Klarinet Archive - Posting 001420.txt from 1998/05

From: Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.Net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Please help me / Chalumeau / clarion etc
Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 07:10:47 -0400

Lam wrote:

>I have been following on the posting and notice that different octaves are
called by >different names, Eg clarion , chalumeau etc
>I asked my sister who is musically trained and she does not know of this
>can someone tell me the all the names and how it relates to a instrument's
octaves?

No one has ever standardized the names, there being no Academie de
Clarinet. But in traditional usage, the lower register, E-Bb (D-Ab
concert), is called chalumeau because the clarinet's immediate ancestor was
an instrument by that name which had no register key, and could play in the
upper register only by overblowing. The instrument with a thumb key to give
notes from written B on up, invented late in the 1600s, was called a
clarinet or clarionet, and its upper register (A to high Bb concert) was
sometimes called the clarion. Most modern players simply call it the upper
register. In the preface to his Celebrated Method for Clarinet, Hyacinthe
Klose' calls it medium

Notes above high Bb, written C for the Bb instruments, he calls "in alt."
Nowadays the notes up to G are usually thought of as being part of the
upper or clarion register. High G# up to the second C about the staff
(written) have come to be called altissimo. Klose' said high G was the
reasonable limit of the instrument, and advised against going higher. To
judge by some of the posts here on the Klarinet list, there are a few
students out there, and possibly even some professionals, who spend time
trying to produce the altissimo notes, probably to impress other
clarinetists. Their time would be better spent blowing long tones and
playing tech exercises, scales and arpeggios.

Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.net>

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