Klarinet Archive - Posting 000330.txt from 1994/02

From: Stephen Cranefield <stephen@-----.NZ>
Subj: Re: Instrument Museums
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 16:47:15 -0500

Dr. Ronald P. Monsen writes:
> ... if anyone ventures to England you may want to consider
> the instrumental collection at Kneller Hall-The Royal Military School of
> Music.

Also, if your travels take you "North of the Border" to Edinburgh, I
recommend the musical instrument collection owned by the University of
Edinburgh (viewable by arrangement with the music department). They
have clarinets of all shapes and sizes, including a combination
B-flat/A clarinet (with a single central bore that switches between
two outer sleeves) and a clarinet with a continous slot down the front
instead of individual tone holes -- it's closed off piece by piece as
you descend the scale (the reason for all this was so that only the
part of the tube you were using was closed off, the rest was open
right down to the bell).

I read a remarkable story about this collection recently. It seems
that the university owned two halves of the oldest English clarinets
known to have survived (the top half of one and the bottom half of the
other) but it wasn't known what had happened to the other halves of
these instruments. Recently someone with a private collection of
instruments died and his widow presented the collection to the
government which then gave it to Edinburgh University. To their great
surprise this collection included the other halves of these clarinets
which are now complete again!

- Stephen
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Cranefield Phone: +64 3 479 8083
Department of Information Science Fax: 479 8311
University of Otago
Dunedin, New Zealand E-mail: scranefield@-----.nz
-------------------------------------------------------------------------