Klarinet Archive - Posting 000616.txt from 1999/05

From: Mark Thiel <thielm@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] tone
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 16:02:28 -0400

I was wondering when the business about the difference between new
and
historical C clarinets was going to turn up in our wide-ranging
timbre discussion.
I had recalled Arthur Benade saying that in Beethoven's time the
C's sounded more like
the A's of today and that the tone quality of the C's of today
(undarkness??,
Eb-ishness??, stuck-pig timbre???) was due mainly to differences
in bore.

So I was glad that Mark C. dug up the direct quote from Benade:

>Here's a bit of what A. H. Benade had to say about "light" and
"dark"
>(Fig. 22.9 refers to a graph of cutoff frequency vs. pitch):
>
>"Figure 22.9 shows the variation of cutoff frequency across the
>low-register scales of several clarinets. For reference purposes,
the
>curves for both A and Bb Boehm-system clarinets are drawn with
heavy
>lines. One can see clearly the close correlation between the
darker tone
>color and lowered fc of the A clarinet relative to its Bb
brother.
>Clarinet number 4, a C clarinet from the time of Beethoven, is
>particularly interesting in this connection since it has a lower
cutoff
>frequency than
>any of the other instruments. Cutoff frequencies on today's
Boehm-system
>C clarinet normally lie in the region of 1700 Hz, making the
instrument
>bright for playing orchestral parts written in the early 1800s.
>
>I have taken a pair of brand new Bb clarinets (part of a gift
made in
>support of my research activities by Vito Pascucci
>and the Leblanc Corporation) and carefully reworked them so that
one has
>its fc raised by about 3 percent while the other has its fc
lowered an
>equal amount. Both instruments are well tuned and have excellent
>response. Players of classical music are very much attracted by
the
>low-fc instrument, while they consider the other clarinet to have
been
>ruined; serious jazz clarinetists are equally positive in holding
the
>opposite opinion! Both instruments have been borrowed from time
to time
>for public performance. We have here a beautiful example of the
way in
>which good musicians select their instruments to fit their
musical
>requirements."
>p 488, "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics, Second Revised
Edition",
>Arthur H. Benade
>----

Kind of throws the monkey wrench into the theory that only a C
clarinet will do
because the composer wanted that exact sound, doesn't it? Well
not entirely, I guess
the point has been made already that in specifying clarinets in
certain keys timbre is
more likely to be the factor for more modern composers and
convenience of key
signature for the long dead ones.

It's also interesting that people like Moennig and Benade can make
a clarinet
sound like anything they want. In addition to the pair of Bb's
mentioned in the
quotation above, Benade was particularly fond of a clarinet he had
altered so that
the pitch would actually rise on crescendos and fall on
dimenuendos. He liked to
ask clarinetists to do a dim. on a note that particularly
exhibited this -- and then
catch the horn when the clarinetist dropped it in shock. And then
there was his
clarinet with the flute head joint ...

Mark Thiel

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