Klarinet Archive - Posting 000766.txt from 1998/07

From: Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.Net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Bb3/C3 trill and trills generally
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 13:01:54 -0400

Kevin Fay remarked that he
> played a teacher's "full Boehm"--a clarinet with a whole gaggle of
>extra keys, extending down to Eb. This, I believe, was Klose's design.
>Most clarinets sold today are the 17 key/6 ring variety, which is basically
>a winnowing down of the entire system to what (the market thinks) is
>"necessary."

I have never seen an original edition of Klose's Celebrated Method. The
oldest one I have is the 1898 edition revised by C.L. Staats. The pictures
of Mr. Staats and his clarinet show a standard Boehm system instrument,
except that the register key hole is on top. The fingering charts, which I
think are Staats' work, and the discussions in the book, mainly written by
Klose for a revised edition, also suggest that it is a 17-key, 6-ring
clarinet that they are talking about. (Please imagine that the final e on
Klose has an acute accent.)

So I cannot be certain, but I have always believed that the "full Boehm"
clarinet was a later invention, perhaps by Klose, but more likely by
someone else -- Buffet, maybe? I'm 70 miles from the nearest good library,
and the Internet hasn't been helpful today on that question. Does anyone
know for sure?

In any case, Klose and Buffet's great innovation was not adding four keys
to the 13 then in common use. That had already been done in various ways.
What they did was adapt Boehm's system of moveable rings for flutes, to the
clarinet. Boehm. a Swiss, seems to have had nothing to do with the changes
the two Frenchmen made in clarinet mechanisms. Klose, who taught at the
French Royal Conservatory, thought Boehm's innovative flutes were so great
that clarinets should have Boehm-style rings. Auguste Buffet Jr. made the
first clarinets that used them.

I've always thought it was interesting that Boehm's name is not mentioned
once in all the self-promoting prose Hyacinthe Klose wrote to preface his
clarinet method. It's a sort of poetic justice that his system is called
Boehm and not Klose, or Buffet..

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