Dear Dan,

Thank you for your lovely letter. I appreciate your expressions of sympathy and those of I.D.R.S. members. As you can well imagine, I am still in deep shock! I only thank destiny that Harold never suffered... and never knew. He had diabetes and the damage that incurred he didn't really believe; it caused a fatal stroke.

I think your idea is excellent - yes! I will send you a painting from which you can make a photo for a cover for The Double Reed. It is rather light in character, but of course, it has his traditional oboist, Italy, and me at the harp. After you use it, I would want you to have it for yourself

Harold so valued your work - so frame it well, add it to your collection, and enjoy it!

The tragedy is Harold was to have played solo in San Domingo in February, and then give master classes and do more playing in October. But, saddest of all he will miss hearing our music, composed and performed by us for a ballet of Maurice Bejart to be done in Paris this coming spring. He was very proud of this project, and after the premiere we were to do a recording - one side the music which Bejart has entitled Encounters for Harp and Oboe - the other side our newest music, taped in a 15th century oratory of St. Agostino in Perugia. Harold titled this Memories of Two Puppets. We did this in May. I think it is his legacy to the oboe playing art and I am deeply moved to have been a part of it.

When you come to Capri, please come to visit. My daughter and I would love to see you.

Margaret Brill Gomberg
Capri, Italy

Editor's note: The painting Mrs. Gomberg refers to is enroute to the States now. I will hope to share it with I. D. R. S. members on the cover of the fall Double Reed.

January 28, 1986 Dear Ron:

I enjoyed your page 57 [Last issue. Ed. ] reference to cracking. We here on the West Coast have been making noises about this problem for years largely because Moritz taught us how to avoid it. We call it "Clucking". In fact those of' us at the Texas I.D.R.S. meeting who are tuned into this peculiarly found ourselves "talking to ourselves" over the preponderance of the phenomena, calling it averitable "chicken farm" of clucks, sort of premature multiphonics, not wanting to call it an "area" problem. We here out West are beginning to meet pupils coming from the East Coast where first defensive remarks are "Oh, no, you're not going to give me all that crap. " Norm Herzberg who when he first arrived in California refused to admit that clucking was nothing more than a bassoon characteristic. Especially to Ray Nowlin and myself. Moritz, older and wiser, convinced him. Now he is a convert, as I believe John Miller is. I know Arthur Grossman is "super" aware.

Frederick Moritz was perhaps the cleanest technician who ever lived, and the one conception, or misconception is perhaps a better word, I have noticed, is that experimenters who have given this system a try and given up, have all overlooked Moritz's total "direction". And that is that the flip keys b & c# must be bent upwards above the sub-structure about 1/32" of an inch.

Both must be slightly above the "A" or middle flip key. Depressing these keys now calls for only touching the sub- structure, not pressing it down also. Now this calls for a very light touch and much less motion than what full depression calls for, also much less than what the sideways flipping action calls for. It has been my observation when watching many use the flip actions, I see first a flip then an attack with the obvious result, a cluck, and another cluck when the attack preceeds the flip. Moritz convinced me with, not only Beethoven's " 4th " but the solo in Mignon

which when done correctly, the thumb moves from C# to A# without touching the A at all and with even greater efficiency when the thumb touches only the right side of the B key (No. 1) then leaps to the left side of the C# key (No. 3).

Emil Hoffman was Moritz's teacher from Berlin. Historically, flip fingering was born of necessity because there was no whisper key on the early bassoons and no substructure. It may have been Moritz's invention - the half depression of keys. He himself is not sure.

Yours truly,
Don Christlieb

(I greatly appreciate this letter from Patricia Murphy Snyder. Her suggestions for improvements to the I.D.R.S. publications are excellent. Please read them carefully, and if any of you have particular expertise in these areas, PLEASE send us an article. Thanks, Patricia for your wonderful ideas. We'll try to incorporate some of them in the future. Ed.)

February 4, 1986
79 Fieldstone Ct. #19
Holland, MI 49423
(616) 396-9705

Dear Mr. Klimko,

I was inspired by your note from the "Editor's Desk" to drop you a line on some ideas I had for things that I would like to read about in The Double Reed. Unfortunately, I moved and did not notify the I.D.R.S., (Yes! I am one of those irresponsible fools!) and did not receive my Double Reed until last week. But, I did do some thinking and have compiled some thoughts. The list is as follows:

Surveys on:
· Selecting cane
· Profiling cane
· Shapes - practices, reasons, and outcomes
· Reed construction - I know of the oboe reed book, but what about the bassoon reed book? I talked to the publishers at a musicology convention in Ann Arbor about three years ago and they said that it would be published I I soon." Do you know anything about it? Indiana University Publications, I think.
· Vibrato - there is an interesting dissertation from some Florida university written in the 1970's.

Biographical Articles:
· It could advertise up and coming workshops and include profiles of American professional bassoonists (Live ones! Memorials are nice, but living professionals would be better).
· Include philosophies
· Teaching techniques
· Playing secrets

Other Articles:
· Bassoon ensemble playing
· The benefits of starting young bassoon players
· Survey on teaching techniques

Publish Dissertations on a Regular Basis
·You might have to cut them down or publish them in parts

I really look forward to receiving The Double Reed and the Journal, and hope that it always maintains such a high standard of publications. They always seem to come when I have to play something that has tacet parts, so I can read them cover to cover! "The Changing Scene" is very interesting. Is it new? I also found "Help for the Standing Bassoon" a helpful article.

I will be looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Bassooningly yours, Patricia Murphy Snyder


Dear Dan,
I have just had time to look at the Gillet article in the Fall, 1985, Vol. 8, No. 2 issue and I am very pleased with the way the illustrations came out. There are several small typos which don't matter too much. 'However, I WOULD appreciate a correction of page 34, 2nd column, where it says "This format of scale study, must have become somewhat down..." etc. As you can see, this doesn't really make sense. The text should read "This format of scale study must have become somewhat watered down over the years as I was required to play scales and broken thirds only through high F and with only the harmonic minor. " This correction might eliminate some confusion on the part of your readers. All best wishes.

Laila Storch, Seattle

Our apologies to Miss Storch and to our readers who no doubt WERE confused by this omission. Editors.

January 13, 1986

Mr. Lawrence Tilson
270 Baldwin Road C-11
Parsippany, N.J. 07054

Dear Mr. Tilson,
I read with interest of your performance of the Skalkottas Sonate Concertante. You asked for feedback about other performances. I recorded this work some years ago. I believe that the record is still available as: Bravura Bassoon on Pandora #112. The pianist on the
record is Neal O'Doan.

I have not seen the published version (I got mine from Skalkottas' widow) but I assume that you are aware that there are two versions. Neither seems ideal; I wonder what the published version is? I made my own using both versions.

Sincerely,
Arthur Grossman

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