How to play the first bar of Rhapsody in Blue

To play the glissando opening Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, expert clarinettists combine unusual fingerings with even more unusual vocal tract configurations to achieve a nearly continuous rise in pitch. To study directly the player’s vocal tract when performing the glissando, we incorporated an acoustic impedance measurement head within a clarinet mouthpiece. The player’s vocal tract impedance spectra were measured and compared with the corresponding clarinet impedance spectra for the fingering used at that pitch. Partially uncovering an open finger-hole raises the frequency of clarinet impedance peaks, allowing smooth increases in resonance frequency of the downstream bore. In the clarinet’s second register, however, upstream resonances in the player’s vocal tract are manipulated to be comparable in magnitude with those in the clarinet. Thus, by skillfully coordinating their fingers and simultaneously coupling strong vocal tract resonances to the continuously changing pitch, experienced players facilitate a smoothly rising pitch, particularly across the glissando’s final octave.