Klarinet Archive - Posting 001106.txt from 2003/03

From: "Alan Woodcock" <alan.woodcock@-----.fr>
Subj: Re: [kl] Cylinders vs. Cones
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 07:16:41 -0500

Yes, but I'm beginning to think that none of these instruments overblow,
except perhaps sporadically and tunelessly. Bagpipe chanters don't even
play more than one note.

After posting my last reply I looked into Baines "Woodwind Instruments and
their History". I find

a) the cylindrical, single-reed chalumeau (ancestor of clarinet) did not
overblow.
b) the conical, double-reed shawm (ancestor of oboe) did not overblow.
c) the cylindrical, double-reed cromorne did not overblow.
d) there was no conical, single-reed instrument. (or, I didn't find it...)

By "overblow" I mean "in a musically useful fashion". You can excite even
a cromorne into a higher régime of oscillation (just touch one of the keys
to make a leak while covering all holes) but I don't think anybody could
play in this register.

Since nothing overblew, people played music which did not require
overblowing, and were (in general) quite happy.

The revolution came in the mid-seventeenth century with the French court
fashion for wind music.
The instrument makers of La Couture-Boussey, including the Hotteterre
family, remodelled the shawms to make the oboe. They were great
wood-turners (it was the speciality of the village) and obviously had a
great practical knowledge of experimental acoustics, being makers of flutes,
recorders, bagpipes etc. They did not "invent" a cone of the right
dimensions, but could surely arrive at it by successive approximations. I
surmise they deliberately tried to get a playable upper register such as
existed on the flute. This would be aided by the fact that they were the
first to construct an instrument in several joints, which one would think
helps such experiments. (Baines doesn't think so, he finds their bores
"distinctly primitive" although they "successfully gave musical results").

(If you want to visit La Couture-Boussey and its museum of instruments, see
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/musee.instrumental/ )

So the octaving cone would not be arrived at by genius or luck, as I
imagined, but by controlled evolution from a pre-existing non-octaving
design.

But why did anybody ever think of making a conical instrument in the first
place? I would have thought cylindrical instrumetns easier to bore. I
would be interested by a woodworker's opinion on this (taking into account
tools available at the time).

A possible answer is : if you want to use a double reed, it will necessarily
have a very small aperture; if you stick it onto the end of a cylinder, then
it must be a vary narrow cylinder (like a cromorne) because it will not work
on a wide bore cylinder, like the clarinet - the Clarisoon experiments will
surely tell us if this is true. So if you want a louder tone you open out
the lower end of the cylinder and hey presto! you have a shawm.

What we need is a not a mathematical but a cultural history of acoustics...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Shilcock"
<roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subject: Re: [kl] Cylinders vs. Cones

> Cylindrical and conical reed instruments have probably co-existed for
millennia.
> For instance, East European bagpipes mostly have cyclindrical chanters,
whereas
> Scottish, Irish and Galician examples have conical chanters. There are and
have been other folk reed instruments of both types.
> Roger S.
>
>
>
> In message <000701c2f36c$a1815360$06202cd5@mr8hp5hiz6ecyt>
klarinet@-----.org writes:
> > My point (well, Mr Ferron's point, actually) was that not all cones
overblow
> > at the octave, and most cones hardly overblow at all. (In fact, they
hardly
> > blow).
> >
> > Mr Ferron was not proposing that non-overblowing cones are useful,
> > he was just demonstrating their existance and explaining why.
> > I thought this relevant in the context.
> >
> > Maybe everybody but me had already understood this. Still, it leaves me
> > perplexed. Who first discovered the "right" cone that made octaves
> > possible?
> > Surely not a theoretician ! Since discovering the right cone by trial
> > and error seems a difficult job, why was the cylindrical clarinet
"invented"
> > after the oboe ?
> >
> > Sorry if this thread is over by the time you get this; I'm another of
those
> > people who cannot read their mail in real time.
> >
> > Alan
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "B. Rite" <b1rite@-----.net>
> > To: <klarinet@-----.org>
> > Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 4:19 PM
> > Subject: Re: [kl] Cylinders vs. Cones
> >
> >
> > <><> Alan Woodcock wrote:
> > 50 + 55 = 105 Hz
> > 150 + 55 = 205 Hz
> > 250 + 55 = 305 Hz etc
> >
> > "The instrument will be mistuned and difficult to play [snip] So in
> > summary: Not all cones overblow at the octave.
> >
> >
> >
> > I guess I miss the point here. It is possible (and usually
> > inescapable) to build any instrument a bit out of tune because of
> > physical practicalities. End effects do exist because an instrument
> > cannot be infinitely long (in the real world), air has inertia, a
> > mouthpiece cannot be perfectly conical or cylindrical, the reed or
> > player's breath creates an "elastic" boundary, etc etc etc.
> >
> > Many instruments have intentional 'restrictions' (narrowing of bore)
> > even though, by definition) this violates a perfect cylinder or cone.
> > These restrictions are necessary in order to cope with a mouthpiece's
> > "irregular" shape. to cope with the "elastic" boundary, etc etc etc.
> >
> > Clearly the principle of "octave or twelfth" can be violated in many
> > ways. The topic of this thread has been to examine one particular
> > violation (combination of violations, actually) which --- as it turns
> > out --- also destroys much of the instrument's otherwise playable scale.
> > It's questionable, therefore, whether you can even call a device with
> > this particular violation(s) an "instrument" at all.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Bill
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
>
> --
> Cet animal est méchant. Quand on l'attaque, il se défend.
> ---- Alleged sign in French zoo.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>

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