 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Belinda
Date: 2001-02-14 03:44
I've just been listening to period instrument groups playing Mozart's pieces, such as the English Baroque soloists and the Academy of Ancient Music. They claim to play clarinets which were similar to those used in Mozartian times. My question is how different were these clarinets from the present day ones? Do they have a smaller range? A reedier tone? From what I've heard, the distinction wasn't as extreme as between the natural and valved horn, or the strings. So how much has the tone of the clarinet changed?
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2001-02-14 18:08
Belinda -
The Mozart-era clarinet had 5 keys: 2 for the left little finger for E/B and F#/C#, 1 for the right little finger for G#/Eb, 1 for the left index finger for the throat A, and 1 for the left thumb for throat Ab and register key. There was a hole for the right little finger to cover for F/C. The other half steps were cross-fingered.
The highest note that occurs in Mozart is a high G in the Concerto, but there's some controversy over whether it was there in the original. Certainly Mozart wrote up to high F. By Beethoven's time (e.g., in the Tausch and Spohr concertos), double high C was called for, at least for virtuoso players.
The instruments were usually made of boxwood, which is lighter than grenadilla and is off-white in color. The outside was usually stained with nitric acid to a medium brown color. The bore was smaller than it is today.
Mouthpieces were made of wood, usually a darker and harder wood than box, often cocus. Some surviving examples are short and wide. Most are long and much narrower than modern ones. All were designed to have the reeds tied on with string. Again, there's controversy over this, but most surviving records say the reed was on top, against the upper lip.
The tone of the early instruments is unknown, and there are very differing recordings on old instruments and reproductions, no two sounding alike.
Lawrence McDonald, for example, has an old instrument with an old mouthpiece, which I have heard him play live and on records. He told me that he had dreadful problems getting a tone that satisfied him. At least a few years ago, he got a sound that was very soft and velvety, with practically no reediness. He played the Mozart Quintet at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, and even with baroque-style string instruments, the balance was not good -- he was almost inaudible.
Nina Stern gave a recital in New York a few years ago, playing with the reed on top. She sounded OK -- rather modern -- but she's mainly a recorder player, and so it was hard to tell how much it was what she wanted and how much she was just doing what was possible.
Eric Hoeprich has worked for years to reproduce Anton Stadler's basset clarinet, on which he premiered the Mozart Concerto and Quintet. A couple of years ago at the ClarinetFest in Columbus, Ohio, Eric played a hypothetical Stadler instrument he had just made . It was soft, with a slightly thin sound that had only a little reediness. It balanced quite well with classical-era strings, though I thought it would be too soft for the Mozart Concerto.
When I have tried such instruments, I tend to sound like I do on the modern instrument, if only because that's what I'm used to sounding like, and because modern reproductions have to be made playable by modern players. There are enough compromises on pitch and mouthpieces, not to mention reeds, that we can't reasonbly suppose we're reproducing "old" sounds. One of the problems is that boxwood warps dreadfully. Museum instruments are practically sickle-shaped, and the bores are warped oval, so they can't be measured to the thousandth-of-an-inch tolerances necessary to make modern copies. Old mouthpieces are even more badly warped. Almost no old reeds have survived, and as far as I know attempted copies of them have been pretty much unplayable.
My own opinion is that the Mozart-era clarinet was much softer than the modern instrument, with some reediness and almost no "ringing." I think of the instrument as a tiny ballerina, with a quiet, flexible, non-domineering tone -- much more "personal" than today's tone -- one that was coaxed and flattered out rather than just "blown."
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Ed
Date: 2001-02-14 18:57
FYI. I had asked a similar question to the board on 2-9-01 and there are some responses to it that show some great photos of the historical development of the instrument.
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