 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Loliver
Date: 2010-11-02 21:23
On 'that auction site', there was a set of four clarinets for sale, one each in A, Bb, B and C.
I had never heard of a clarinet in B natural before, and so was just wondering how rare this instrument is, and if there is infact any repetoire specifically for it at all.
Just found out it was made by Buffet, so not just made by a forgotten company.
Post Edited (2010-11-02 21:28)
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2010-11-02 22:18
I saw a similar set of clarinets listed on there a few years back, though there were five of them.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: William
Date: 2010-11-02 22:50
I have an old Albert system Penzel Mueller clarinet that is pitched in B which came in a double case--however, no companion. It was given to me and I had it completely restored--and it plays beautifully.
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Author: GLHopkins
Date: 2010-11-03 02:33
Back in the late 60s a college friend, voice major, had his grandfather's clarinets. They were a set of 4. One was in the key of B natural. It's the only one I've ever seen. The other three were Bb, A and C.
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2010-11-03 03:49
The Clarinet in B natural is currently being discussed in another discussion group.
Apparently Mozart wrote for the B natural clarinet in two operas, Idomeneo and Cosi. According to those who have seen it, evidence of this is in the autograph of those operas and the Neue Mozart Ausgabe. In modern editions of these operas however, the movements using B natural clarinet have been transposed to A clarinet.
Simon
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2010-11-03 09:23
The website that shall not be named quite frequently offers clarinets in B. I've tended to assume that these are in fact high-pitch Bflat instruments, which were common enough before 1930 or so. Sometimes these are distinguished by the letters HP, but not always. Similarly, it's possible to confuse a high-pitch A clarinet with a standard Bflat. I bought one once, and only discovered the problem on trying to play with piano: the HP-LP difference is about 10% less than a semitone, so it was impossible to get this alleged Bflat clarinet to play up to pitch. I've seen cases where this problem was "cured" by using a super-short tuning barrel. So I'd be skeptical that this really is a clarinet in B unless it was tested with a tuning meter and the barrel was normal length.
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2010-11-03 14:32
With the possible exception of a very old clarinet I seem to recall from a museum collection, all of the alleged low-pitch B clarinets that I have seen have turned out to be high-pitch Bb instruments. A clarinetist in the late 1800s - early 1900s might very well have wanted an A, Bb and C clarinet in low pitch for orchestral work and a high-pitch Bb for (military) band work. (They might also have wanted other high-pitch instruments in their quiver.) That combination makes a lot more sense to me than a low-pitch clarinet in B whose use would be limited to a couple of Mozart operas and perhaps occasional transposition in awkward keys. Also, while Buffet almost certainly made low-pitch A, Bb and C clarinets and high pitch Bb clarinets as standard, a low-pitch clarinet in B would also almost certainly have to have been a special order. Even if someone gave them such an order, I suspect Buffet would simply have matched up an appropriate barrel to a high-pitch Bb instrument.
A European clarinet from this period would pretty much have to be marked L.P. (or be marked in the key of H instead of B) and play in B with a tuning meter to convince me.
Best regards,
jnk
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2010-11-03 15:19
John -
In European nomenclature, an instrument marked "B" is in Bb. If it were in B natural, it would be marked "H." "H.P." and "L.P." markings are completely separate, meaning high pitch (A-460) and low pitch (A-440).
Dan Leeson, who's a recognized authority on Mozart and Mozart-era clarinets, has written extensively about the clarinet in B, including in a recent discussion on the Klarinet list.
Ken Shaw
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2010-11-03 15:36
Ken:
"In European nomenclature, an instrument marked "B" is in Bb. If it were in B natural, it would be marked "H." "H.P." and "L.P." markings are completely separate, meaning high pitch (A-460) and low pitch (A-440)."
Yes, this is all well known. I don't quite see how what I wrote could be taken as implying anything different??
For what it's worth, I think it's much more common to see HP or LP without any explicit designation about what pitch the instrument is supposed to be in. But then it's easy to figure that out. The problem is instruments that have neither HP nor LP.
By the way, on a slight digression, some instruments display the initials NB - I have this on a 1915 Buffet that is definitely LP Bflat. Does anyone know what it means?
Finally, I don't want to claim dogmatically that a genuine LP B clarinet is impossible - but since I have bought an HP A that the seller thought was a standard Bflat, the possibility clearly exists that this alleged B clarinet is not what the seller thinks.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2010-11-03 17:32
I played Idomeneo earlier this year using clarinets in B natural. They sounded pretty cool, and very different from what it would have sounded like if we'd used A clarinets.
I recently read a few posts in another thread in which people claimed that no conductor has ever cared which clarinet was used. I've given up discussing this, because it seems that once people's minds are made up, there is no convincing them otherwise. (Especially the ones who haven't even tried much to play on the instruments in question) Anyway- the two clarinets in B natural actually belonged to the conductor (Nikolaus Harnoncourt) who had them specially made for Idomeneo. He was happy to lend them to us, and very happy that we played them. He's always been absolutely thrilled when we used C clarinets in the past, even modern ones.
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Author: BartHx
Date: 2010-11-03 21:46
The markings don't always tell the whole story. When you get into less expensive, older instruments, it seems to be an approximation. I have a wooden M Dupont (Sears) with a hard rubber barrel (which may or may not be original). The bell is marked B (not Bb) and L.P. Throughout its entire range (at A=440) it seems to play five to ten cents flat. My guess is that it started out as a low pitch Bb and got a replacement barrel from a newer model (after they went to all hard rubber) and the barrel is just a hair too long. However, my Kohlert from the same era is definitely marked Bb and L.P.
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2010-11-04 21:06
Liquorice wrote "I played Idomeneo earlier this year using clarinets in B natural" "the two clarinets in B natural actually belonged to the conductor (Nikolaus Harnoncourt) who had them specially made for Idomeneo."
This is interesting. Do you know who made the B natural clarinets?
I don't doubt good conductors can hear the difference between clarinets (C/B/Bb/A) in a period instrument setting, as others, sensitive to those differences, can as well.
My experience has been the larger the orchestra, the more modern the instruments, the bigger the hall, the louder the din, the more these wonderful differences are attenuated and blurred out.
Which is perhaps one of the phenomena which leads a person (back) to the period instrument.
Simon
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2010-11-04 21:54
Rudolf Tutz (Innsbruck) made the instruments. We had our own mouthpieces made by Andreas Schöni in Bern. He makes fantastic mouthpieces for early clarinets- closed facing with an extremely long lay. Together with the correct reeds they work very well to produce the forked fingerings and the notes in the lower register. They take a bit of getting used to if you normally play modern mouthpieces, but they are definitely worth the effort.
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Author: karlbonner82
Date: 2010-11-05 07:23
I'm having trouble telling whether all four clarinets in the photos have different lengths. Of course the C looks much smaller than the A or Bb, but if I saw this photo without knowing of the B clarinet, I probably wouldn't figure out that one of the four is that way.
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Author: William
Date: 2010-11-05 22:26
My Penzel Mueller clarinet produceds a perfect concert B on my tuner when it plays the written C and is not marked LP or HP anywhere. I therefore believe it to be a legitimate Albert system B clarinet. Original barrel as far as I can tell, no mouthpiece came with it.
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Author: Molloy
Date: 2010-11-07 01:32
"My Penzel Mueller clarinet produceds a perfect concert B on my tuner when it plays the written C and is not marked LP or HP anywhere. I therefore believe it to be a legitimate Albert system B clarinet. Original barrel as far as I can tell, no mouthpiece came with it."
During some period of time in the early 1900s, PM marked their LP clarinetts but not their HP ones, so an unmarked PM of that vintage is a high-pitch instrument. But if yours plays in tune the way you describe, then you can certainly consider it and use it as a LP B-natural clarinet even if it was manufactured as a HP B-flat.
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Author: MacLeod
Date: 2013-11-23 20:25
I was given a B natural Buffet many years ago. It played but needed to be set-up. It had a beautiful sound, very clean and pure. I was a student at the time and in order to pay for lessons I "sold " it to my teacher. He said he turned it into a lamp! I have mentioned it to him a couple of times but will try again to buy it from him.
It would make the opening to Daphnes very easy and clean.
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Author: Krommer
Date: 2013-12-02 01:29
The reason for clarinets in different keys?
On older instruments the fingerings for certain note combinations
dictated that would not be a problem if the instrument matched certain keys. Thus clarinet players would use whole sets & play the one closest to the piece's key signature.
The A clarinet satisfies that today because it's easier to play in the sharp keys of orchestral works.
Tone quality on an instrument might not be noticeable on a less experienced player.
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Author: modernicus
Date: 2013-12-15 18:43
I'll be damned if I didn't just slap the ~60mm barrel from my late 1880's/ early 1890's high pitch JTL Boehm system on my JTL Albert system (barrel missing) from the same era marked "B" and this thing is tuning quite well so far at A=466 or as a B natural at A=440 with my antique wooden Buffet mouthpiece (which is rather "sharp" playing mouthpiece). The joints are substantially shorter than the two JTL Boehm high pitch clarinets that I have, the oldest one being from about 1880. My guess? Some clarinets were built to a really high, high pitch- so high they could pass as B natural in A=440. Anyway, this thing sounds really neat and as I have posted in the past, the craftsmanship and wood are unbelievably fine. It needs some cracks repaired and a few new pads...
Post Edited (2013-12-15 19:16)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2013-12-16 12:06
modernicus wrote,
>My guess? Some clarinets were built to a really high, high pitch- so high they could pass as B natural in A=440. >
Yes, I've seen much evidence that you're right. Recently I've been reading a lot about the history of music in London in the late 19th century. One of the more interesting documents is the autobiography of Sims Reeves, "My Jubilee, or, Fifty Years of Artistic Life." London: London Music Co., Ltd,., 1888 and Simpkin, Marshall & Co and Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1889. Foreword by Thomas Ward (Managing Director of London Music Publishing Co., Ltd.) dated July, 1889. The copyrights have expired and the book is now in the public domain. A digital reproduction is available free of charge online, on the Open Library site:
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL13499427M.
Reeves, who began as a baritone but made his career as a tenor, wrote at length about his angry campaign to lower the pitch in England to match pitch standards in Europe. See the final chapter of the book. According to him (and I found numerous other documents backing him up), pitch in England was a full half-tone higher than on the Continent. In other words, England's B-flat was indeed B-natural in France! Much of the resistance to standardization came from musicans based in England who could not easily alter the pitch of their instruments. Of course the high pitch in England drove tenors and sopranos nuts. Reeves was a self-indulgent divo and a bad writer -- fair warning -- but his description of this fight, which ultimately did lead to pitch standardization (too late to help him), makes fascinating reading.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2013-12-16 12:16)
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2013-12-16 15:02
It could be a C clarinet built to 415Hz. After all, an A clarinet is just a Bb clarinet built to 415Hz.
Only joking.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: modernicus
Date: 2013-12-17 02:32
Hehe, you've been looking at or recalling our other conversations on this subject haven't you. Nothing like speculating about the mythical ol' B natural clarinet for some fun and excitement...
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2013-12-17 15:55
Ken, that book about Sims Reeves does look fascinating. Thanks. It's on my Library of Congress "try before I buy" list.
My J. Wallis & Son boxwood clarinet in C, probably made between 1884-1891 as a replica of a Mozart-era clarinet, turns out to be one of those extremely high-pitch instruments. I can understand why the semi-pro clarinet player who sold it to me decided to get rid of it. By modern standards, it's a D-flat clarinet!
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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