Klarinet Archive - Posting 000685.txt from 2000/11

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Poor Man's A Clarinet
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 00:39:29 -0500

On Mon, 20 Nov 2000 18:17:53 EST, LeliaLoban@-----.com said:

[snip]

> I did find a brief mention of the technique in David Pino, _The
> Clarinet and Clarinet Playing_ (1983 Scribner's trade paperback
> edition), p. 215.

> > The most amusing attempt of all to make a combination clarinet
> > occurred in the early 1900s. Someone got the bright idea of simply
> > dropping a length of string into the bore of a B-flat clarinet,
> > hooking it onto the shoulder of the barrel joint with two little
> > metal hooks, and ending up with a clarinet that blew so 'flat' that
> > it played in A. The string was about 15 inches long and had the
> > approximate thickness of the average rope-type clothesline, and it
> > did indeed lower the pitch of the clarinet a half step. When I was
> > in high school, my band director gave me a string-tuning device
> > which he had had for a number of years, as a sort of curiosity. I
> > still have it, and to this day it occasionally affords me and my
> > students a good laugh. As might be expected, a clarinet with a
> > clothesline in its bore blows like, well, a clarinet with a
> > clothesline in its bore.
>
> It's an amusing description, though I wish he had explained where the
> metal hooks attached, and how.

Thanks for your efforts, Lelia!

The metal hooks would require that you 'pull out' a little bit, in order
to attach securely, wouldn't they?

I think the thread is a much better solution.

> Also, I'm not sure how he imagines his readers will imagine a clarinet
> with a clothesline in its bore sounds. Unfortunately, he gives no
> source for the information that someone (who?) came up with the idea
> of using the string in the early 1900s, so alas, we're no farther
> forward.

Two people, my colleague Jane Booth, who has a collection of 'methods',
and Al Rice on the Early Clarinet list, both say that they know of no
eighteenth or nineteenth century mention of the practice.

Al Rice further says, and I'm sure he won't mind my repeating it:

> Although there are not that many surviving corps de rechange or extra
> fingerhole joints of 18th and 19th century clarinets, makers still
> offered them into the 1840s. Apparently travelling players during the
> 19th century coped with pitch and temperature/altitude differences
> with different sized barrels and by pulling out at all the joints.

So perhaps Pino is right, that it first happened around 1900.

Anyone know how to get in touch with Pino?

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

... I was an atheist until I realised I was God.

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