 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: ruben
Date: 2025-03-04 00:34
The online British clarinet shop, Clarinet Direct, calls them: "possibly the best ever French clarinet makers." Does anybody out there have any experience with them? What was so special about them?
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
Post Edited (2025-03-05 00:19)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Chris P
Date: 2025-03-04 18:48
A few prominent players liked them and had them copied by British makers to make something like them more accessible to British players as there was a time when getting French instruments was a bit tricky in the UK and probably heavily taxed as well.
Louis Chas Draper clarinets were also based on them as were the early Howarth NS1 clarinets which took the baton from Louis.
I know an oboist who got her Rigoutat cor anglais on the black market back in the '60s as she couldn't just go out and buy one as you can do now.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: ruben
Date: 2025-03-04 20:30
Chris: Were they rather large-bore instruments? They seem to have been more popular in Britain than in France
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tony F
Date: 2025-03-07 13:02
I have a Martel, but I doubt that it can be resurrected. I acquired it as part of a job lot of old instruments from a deceased estate in Scotland and it looks like a piece of firewood with multiple cracks and splits. The one I was actually after was a Louis of Chelsea Bb which was part of the same lot. It was mechanically sound but had been stored in a shed for years. It restored quite well and I occasionally give it an outing.
The Martel was supposedly somewhere in the Louis's ancestry and I can see the resemblance. I remember reading that Martel worked for or was associated with a maker called Kreul in Markneukirchen and that this influenced his design. I have a Pustophon which also can also claim Herr Kreul in its ancestry. Based on the Louis and the Pustophon he must have made remarkably good instruments.
Tony F.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: John Peacock
Date: 2025-03-07 16:04
Ruben:
> Were they rather large-bore instruments?
> They seem to have been more popular in Britain than in France
I have a Martel Bb, for which the dimensions of the upper joint are 14.88mm (top) 14.94 (bottom). A 1010 would be cylindrical at just under 15.4, and an Imperial 926 cylindrical at about 15.05, so this is not big-bore in the normal sense of things. Interestingly, it's an inverted cone - unlike basically all modern instruments where the bore narrows at the bottom of the upper joint. Possibly it was meant to be cylindrical but things have moved over the years - but a relatively narrow cylinder, even so.
This instrument bears a Buffet-like Martel Freres logo, so it may be different from the instruments that Martel made for Hawkes - those might conceivably be big bore, but I've never had the chance to play one.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
