Klarinet Archive - Posting 000592.txt from 1996/03

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Date of basset horn
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 1996 10:01:34 -0500

> From: MX%"Sheba1010@-----.66
> Subj: Re: Date of basset horn

> The Basset Horn came after the Clarinet( c.1730)? I thought the Basset Horn
> came first. [this is like the chicken and the egg thing ;) ]
> -Sherri Hill

Despite a number of earnest attempts by scholars to date the origin
(and originator) of the basset horn, not a single one is without its
problems. Perhaps the most recent serious scholarly investigation by
Dr. Joseph Saam has the advantage of being new, but it presents no
evidence to contradict all previous hypothesis.

However, though this does not mean it is correct, no one suggests that
the basset horn preceded the clarinet. The standard view is that the
basset horn was a first attempt to expand the clarinet choir by the
inclusion of a bass instrument. This failed for at least two reasons:
what the instrument turned out to be was another soprano instrument
with low notes,though some refer to it as an alto or tenor instrument,
and, second, it appears that the technology was not yet there to
produce one that was fluent in all registers, particularly the lowest
one (which wasn't low enough in any case).

It would be a fascinating theory if one were to explore the possibility
that the clarinet's development grew out of the basset horn instead
of the other way round. I'm not even sure where one would begin to
poke at that hypothesis.

As for my earlier question about the Handel aria that is said to have
a basset horn obligatto, one response suggests that the composition
may have been an arrangement done at a later time. And that is why
I included the observation that the conductor on the record was a nut
on authenticity. Charles Mackaras is not one to present Handel in
any guise but Handel's. Of course I have not seen the record only
the review. But I am skeptical of any suggestion that Mackaras would
tolerate that kind of Romantic subversion of Handel's instrumentation.

Certainly Sir Thomas Beecham did that all the time; i.e., he used a
cello instead of a trombone in the Mozart Requiem, and a pair of
bass clarinets in place of basset horns in the Gran Partitta. But
then again, Beecham was the man who said the following to a woman
cellist at a rehearsal when she played something he did not like:
"Madame, you have between your legs an instrument whose voice all
lovers of music yearn to hear, and all you do is sit there and
scratch it!"

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