Maurice Allard brought to the IDRS Conference several interesting accessories. Among these were the above-pictured straightened-shape bocals made by Buffet Crampon for testing on the French-system bassoon. William Waterhouse had shown his own straightened crook set-up, for Heckel, to Mr. Allard in Paris; the test shapes were made up at the Buffet firm, and all three shapes perform very well, with slight variations in playing "feel." The editor borrowed one of these three for performance of the Canteloube "Rustiques" reed trio with Melvin Berman, oboe; and Stanley McCartney, clarinet. It responded excellently. (One IDRS member rather poignantly mentioned after this performance, "How really refreshing it was to hear a clarinet after all the concentrated double reeds!" In the case of Stan McCartney they don't come any nicer, in my opinion.)
Other accessories brought to the conference by Maurice Allard were some different sizes of plastic spacers to place between the wing and boot joints (petite branche et culasse) of his bassoon, in case his extra long bocal and shortened cork piece at the bottom of the instrument (in French: bouchon ) did not bring him comfortably down to Toronto's A 440 c.p.s. pitch level. However, after fifteen minutes of his first rehearsal, for the Tuesday evening recital, Mr. Allard had selected his performance reed (from several) and had assessed the correctness of his tuning (minus the need for spacers) with the Steinway piano played by Monica Gaylord. He also sensed the acoustical nature of the WALTER HALL to an extent that he needed no further rehearsals in that room before the performance (just a tune up back stage and out to play). (Incidentally, the Buffet bassoons--and clarinets, as we all know - are tuned to 442 c.p.s. for A, which creates some problems for the instrument when it is used in orchestras playing to the "international standard" tuning pitch of A 440.)