 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Alphie
Date: 2000-04-11 00:36
Eoin McAuley wrote:
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Some people say that since Brahms, Beethoven etc wrote for German clarinets, they would expect the German sound and this is what we should produce when we play their music. There is much room for debate on this point.
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It's true that the type of clarinet that Brahms wrote for, Mühlfeldt's Ottensteiner Baermann-system, is not so far out in time from the Oehler-system. However, there are two factors that make the two systems quite different from each other in sound. One is the size of the bore that is wider on the Baermann. This gives it a more broad, dark sound with more volume than the Oehler.
The other is the material it was made of, boxwood instead of blackwood. Boxwood is the kind of wood that most early clarinets were made of since the chalumeau in early 1700. It is a lighter kind of wood and gives the clarinet a less compact, more "woody" sound with more overtones.
One of the main reasons for making woodwind-instruments out of African blackwood is that it's hard enough to hold the pillars that the keys are mounted on... and not for sound. However, clarinets had been made out of A. blackwood before but had never been favored. I dare to guess that 90% of all clarinets made before they started to mount keys on pillars were made out of boxwood and I'm sure that sound had a lot to do with it.
When it comes to Beethoven we are even further away from the modern sound. The clarinets that he (and Mozart) knew didn't have a "key-system", but 8 finger-holes and only five to ten keys. Of cause this makes a difference to the sound. Less metal more wood. Also the tone-holes were placed differently since they had to be reached easy and that made also a difference to the sound.
I believe that the reason why the 5-key clarinet remained the same for over 50 years is that they preferred the sound it produced. Backhofen writes in his tutor in late 18th century that a clarinet with more than six keys looses it's soul. They knew how to put another key on. They had the "technology", but they didn't. It was first in the beginning of the 19th C. when the music became more complex and free from the sonata-form with more modulations that clarinetists had to be able to play with more flats and sharps without changing instruments all the time that the development started. When Ivan Müller in 1812 came out with his well worked-out 13-key "clarinette omnitonique", was it possible to play all the notes properly on one and the same instrument for the first time.
What I'm trying to say with this "lecture" is that I don't think it makes any difference whether we play old German music on German or French instruments, since both modern systems differ so much from the original sound anyway. What is important is that we pay respect to the style of early music. Just like when you read a historic novel and feel the atmosphere, see the people before you, feel what they feel, see what they see, you have to develop a sense for how to play historic music. It's first when you can put yourself into the right environment mentally, through knowledge and experience and from that draw your own personal conclusion, that you can give whatever music you play full justice.
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Author: Craig
Date: 2000-04-19 08:09
I have to agree that neither the modern German or Boehm system sounds more like the Baermann -Ottensteiner. I played the Trio on the Ottensteiner four days ago at a soiree- partly in preparation for the quintet next week...These clarinets are in a sound world of thir own... Romantic and ravashing- Liszt spoke of the clarinet sounding like a ripe peach.
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