Klarinet Archive - Posting 001476.txt from 1999/01

From: avrahm galper <agalper@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Theobald Boehm
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 06:52:17 -0500

THEOBALD BOEHM

There is a little booklet written by Broadwood , a friend of Boehm, who
described the work that Boehm did on the flute. It was exhaustive.
Different bores, different sizes of holes, different placement of holes
and what not.

Boehm came to some conclusions: a tone hole will sound best, when there
are at least two semitones holes open below the sounding note.
His flute is based on that principle.

Another thing he decided was: it is impossible to make a flute in tune
in all three registers with the same fingering.

Boehm decided that he would aim for the first two registers and the
third would have to be played with different fingerings.

When you look at the clarinet, there is only one good note that has two
semitones open immediately below.
The low Bb and the F, a twelfth above.

The F is the best note on the clarinet.

When you get to B natural and F# above, one generally uses the middle
finger of the Right hand.

Alexandre Selmer, in his Instructive booklet to clarinetists, says that
the best fingering for that note (the B natural and F#) is the First
finger of the Right hand plus the trill key.
That is: if no note below that note is used.

One can see that the "Selmer" fingering for low B natural, F# above will
give a rather passable high Eb.
But the middle finger of the Right won't!

That, I think, is why Geoffrey Acton came up with the idea of opening up
another tone hole when one uses the Right hand middle finger.
This would help high Eb.
This would be in line with Boehm's contention, that one needs two tone
holes open below the sounding hole.
I've tried the Acton system once but wasn't comfortable with the extra
key work.
Also the extra open tone hole made the high F a bit sharp.

One should try and use the Right hand finger , plus the trill key
whenever possible. It does come in handy to use.
For the very high Eb, there are a variety of fingerings.
One I like to use sometimes, is just holding down the Left side of the
middle Right hand ring, without closing the tone hole itself. That gives
a fairly good high Eb.
This, though, is not for running passages.

--
Avrahm Galper
TONE TECHNIQUE AND STACCATO
THE UPBEAT BAERMANN MELODIC SCALES AND ARPEGGIOS
http://www.sneezy.org/avrahm_galper/index.html

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