Klarinet Archive - Posting 000173.txt from 2008/01

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] bartok/k-622/A vs. Bb arrogance/etc
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:07:19 -0500

Keith Bowen wrote:
> We weren't allowed to blow it to ascertain the pitch, but it was definitely
> too long for an A instrument - probably F, possibly G (but I don't think any
> of the latter, nor of early basset clarinets for that matter are supposed to
> be extant). Must have been thinking of something else.

OK. The one I'm thinking of is referred to (and pictured) in Jack
Brymer's book ('basset horn in A') and I think also in the Cambridge
Companion to the Clarinet. It has a very dramatic round bell at a
right-angle to the body, somewhat à la Stadler's instrument.

I remember that one because Steve talked about wanting to take
measurements of it (or having already done so). I may be misremembering
here, too, but I think that instrument might have a low B range.

I don't have either book handy (they're in a different country from
me...) so if someone who does can check .... ? :-)

Aside from that, there are at least two other extant historical basset
clarinets, both pictured in Pamela Poulin's 'An Updated Report on New
Information Regarding Stadler's Concert Tour of Europe and Two Early
Examples of the Basset Clarinet' (The Clarinet, Feb/March 1995 pp24-28),
one by Josef Ziegler (ca. 1792--1852) acquired by the Brussels
Conservatoire Royale, and an instrument in Bb in the Hessisches
Landesmuseum in Darmstadt (commissioned by the Darmstadt Court, possibly
for performances of La Clemenza di Tito). Both have straight bodies and
are shaped like ordinary clarinets, bar an angled barrel on the first.

I can send a PDF of that article to anyone who wants it (probably
illegal, but all's fair in scholarship and research:-)

-- Joe

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