Clarinet Musical Instruments
Clarinet Musical Instruments Fast Facts
The clarinet is the orchestra’s most versatile woodwind instrument. It is capable of a very wide range of dynamic variation, and is as at home with brilliant, rapid passage work as it is with long expressive melodies. It blends well with other instruments. Examples of its use in the orchestra abound – the ‘trio’ section of the third movement of Mozart’s Symphony No39 in E flat (K543) is very typical, and shows both the chalumeau and the clarion registers contrasting with each other. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto (K622), written in 1791, and Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto (1948) with an orchestra of strings and harp show its virtuosity.
A Brief History of the Clarinet Musical Instrument
The clarinet arrived relatively late in the orchestra but fairly soon became popular with the best composers. This was due to its interesting expressive qualities and generous dynamic range.
Although cylindrical tubes with single reeds were known to ancient and rustic communities, documentation on these is confused and obscure. Whether the clarinet was developed from the chalumeau, a word which could indicate single or double reed pipe is not known for sure. The name of the instrument may derive from clarion and old French word which referred to some form of clear-sounding wind instrument of the horn or trumpet type: the early clarinet could sound very like a trumpet, and was sometimes written for in clarion-sounding style. In fact military bands adopted the instrument before orchestras. The clarinet is one of the few orchestral instruments whose inventor can be named: Johan Christoph Denner (1655-1707), and instrument maker of Nuremberg. Denner’s development consisted of adding a speaker key, that is to say an additional hole that made it possible to play in the upper register. Thereafter the history of the instrument consists of an endless series of experiments made with the aim of producing one instrument that could be played chromatically in all keys.
By the beginning of the 18th century there were
clarinets with five keys, made in boxwood with ivory mounts; this was
the type of instrument which Rameau, Handel, Bach and Gluck wrote for.
At the end of the 18th century the orchestral and chamber music repertoire
of the clarinet had developed and flourished with a vigor unknown to any
other woodwind instrument of that period, and no symphony was without
two.
Apart from the A and B flat clarinets only two others of a family of twenty-seven
of different sizes, ranging from 14 inches to nearly nine feet in length,
are common today’ they are the small E flat and the large bass.
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