There are dozens of these 'beginnings and endings' in my memories - things which had their roots in early tussles with the clarinet and had important later repercussions. Many of these are associated not only with the particular instrument used, but with a specific work.... One such work, for me, is Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue'. It was on one of these sleepy afternoon ciné-sessions that Gershwin first flow into the ken of several of us young and intensely interested clarinettists. The band in the film was that of Paul Whiteman, and the opening of the 'Rhapsody in Blue' was played by a clarinettist who obviously had something very different to say on his instrument. A slow trill, and he soared upwards over two and a half octaves in a perfect glissando, without break or hesitation, but without a single note being articulated separately. It was like seeing someone inexplicably slide up the big slope of the fairground. We simply gasped in unison, and for days afterwards you could hear strangled sounds emerging from nearby attics as each one of us had a go at squeezing that note from the bottom of the clarinet to the top. Quite wrong, of course. A month later we had discovered that exactly the reverse treatment works - that what you have to do is hold the note down and gradually let it come up to you. From then on it was easy. << less