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Re: Buffet in b

Author: John Peacock
Date: 2017-10-24 20:23

> the entire range is in b but a little flat

I had a similar experience with a 1920s simple system clarinet, which I thought was in Bb. But it was consistently terribly flat even when fully warmed up, so I eventually concluded it was more likely to be a high-pitch A clarinet. The most common military band standard was A=452, which is half a semitone above A=440. If instruments are built for marching outside in cold weather, they are probably designed to play a bit sharp when warm, so you could understand how a HP A clarinet could nearly masquerade as a standard Bb.

In Jack Brymer's autobiography, he tells of taking such an HP A and sticking it in a lathe to shorten it so that it was overall exactly an A=440 Bb. Can you imagine what that must have done to the relative tuning?

For the above reasons, I was long skeptical of reports of clarinets in B. But I have been assured by Alex Allen of Clarinets Direct that such instruments really were made on occasion.

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