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Re: old Buffet Albert in the key of?

Author: ned
Date: 2010-10-12 09:08

klook says: ''....and it has no rings on the top section, and two on the bottom, no rollers of course.''

I would say that this horn is more accurately described as a ''simple'' system rather than an Albert.

Albert system instruments employ more rings and have rollers as well. How many keys does it have? I'd hazard a guess and say 12 at the most. My Buffet Albert (circa 1918) has 14 keys, 4 rings and 4 rollers.

THe Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet, Lawson, Cambridge University Press 1995, states that...... ''Instruments of this type were ubiquitous well in to the twentieth century popularly known as 'simple system' in Britain and as 'Albert system' in the USA''. This citation refers to Figure 2.3 (b) where the instrument pictured has features of both systems, that is, there are rollers, but only 2 rings and (although the picture is somewhat unclear) seemingly, a total of 13 keys.

My understanding is that the word 'Albert' has crept in to popular parlance to describe non-Boehm system instruments, in general terms of course, notwithstanding the plethora of systems which have emerged from around 1835 or thereabouts.

Albert is something of a misnomer in any event, as the 13 or 14 key, roller version clarinet is probably more accurately described as a 'Muller' system.

I have a small collection of simple system clarinets too....................which I look at from time to time.................they are not all that easy to play due to the primitive setup.

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