The Clarinet Collector
Fine woodwind instruments restored to their former glory!
The History of the Clarinet
Although the clarinet itself only dates back to the early eighteenth century, its root extend through the 17th century "mock trumpet" and the chalumeau of the renaissance to the pipes and bagpipes of ancient times.
The word "chalumeau" is French for "pipe" or "chanter". The renaissance chalumeau consisted of a cane tube with a single reed at one end and typically six finger holes and a thumb hole. The tone of the instrument was considered warm and pleasant, "more like the human voice than the oboe", but the range was severely limited. Although the horn used fingerings similar to the baroque recorder, the cylindrical bore of the chalumeau meant the horn would not overblow into a second octave. The addition of a seventh hole for the right little finger added a new note at the low end, giving a range of just over an octave. There were a number of different designs which tried to squeeze in more finger holes, including one for the 4th finger of the left hand as well as for the traditionally free right thumb, but none of these designs were very successful, since the required placement of the tone holes and the shape of the human hand made the fit awkward and difficult to play at best.
Experimentation in the early 18th century resulted in adding first one and then a second normally closed key above the top tone hole. Cane, on which it was difficult to mount keys, gave way to hardwoods as the material of choice and the bore diameter standardised into the 13 to 14 millimeter range. Tests showed that careful positioning of these keys could not only fill most of the gaps up to the twelfth, but indeed facilitate overblowing the instrument into new a second, higher register. The new register became known as "clarino" while the low register was termed "chalumeau". With its breakthrough design and extended range, the new two key chalumeau was different enough, to warrant a name change and the new instrument took its name from the new high register, becoming known as the "clarinet".
Playing a two keyed clarinet requires considerable embouchure or "lip" control to raise and lower notes. Indeed the only way of playing a B is to pinch the Bb. The two key "clarinet" soon gave way to an improved five key version by about 1770 , which added new keys for B, C# and Eb.
Such simple instruments were not truly "omni tonic" by which I mean that they played in certain keys much more readily than in others. Playing in a number of keys was awkward and involved utilising a number of "unnatural" and "cross" fingerings which made mastery technically quite challenging even for experienced players. This led to a proliferation of clarinets of different lengths designed to play in different keys including Eb, F, D, C, Bb, and A. Each clarinet was basically just a scaled up (or scaled down version) of every other, optimised to play in various keys. At this time it was common for a clarinetist to have several different clarinets, of varying length, keyed in various home keys.
As pad technology improved and it became possible to make seals which were approximately airtight, the number of keys rose steadily replacing weak notes of early designs with more robust implementations. By the latter half of the 19th century, clarinets with 13 keys became standard. The addition of keywork made it much simpler to play in the various different keys, but did not completely remove the need for having multiple length clarinets. While the 13 key clarinet was arguably "omni tonic", the underlying tone colors of instruments of various lengths is noticeably quite different. Playing the same concert pitch on clarinets of different total length results in sounds of the same pitch, but quite different tone color. Longer clarinets have a noticeably darker tone than their shorter cousins. The Eb sopranino is often described a "bright", while even the Bb soprano is noticeably darker in tone than the only slightly shorter clarinet in C. Hence even after the introduction of the 13 key clarinet, and indeed modern instruments with as many as 24 keys, it was and is not unusual for clarinetists to carry clarinets piched in different keys in order to avail themselves of the tone colors attainable from different length instruments.
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Copyright 2005 - Daniel G. Paladini - All rights reserved.