Klarinet Archive - Posting 000034.txt from 1996/02

From: Nick Shackleton <njs5%esc.cam.ac.uk@-----.BITNET>
Subj: Re: the bassethorn...
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 05:28:52 -0500

>=46riends,
> Further to the comments of David Bourque, may I add that some
>basset horns are more so than others ;-).
> By this I mean that some basset horns are really alto clarinets
>pitched in F and capable of producing the fours basset tones.
> Other basset horns, the Selmer for example, have a distinctive bore
>which is narrower and more cylindrical, and allows the player to use his
>(or her) soprano clarinet mouthpiece. To my taste, such an instrument is
>more pleasant to play and listen to. The extreme top register is as free
>and easy to blow as a soprano clarinet; the clarion possesses a beautiful,
>slightly veiled tone which is (to me) characteristic of the bassethorn; and
>the chalumeau is open and resonant, not unlike the bass clarinet.
> I only wish that Selmer, as well as the other makers of French
>system instruments, would improve and simplify the key mechanism for the
>basset notes by using four separate keys operated by the right thumb, like
>on German system instruments. I can think of no acoustical reason for not
>imitating the German makers in this matter, since the four long keys are
>only used for the four lowest notes of the instrument and have no effect on
>the instrument's hexachord or any overblown note. Perhaps some of you on
>the list (you David or Nick Shackleton, or Da Leeson, or David Niethammer,
>or Ron Monsen, etc.) will know the reason why this is so, or simply confirm
>that there is only a traditional reason for it (?).

Personally, I agree with Armand- I prefer a baset horn where the basset
notes are all controlled by the thumb while the little finger (fingesrrs,
for a German system) hold as for low e.
I think there are two reasons why most makers do not do it that way. One is
that most clarinettists are unaccustomed to using their thumb and prefer to
minimise the amount they need to; for those people most Boehm basset horns
have a number of alternatives for the little fingers; I think that on the
Selmer that I have you can play every note without the thumb if you like.
The second reason is that there are some things that are simply not
possible. For example I have an arrangement of the Schubert quintet with 2
cellos for clarinet, basset horn and string trio where one of the turns that
are easy on the cello is admitted by the arranger to be impossible on some
configurations of basset horn.
> By the way, I remember playing the basset horn in a Stravinsky
>work... I THINK it is his Symphony for Winds, First Edition (pre 2nd World
>War). The part is marked Alto Clarinet in F.
I've never played that version (I think it is suppressed because there is no
copyright on it) but that section is an excellent example of something that
would be very hard to bring off well on a big-bore alto clarinet. I have a
dim memory that this was discussed in the French version of the first
conversations between Stravinski and Robert Craft, but not in the English
version.
Nick