Klarinet Archive - Posting 000606.txt from 1996/12

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: A research question
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 17:24:38 -0500

Can anyone on this list offer me a specific reference that documents
when it was the Stadler began to play the basset horn.

I know, of course, that he was playing clarinet his entire professional
life, and that sometime around 1786 he got a basset clarinet, and that,
in 1791 Mozart wrote the big basset horn aria for him in Titus.

But when did he begin to play the basset horn?

Forgive me for short stopping any shoot from the hip suggestions, but
I am desperate for a serious and solid reference on this matter.

The only thing I can find is a reference in Otto Erich Deutsch's book
(Mozart: A Documentary Biography") that says (in speaking of 1785)
that "the Stadler brothers, however, soon learnt to play the basset horn
themselves."

Now Deutsch does not say how he came to this conclusion, or what the
date was that they did learn to play b.h.

Does someone out there have a really good source for this information?

And ancillary to this is the question, except for Anton David and
Vincent Springer, who else in Vienna did play the basset horn? And
that is a much, much more difficult question.

Appreciate any help I can get on this one. I'm stuck (though I have
not yet looked at Groves dictionary or several other reference works
not at hand).

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