Klarinet Archive - Posting 000254.txt from 1994/02

From: Cary Karp <nrm-karp@-----.SE>
Subj: Re: Exotic axes and Albert
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 16:10:31 -0500

On Fri, 18 Feb 1994, Michael B. Favreau wrote:

> I enjoyed Ron Monsen's last posting about unusual instruments. Does
> anybody else have something out of the ordinary in their collection. I'm
> sure Cary must.

My personal collection's got nothing really exotic, but the museum
collection has a full quartet of Sax saxophones, one of the first known
bass clarinets, about half the known surviving chalumeaux, an oboe
d'amore stamped with the earliest date yet associated with that
instrument, one of the two oboi da caccia from what was probably the
first pair made for J.S. Bach (the other one is in Copenhagen), what is
supposed to have been Crusell's clarinet, plus a couple thousand other
pretty interesting items. I'd be happy to give anyone a tour of the
storerooms.

Otherwise, on a perhaps less exotic note, what do people think about
Albert system clarinets? The suggestion that 40's classical clarinetists
loathed vibrato because of its jazz connotations sent me back to
listening through my record collection to see if there was any difference
in the way vibrato was used by black and white clarinetists. I couldn't
hear any, but was reminded of the whopping difference between the
sounds produced by Albert and Boehm instruments. Although it seems
possible for an Albert clarinet to be made to sound like a Boehm
instrument, very few people seem able convincingly to pull off the
opposite trick.

Are there are Albert clarinet fans out there?

Anybody done more than casual toodling on one?