Klarinet Archive - Posting 000346.txt from 2005/06

From: "Dan Leeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Basset clarinets are regular orchestral instruments
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 08:34:16 -0400

There is mjuch practical wisdom in what Adam has written. But all you need
is one really exceptional piece of music requiring a basset clarinet and
players will start to buy them. This in turn will feed more compositions. I
wish that piece that Emily Bernstein played had been for basset clarinet.

I suspect that two pieces of music are personally responsible for the
continued existence of basset horns: The Mozart Requiem, and the Gran
Partitta. Why Brahms once heard a Mozart aria (from Figaro) requiring two
basset horns and he commented in a letter that he had never had the
opportunity to hear them before that time. He got quite excited about it,
though he himself never wrote for the instrument.

All I have said in my posting on the matter is that the basset clarinet,
hinted at in 1948 as having once existed but became as obsolete as the
dinosaur, began to be revised and more than 50 years have passed during
which the instrument has gone from a state of being unknown, to a state
where you can buy them from several manufacturers. And we clarinetists are
getting casual about their use; i.e., well they are nice, to be sure, but
who needs them for general use? I am proposing that our attitude to that
instrument (for both B-flat and A and even C instruments) be far more
aggressive than it has been.

DNL

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Michlin [mailto:amichlin@-----.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 8:03 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: Re: [kl] Basset clarinets are regular orchestral instruments

About a year ago, I was at a regional CBDNA (Collegiate Band Directors
National Association) conference and partook in a meeting with some really
big name composers. The really big composers were asked by a doctoral
student "What can we do to get you to write more works for the wind band?".
One of the really big name composers, without missing a beat, responded
"Write us a check.".

There are two very important goals in a professional composer's mind:
making a living and making music. Some composers are lucky enough (or,
perhaps, gifted enough) such that they are able to reach both goals to
their satisfaction. Most struggle with one or both throughout their entire
career. It would make no sense for them to write for basset clarinet,
unless they were being paid to do so (or, perhaps, if they owned one
themselves... talk about your chicken and egg problems!). For better or
worse, writing for basset clarinet severely limits the performance
opportunities of a piece. As a composer, I gain a few extra notes but I
also now have a piece playable by only a tiny subset of clarinetists.

Now I'm not even a really small name composer (I rank probably only
slightly higher than completely unknown composer), but I think I am
qualified enough to say composers need to make a living, too. If anyone
feels we need more basset clarinet music, the easiest way to achieve this
goal is to commission such music. Write a check.

Driving home tonight I was pondering whether or not we would even be
discussing this if someone other than Mozart had written the one clarinet
concerto with an extended range. Say Salieri, Stamitz, or JC Bach? Like it
or not, the basset clarinet exists only to play Mozart and it seems there
is not enough Mozart being performed in this world for most players to
justify the purchase of a basset clarinet (a sad state of affairs which
goes way beyond the subject of basset clarinets). If the pieces were
written by a lesser composer, or even if the pieces were lesser examples of
Mozart, it is likely we would not even be having this conversation (Save
the Glass Armonica! Um... er...).

The bass clarinet to low c argument is comparing apples to oranges, since
the extension to low c of the bass clarinet adds new range to the clarinet
family (Eb Soprano, Soprano, Bass->Eb) of the orchestra. The basset
clarinet does not offer composers any new notes which were previously
unavailable to the existing (common) orchestral clarinet family.

Technical superiority has nothing to do with it. Beta was technically
superior to VHS in almost every way, to use the most common example.

-Adam

At 05:53 PM 6/19/2005, Joseph Wakeling wrote:
>I highly support the greater use of the basset clarinet and I would
>encourage modern composers to make use of the instrument in orchestral and
>other contexts. (I think Thomas Adès wrote a piece---the Chamber
>Symphony?---which includes a significant part for the instrument; it was
>originally intended, I think, as a basset clarinet concerto. And then
>there are the beautiful works written for Alan Hacker such as Birtwistle's
>Linoi.)
>
>However, I don't think it is sensible to adopt the basset clarinet as the
>"standard" instrument for orchestral and all other playing. There are
>several reasons for this. First is that compared to the standard
>instrument the basset clarinet is relatively cumbersome and it's
>inconvenient to carry around relative to the actual need for the
>extension. It's easier to have standard instruments but to have an extra
>"basset" lower joint which can be swapped to when needed (as provided by
>Steve Fox, Howarths, Guy Chadash and others)---something I would encourage
>all serious clarinettists to invest in since it's not expensive compared
>to the cost of a whole instrument.
>
>One cannot fairly make the comparison to the bass clarinet. From what I
>recall the bass clarinet was built to low C from earliest days---building
>on the basset horn---and the existence of basses descending to low E or Eb
>only is a compromise that was invented to make the instruments more
>portable for band use. The bass to low C is therefore the "standard"
>instrument written for in a great deal of the instrument's repertoire.
>
>By contrast the standard clarinet descends only to low E and this is the
>instrument that is written for by most composers. This is particularly
>worth noting in modern music calling for multiphonics etc., since the
>acoustics are notably different from the basset clarinet, but it's
>noticeable even in the standard repertoire. I feel that a basset clarinet
>has a unique character distinct from the standard instrument to low E,
>that goes beyond simply the added low notes.
>
>(On the multiphonics issue, there *are* some modern pieces where a basset
>clarinet can be useful, e.g. the Berio Sequenza IXa and other Italian
>works written for "full Boehm" instrument. Using the basset clarinet
>allows one to play the multiphonics which are not possible on the ordinary
>instrument.)
>
>I think this is a case where one simply has to respect the history of how
>the clarinet family has evolved. Ultimately I think it's positive that
>clarinet and basset clarinet have a separate existence. It gives us more
>resources as players *and* composers.
>
>Incidentally, on the economics issue, I don't think it's really a
>problem. A friend in London has basset clarinets in both A and Bb. He
>got the former to perform the Mozart concerto of course, but the latter
>was bought for Clemenza di Tito---he for a long time principal with an
>opera company (and has since frequently been a guest soloist for that
>work). He told me that when he commissioned the instrument, people almost
>queued up to tell him it was a waste of money; but in fact the extra work
>that he received because he had the Bb basset, combined with hiring it out
>to other players, paid off the investment (and more) in less than a year.

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