 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: bassclefbabe
Date: 2007-07-27 20:07
Are these in existence anymore?
I know there are some soprano clarinets in c but I already have a soprano clarinet.
If they are still available...
What companies make or made them?
where would I be able to buy one?
Would you reccomend buying one?
would I be able to read music in bass clef with it(trombone)?
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2007-07-27 21:11
Don't think they're still made. If they are, they're probably very expensive, of poor construction, or both.
Can't think of any reason to buy one, except if you're really horrible at transposition, in which case now's as good a time as any to learn.
You can read music in any clef with any instrument if you put in some time to learn and practice the transposition. Sometimes you'll have to displace by an octave or two, but that's about the worst of it. In my conducting class, we had lots of clarinets and a bunch of missing instruments, so I switched off between the bassoon (mostly bass and tenor clef in C), oboe (soprano C), and horn (soprano F) parts, all on my Bb. Tricky (especially when I covered more than one at once from the score), but doable.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2007-07-28 00:06
Never seen one, never heard of one, can't think of any reason to have one. If you want something similar to play other parts, pick up an EEb contra-alto and read bass clef (concert pitch) parts directly by pretending they're in treble clef and adding three sharps. A well-played contra-alto sounds (and feels) very much like a big bass clarinet.
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Author: rsholmes
Date: 2007-07-28 01:59
Rendall (in the 1971 edition edited by Bate) says "The bass in C has long been extinct; that in A is dying a lingering death." As for reasons to want one -- well, some people just want to have one of everything; and some amateurs might want to play off concert pitch music without having to devote themselves to learning sight transposition. I'd probably fall into that category, but even if C basses were available, I'm sure I wouldn't have the money for one...
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2007-07-29 00:24
The Search function will find several mentions. In particular, Dennis Smiley, who's a low clarinet specialist, found a Buffet bass in C and had the Powell flute shop build a low C extension (in silver) so he could play cello parts on it.
A no-brand C bass appeared on eBay about 10 years ago, but the owner wanted a high price and it didn't sell. I wrote him and asked if he could lower the price, but he wasn't interested.
I've had some correspondence with Steve Fox about making one, and he was interested, at least in theory, but the wait (not to mention the price) would be extreme.
Ken Shaw
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Author: rsholmes
Date: 2007-07-29 01:30
I had read that Smylie's instrument was originally owned by Rosario Mazzeo, who had the extension made for it, and that the extension goes to low B flat. I'm surprised to read that it is a C bass; I'd never heard that before.
As for a C bass on eBay, I'd be skeptical if I saw such a thing listed.
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Author: donald
Date: 2007-07-29 12:09
bass in C does pop up in orchestral parts every so often- isn't the bass Clarinet part in Verdi- Fallstaff in C???? (maybe i'm remembering it wrong, and it's in A). please correct me if i'm wrong.... i'm sure i've had to transpose C bass more than once over the years.
donald
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2007-07-29 13:42
If and when you may be able to read [and view figures in ] Al Rice's fine "paper" presented in Edinburgh a few weeks ago, or just ask Al, I believe he makes mention of some C basses in the ancestry from Sax to 1900. Like the discarding of the C Melody sax and the minimal use of the C Sop cl [anymore], possibly the Bb and Eb horns have won out in the marketplace, because of the similarities of reading/fingering/sounding of the notes. Just my AM thots. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: LarryBocaner ★2017
Date: 2007-07-29 14:01
The ex-Mazzeo bass clarinet owned by Smiley is a Buffet in Bb; the extension built for Mazzeo by Powell goes to written low Bb (Ab concert pitch).
Remember the "gossip" game some of us played when we were youngsters, where a story was passed in whispers around a circle only to be compared with the original version when it got back to the initial gossiper? Perhaps the Clarinet BBoard is the cyber-gossip game!
The only orchestral C-bass clarinet parts I know of are in one or two Liszt tone poems that are easily transposed. I've never seen a C-bass clarinet personally.
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Author: John B Dick
Date: 2010-05-15 10:53
In the 1960's The Clyde Valley Stompers disbaded and their instrument sale included a C bass clarinet.
If you need to transpose all the time, the Contra Alto is the expensive but best answer with useful extra range. Otherwise you have to learn what brass band trombonists have to learn when given parts written in the orchestral convention.
If its only a small proprtion of what you play, scan the parts into Sibelius.
German artisan makers could make a C Bass at a huge price. The economics are quite different from the Soprano sizes.
You buy the normal German clarinet direct from a workshop in which five people work, one of whom has played the instrument before he put his name on it and approved its sale under his brand. The cost is not so different from the mass produced French instrument which has added costs of distribution, stockholding, retailer's profit and advertising.
The Bass clarinet is hugely more expensive in Gemany because the measurements, tools, jigs and fixtures do not already exist in the workshop, and there is now a large enough international market for the French instrument to be mass produced. A German music school, which refuses to teach the French instrument, has recently bought a Boehm system bass for its wind band and the player has to play both systems.
A French manufacturer might not be willing to make a C bass at any price, because it does not fit with their production system. A German maker would find it no more costly to make than any other one-off design, but would probably prefer not to make it in the Boehm.
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2010-05-15 14:20
Last summer, what appeared to be an old Boehm Selmer Bass Clarinet in C, range to low Eb (serial number 275 -- so probably made no later than the 1920's) sold on eBay for around $2,500.
Best regards,
jnk
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Author: William
Date: 2010-05-15 18:18
good grief!!!!!!!! Bass clarinets in C, A, and Bb?? Rather than re-mortage my home and car--not to mention actually carrying them all to a gig--I prefer to do what french horn players do routinely.....transpose.
Post Edited (2010-05-15 21:03)
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2010-05-15 18:32
Here is my BIG question, why would anyone want to buy a bass clarinet in C? I could never understand why someone would buy a bass clarinet in A but at least there's a good deal of orchestra music written for it, though I can't imagine having to have two bass clarinets on stage, so we all learn to transpose, not a big deal. As said above, the only music written for a C bass clarinet is because many scores are written in C and the publisher didn't bother transposing it to the proper instrument and even that's pretty rare. I remember that happening only once in my 48 career to date. ESP
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2010-05-15 20:20
Every player with pretensions to professionalism learns the
Bb-to-C transposition. In "standard" music, I can do it pretty well.
Nevertheless, when the harmony gets weird (or the music is atonal), transposing takes significant effort, which is not available for music-making. I went looking for a C clarinet after playing the flute part in the Trio Sonata from Bach's Musical Offering and tying my mind in knots in the slow movement. I could transpose it, but only by shutting out everything and everyone else.
I'm not a bass specialist, so reading cello parts generally (let alone when they go into tenor clef) requires significant effort. If I found a bass in C, and had the money, I'd buy it in a minute. I'd love to be able to play continuo without thinking too hard.
Ken Shaw
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Author: karlbonner82
Date: 2010-05-16 08:51
Aren't bass clarinet parts often written in true (concert) pitch? If that were the case, you should be able to do what euphonium players do: the Bb on the fourth line of the bass clef (lines numbered from the top down when in b.c.) is fingered exactly like middle C on the soprano clarinet, just as the Bb on euphonium is fingered like the trumpet's middle C!
Actually, IMO, it would probably be a good thing if ALL players of non-C wind instruments were able to read at concert pitch. I realize that asking beginning and "intermediate" school wind ensembles to be fluent in concert pitch is probably way too ambitious a goal. However, there's no reason why more serious students couldn't manage such a task, provided the part they are reading isn't too full of black notes. Horn players transpose all the time to several different keys, not just horn in C parts! And recorder players always read at concert KEY whether on a C or F (or G) instrument - though recorder parts do transpose at the octave.
A low D key on a bass clarinet gets you to the cello's C string and a low C extension gets you to the bassoon's bottom Bb. These bottom notes may or may not be useful, depending on the music you are reading (if my memory from instrumental theory class is correct, bassoons don't make very liberal use of the bottom couple notes.)
The only problem I would see with a bass clarinet is if you are playing in one of the really sharp-heavy keys like A or E; the parts wouldn't be very ergonomic if they were too fast. But then again, symphonic-band flutists play in Ab all the time and Db at least occasionally, even at the intermediate level. And from my limited personal experience, both flute and oboe have fingering regimes that slightly favor sharps over flats.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2010-05-16 09:54
A bass in C that descends to low E or Eb will only descend an extra semitone or whole tone lower than a basset horn.
Although a modern Buffet basset horn (and others built with a bell vent for the low C) will descend to written low B (sounding concert E) which will be the same lowest note as a C bass to low E.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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