took also some lessons with Daniel Bondade], but Leon Russianoff, he was a good teacher also. I took a few lessons with him. He was very “do this! do that!” – a nervous guy, very demanding.

HM: Yes, there are some videos on YouTube, masterclasses with Leon Russianoff. JM: I’m sure you have seen. The good thing is that Joe was patient. With each student was a different problem. So, he put his fingers in your mouth, because you were pulling your mouth back. Nowadays, a teacher can’t do that, because it’s considered inappropriate. He would also let you expand [the corners of the mouth during the embouchure building].

Double lip embouchure?

HM: Do you think that practicing double lip embouchure helps to improve the sound quality?

JM: No! Double lip only hurts your upper lip! You don’t want any pressure on the lips. There’s not more pressure or less, there is very little. So the single lip is bad enough, so we speak. In putting this [the bottom lip] over your teeth and putting the mouthpiece on it on it, then pulling your upper lip over your teeth and biting down on the mouthpiece, is even worse.

Use the upper lip to seal up the mouthpiece

HM: It hurts, when you are biting on it.

JM: It hurts, what’s the point? You don’t need to play with double lip embouchure, as Joe Allard said: “[The upper lip] just seals off your mouthpiece. So, if the mouthpiece is in your mouth, and your teeth are on the top, and you seal, with a little bit of pressure up at the reed. You just seal with the cornes of your mouth, you don’t pull them back [like when you would smile]. You pull it together to seal. The upper lip touches the bottom lip, and it’s just like this: the upper lip is relaxing over the lower lip, with the clarinet in mouth of course. And sometimes there is a little leakage of air, but you could stop it if you have to. Just let everything come forward, yes, relaxed and forward!

A flexible embouchure-line

HM: There are different kinds to create the little bit of pressure that is necessary to make the reed vibrate. Do you create a small pressure by bringing the instrument with your right thumb more or less against the embouchure?

JM: Yes, the clarinet moves in and out. Ist like playing on a piano [each register has his place on the reed]. So, as I take more mouthpiece in the mouth it is to be louder and brighter; as I move out, it’s darker, because there is more lip on the reed. When there is more lip on the reed, it’s darker; less lip on the reed, and more you have in your mouth, it’s brighter and louder. The clarinet does move, in and out, yes. (see Joseph Allard) HM: So, you change the embouchure line on the reed. JM: Yes, for musical reasons. There is no one spot on the lip.