Klarinet Archive - Posting 000155.txt from 1993/12

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: The wooden clarinet
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1993 23:13:04 -0500

About 6 months ago on Nova, there was a show entitled "The Tree of Music."
I loved it so much, I waited for a rerun and taped it. It dealt with the
problem of the inexorable disappearance of African blackwood from the clarinet
scene.

It is the ecology. The land is producing less, the trees are being dug up
smaller and smaller, they are not being replanted at anything like the rate
that they are being used to make clarinets (and other instruments, too).

Buffet is said to have a 20 years supply of African blackwood on hand and,
after that, who knows?

Three questions come to mind:

(1) Will the price of blackwood clarinets go up as the supply of
wood runs out?

(2) Is there a substitute wood that is useful and that will be a
viable alternative?

(3) Is wood really, really important to the sound of the clarinet?
Does blackwood produce a "better" sound than say, glass, hard rubber,
bamboo, rosewood, crocus wood, cheese box wood, metal, etc.

The matter is not academic. Today we pay $1,000 for a clarinet, maybe more.
When I was a kid the same clarinet cost $100. If those figures keep growing
like that, what will a clarinet cost in 30 years? Today, a good bassoon costs
$15,000, a great flute is the same.

Save your money!! Save your old clarinets. They may be worth a fortune
soon.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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