Klarinet Archive - Posting 000153.txt from 1994/10

From: Cary Karp <karp@-----.SE>
Subj: Re: Clarinette d'amour
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 1994 07:23:02 -0400

On Sat, 15 Oct 1994, Roger J. Shilcock wrote:

> The clarinette d'amour was in G and its lowest note was written E - sounding B
> on the 2nd line up in the bass clef. Hence, it would presumably have been
> slightly longer than a C basset clarinet and slightly shorter than a B flat
> specimen. The different key sets would have been distinctive to One Who Knew;
> also, the spacing of the holes would have been wider.

Wait a 'sec -- am I to understand that we are uncertain as to whether the
depicted instrument is a basset clarinet or a clarinet d'amore? Dense me.
The surviving d'amores normally have brass neckpipes of basset horn type
and bulb bells. I haven't seen many surviving basset clarinets but
recollect them to look just like extended clarinets, perhaps with an
angled barrel. There would be little risk of confusing the two on the
basis of appearance.

Again, as I understand it, the Stadler instrument that everybody has been
looking for is a basset clarinet with a box rather than straight
extension, since that's what a contemporary description of his instrument
seemed to be describing.

Given the numbers of different sizes and shapes of instruments that
individuals on this list own, why couldn't the clarinetists of yesteryear
have been similarly well equipped with hardware? I would assume it to be
reasonable that Stadler could have been depicted with any number of
different types of horns during his lifetime.

For two decades, I was the custodian of a fine Grenser clarinet upon which
someone long ago had written, "Owned by Bernhard Crusell". Despite the
fact that it didn't match the description of any of the instruments in
Crusell's possession at the time of his death and was a "run of the mill"
Grenser of the type that was legion, there was no way that a long parade
of clarinetists could be persuaded that they had come to Stockholm to look
at what in all likelihood was a single-reed equivalent of a bed that
George Washington had slept in.

Cary Karp <ck@-----.se>