Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2017-12-14 18:58
Clarnibass wrote:
> From vague memory I think no one really answered it,
> except a person called Dan Leeson (or something close to it)
> said he wrote an article that explains it.
Any of us who have participated in the Klarinet list have read Dan Leeson's comments about this many times. Dan was expert particularly in the music of Mozart and his exchange with Eric James was focused on the problem of what parts to publish for a piece by Mozart. Dan's comment succinctly reviews his view on the importance of using the instruments a composer called for.
I don't know if the article clarnibass mentions goes into more history than Dan develops in this Klarinet excerpt. I don't remember reading anything he wrote on the list that went father into the history of the use of separate instruments for each key. But I think it is telling in a way that he mentions that "Horn players are expected to be able to transpose anything, but not clarinetists." I'm not sure what Dan meant by that, but in fact, throughout 50+ years of orchestral playing I've never heard any horn or trumpet players debating whether or not to use the original instrument in a piece of Classical, Baroque or even later 19th century Romantic music. Trumpet players own a Bb, a C and sometimes a piccolo in Eb. Horn players generally own a double horn (F/Bb) and/or an F horn (or in some cases I know personally several of each). Parts in other keys including trumpet or cornet in A are routinely transposed, and many orchestral trumpet players in my experience transpose everything to a C trumpet, not one in Bb, regardless of the original key. Horn players transpose everything to their double horns.
Whatever the roots deep in the history of the early chalumeaux and clarinets, we are certainly in my experience the only group of instrument players who still debate the issue. Part of the problem no doubt is that good, well tuned C clarinets are so hard to find, mostly, I suppose, because players in the late 19th and most of the 20th centuries stopped using them (or did they stop because the C clarinets available to them weren't up to quality of the Bb and A clarinets?). Limited market demand = limited research and development.
As I've already suggested, the alternative to all of these transposing instruments would be to find a good C clarinet and use it for everything, transposing all the parts as horn players and many trumpet players do to the one instrument. Then any music written at sounding pitch would be accessible with no further changes for the clarinetist.
Dan Leeson would be aghast.
Karl
Post Edited (2017-12-15 00:19)
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