Klarinet Archive - Posting 000193.txt from 2000/01

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] recorders
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 04:05:02 -0500

I'm not sure your loose use of the terms "ancestor" and "evolution"
justifies your claim that your statement was "correct". Some extra
thoughts on all this, though ---
1) There were at least "two* Denners, and they were and are
principally famed for
their recorders - Arnold Dolmetsch is supposed to have lost one in a taxi.
However, they may well have known their business well enough to realise
that the market for recorders was contracting, which could have been an
incentive towards seeking a new product.
2) The non-Boehm clarinet from all periods has a characteristic which the
recorder as generally known today does not have --- namely, that the note
produced by the first 4 fingers is written f#, not f. Denner's recorders
have the cross-fingered f# too. Presumably the clarinet's
non-cross-fingered f# is a chalumeau feature.
Modern recorders have been made in Germany with this feature, which is a
20th-century idea.
I wish musical instruments were *not* said to have "evolved" and have
"siblings". They're not organisms - people make them.
Roger Shilcock

On Thu, 6 Jan 2000 LeliaLoban@-----.com wrote:

> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 14:33:26 EST
> From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
> Reply-To: klarinet@-----.org
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: [kl] recorders
>
>
> I wrote,
> >The recorder is the clarinet's reedless ancestor....>
>
> Dee Hays wrote,
> >>[T]o say the recorder is the reedless ancestor of the clarinet is
> incorrect. The recorder is technically a "fipple flute" or "block flute."
> It bears no ties to the clarinet. This can be seen by the fact that the
> first register jump is the octave not the twelfth. Recorders were eventually
> supplanted by the transverse flutes that we see today as the volume of the
> recorder simply wasn't enough to cope with a mass of strings or with other
> instruments like the oboe etc.>>
>
> >>Primitive single reed instruments have been documented that even predate
> the chalumeau. Something along the lines of a piece of cane tubing being cut
> with one end split and modified to form a "mouthpiece/reed" result.>>
>
> My statement was correct. The recorder is one of the clarinet's closest
> ancestors. See Colin Lawson's essay, "Single reeds before 1750," available
> in _The Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet_, which he also edited (Cambridge
> University Press, 1995), pp. 1-15. He is senior lecturer in music at the
> University of Sheffield and has played principal clarinet with The English
> Concert, The Hanover Band and the London Classical Players. He has written a
> number of articles about the history of the clarinet, along with a book, _The
> Chalumeau in Eighteenth- Century Music_.
>
> Some reference sources, such as Robert Willaman's book, _The Clarinet and
> Clarinet Playing_ (New York: Carl Fischer, 1954 and 1959), call the clarinet
> an improvement on the chalumeau and more or less leave it at that. David
> Pino's book with the same title, _The Clarinet and Clarinet Playing_ (New
> York: Scribner's, 1980), states unequivocally, "The chalumeau was the direct
> ancestor of the modern clarinet" (p. 194), though he goes on, over several
> pages, to make clear that the evolution is less simple and linear than that
> statement sounds. (Caveat: Pino did serious research, but the reader must
> beware of his post hoc reasoning and his questionable deductions made from
> ambiguous or insufficient evidence.)
>
> Lawson's essay, however, is the best I've seen on the origin of the clarinet
> and the chalumeau. He says that medieval writers used "chalumeau" loosely
> and inconsistently, to refer to various types of simple pipe instruments.
> However, before the paragraph I quote below, Lawson explains that he refers
> here to the later, 18th century chalumeaux.
>
> Lawton says (p. 3), "Musical sources indicate that Majer's four chalumeaux
> corresponded in size to sopranino, descant, treble and tenor recorders,
> though sounding an octave lower on account of the acoustical properties of
> the cylindrical stopped pipe. Majer notes that the fingerings closely
> resemble those of the recorder, though its range is not much more than one
> octave; if one can play the recorder, the chalumeau is quite easy. Such
> comparisons of the two instruments, as well as their physical similarity,
> lend credence to the hypothesis that the chalumeau derived from the recorder,
> perhaps during attempts to increase its dynamic range." The range of a
> recorder of that era (as today), is two octaves, or a bit more for a skilled
> player. In that sense, the chalumeau represented a step backwards.
>
> Lawton describes many correspondences between 18th century chalumeaux and the
> clarinet that Johann Christoph Denner and some unknown, slightly earlier
> inventor (of the clarinet known as the "mock trumpet") designed along similar
> general lines. Lawton disagrees with F. G. Rendell that "chalumeau" and
> "clarinet" were synonyms in the 18th century (though some writers unfamiliar
> with the distinctions ignorantly used the two words as synonyms). He cites
> persuasive evidence that they were different instruments from the beginning
> of the history of the clarinet. The 18th century chalumeau and the clarinet
> co-existed for many years of their development. Lawton regards the clarinet,
> not as a twin of the chalumeau or a child of the chalumeau, so much as a
> slightly younger sibling. In other words, the clarinet's evolution is not
> linear. The clarinet is inbred. Think of a horse breeder "breeding back" a
> mare to her grandsire, in turn the progeny of his own grandsire's
> half-brother.
>
> Denner didn't just take a chalumeau, alter the mouthpiece and add a register
> hole. He seems to have started over from the recorder, with its superior
> range, then incorporated features of the chalumeau, which already included
> some features of the recorder combined with some features of the older
> idioglot pipes and other instruments. The mouthpiece with the single free
> reed derives in part from the idioglot reed, but it's a huge improvement to
> be able to replace a free reed, which is fairly simple to manufacture, while
> keeping the more durable mouthpiece, which is a lot more trouble to
> manufacture.
>
> See also the entry under "Clarinet: History" in Vol. 2 of _Grove's Dictionary
> of Music and Musicians_, fifth edition (St. Martin's Press, 1959), which
> notes (p. 321) that, "The primitive 2- key instrument by J. C. Denner
> resembles externally a recorder." In addition to other similarities,
> Denner's clarinet "narrows towards the lower end" like a recorder. That is a
> really striking difference between the Denner clarinet and our modern
> clarinet. Our flared bell is a later addition. "Denner's vital discovery was
> the speaker hole, making available the series of twelfths." However, as Colin
> Lawton points out, that register break of a twelfth also had a predecessor,
> in an ancient Greek wind instrument.
>
> As is apparent from the pictures in both Lawton and Grove's, the early Denner
> clarinet looks like a recorder except for the mouthpiece. As Lawton
> observes, though the head joints or mouthpieces of these instruments differ
> considerably, the basic fingering systems of simple flutes (whistles),
> idioglot reed pipes, fipple flutes, chalumeaux and clarinets are so similar
> that a person who plays one can quickly learn the fingering for all. Even
> today, after all those keys added to the modern clarinet, most of the
> naturals (as written on a treble staff) on a C-pitched recorder are fingered
> the same as those (written) notes in the clarinet clarino register from
> mid-staff C up to the first A above the staff. (Here I rely on personal
> experience, not research, since I've played the recorder since 1962 and the
> clarinet since 1957.) The F# on the top line of the staff is also fingered
> the same. Even the first B and C above the staff are technically playable on
> a recorder with the same fingerings as on a clarinet, though they're
> dreadful, off-pitch notes, better fingered otherwise. Similarly, it's
> possible, though rarely the best choice, to use several of the recorder's
> forked fingerings as alternate fingerings for sharps and flats on clarinet.
>
> Lelia
> "Being absolutely positive is nothing but being wrong at the top of your
> lungs."
> --Dad
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
> Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
> Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
> Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org
>
>

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org

   
     Copyright © Woodwind.Org, Inc. All Rights Reserved    Privacy Policy    Contact charette@woodwind.org