Gaston Hamelin (27 May 1884 – 8 September 1951) was a French

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

ist and teacher. Born in

Saint-Georges-sur-Baulche Saint-Georges-sur-Baulche () is a commune in the Yonne department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in north-central France. It is twinned with the affluent English village of Little Aston. See also *Communes of the Yonne department The following i ...

, Hamelin won the first prize for clarinet at the Paris Conservatory in 1904 under professor

Charles Turban Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "f ...

. He was a noted soloist, becoming the first to perform the ''

Première rhapsodie The ''Première rhapsodie'' (First Rhapsody), L. 116, CD. 124, by Claude Debussy is a piece for accompanied clarinet. Composed between December 1909 and January 1910, it was dedicated to the French clarinet professor Prosper Mimart. In 1909, G ...

'' for clarinet by

Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

in 1919; he is also believed to be the first to record that work. Hamelin moved to the United States in 1926 to assume the seat of principal clarinetist for the

Boston Symphony Orchestra The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the second-oldest of the five major American symphony orchestras commonly referred to as the " Big Five". Founded by Henry Lee Higginson in 1881, ...

. He performed with that group from 1926 to 1932, but was reportedly not offered a contract renewal because conductor

Serge Koussevitzky Sergei Alexandrovich KoussevitzkyKoussevitzky's original Russian forename is usually transliterated into English as either "Sergei" or "Sergey"; however, he himself adopted the French spelling "Serge", using it in his signature. (SeThe Koussevit ...

disapproved of his practice of playing on a metal Selmer instrument instead of one made of the more traditional grenadilla wood. One anecdote about his dismissal records that he responded to praise on his performance in a rehearsal by waving his instrument in the air, which "enraged" Koussevitzky. In the early 1930s Hamelin returned to France, where he was active as a soloist and private teacher. He published his ''Scale and Exercise Book'' in Paris. His

pedagogical Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and Developmental psychology, psychological development of le ...

approach was notable for advocating a double-lip embouchure, which was less common than the single-lip variety but was credited with reduced

biting Biting is a common zoological behavior involving the active, rapid closing of the jaw around an object. This behavior is found in toothed animals such as mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish, but can also exist in arthropods. Myocytic contrac ...

and increased fluidity of tone. His students included Rosario Mazzeo, Joseph Allard and Ralph McLane. He is known as a founder of the "American" school of clarinet and is credited with having a significant influence on the development of performance practice in the United States. His son Armand Hamelin, born 1907, played

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...

in the Boston Symphony for the last two years of his father's tenure there.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hamelin, Gaston 1884 births 1951 deaths People from Yonne Conservatoire de Paris alumni French classical clarinetists 20th-century classical musicians