Author: Clarimellonet
Date: 2018-11-19 21:15
Hi all, jumping in here as someone who performs extensively on baroque, classical, and romantic clarinets, and builds them as well.
The "deep broad bass tones" on a soprano chalumeau or the shrill nasal quality of some period instruments have little to do with the actual instrument itself and are much more a function of the way the mouthpiece or mouthpiece/barrel and reed interact to create the initial sound before the rest of the body and bell act as resonators. In my ten years of experience measuring and building these instruments, I've found that there is no "magic formula" to fix all of the individual issues on an instrument, BUT there are a few basic principles that can be applied that make it easy to understand why certain instruments respond in certain ways:
1) Certain 18th and 19th century clarinet makers purposely made mouthpieces with exit bores wider than the bore of the barrel and rest of the instrument. The wide mouthpiece bore would provide a "broad" and "darker" sound, but the 'step' at the top of the barrel where the mouthpiece meets the barrel bore would create an area of higher pressure and intensify the sound which in addition to the register tube makes overblowing quite a bit easier. The end result is an instrument that can take a lot of air and project over a relatively large 18th and 19th century orchestra, but that can also play as quietly as one would need in a ppp passage with little effort. The baffles on these original mouthpieces are generally concave on two axes, though the degree of vertical concavity varies depending on the "national school." There is of course much more to 18th and 19th century clarinet mouthpiece geometry, but this is just a start.
2) Baroque chalumeaux designed to play the lowest register almost exclusively are excellent examples of a perfect symbiosis between a well crafted mouthpiece and instrument body. While there are examples in the repertoire of the chalumeau overblowing (Fasch requires a Bb-C trill, Graupner requires a C AND D, etc), the main purpose of the chalumeau is the play in the fundamental register hence the SATB sizes in order to cover a wide range. Interestingly enough, most chalumeaux have mouthpieces that match the bore of the instrument because one presumably would have little use for the accelerated high pressure air to overblow. The baffles of these are relatively straight with little conavity and are perfectly suited for this sort of playing.
3) The reed above or reed below debate factors heavily into the design of these mouthpieces, but not the instruments themselves. The main obstacle to overcome with reed above playing is retraining the embouchure to respond more like an oboe or bassoon. In general, a higher angle of insertion is needed to get the reed to respond, and of course, a slightly different reed will make all the difference. The main difference in these type of mouthpieces is that the baffle and chamber are much closer to that of a chalumeau with the reed above in terms of relatively little vertical or horizontal concavity, a rather tight throat where the bore meets the base of the chamber, and a very shallow beak angle. That said, there are many surviving mouthpieces that function equally well as reed above or reed below. The earliest mouthpieces by Amlingue, Baumann, and even Lotz basset horn mouthpieces that were clearly initially stamped to be reed up work remarkably well with the reed below as long as one adopts a more "early clarinet" embouchure and approach to the air. However, the more "modern" mouthpieces of later makers such as the latest examples of Heinrich Grenser, Griesling & Schlott, and Georg Ottenstiner are very clearly meant to work exclusively as reed below, and feature baffles and facings meant to aide this sort of playing.
To say that "makers followed their instincts" would be be correct, but to imply they ignored "learned sciences" would be a gross underestimation. While there may not have been mathematical information to calculate exact frequencies and internal airspeed and pressure, the fact that makers were able to come to basic designs that were easily reproducible, consistent from instrument to instrument (from the same maker), and employed basic principles that 20th century makers would continue to use and write about endlessly in acoustics books would seem to imply that the scientific method was alive and well for these makers. Simply tracking the evolution of the instruments of a maker such as August Grenser, one can see a clear evolution of design, each one building off the successes of the previous generation while doing away with the less successful features of a previous instrument whether that be a single body, an integrated bell and stock section, or even the size of the swell for the RH pinky. As a maker in the 21st century I have binders upon binders full of measurements and calculations, but they don't mean anything if I can't consistently produce an instrument that responds the way I want it to and doesn't make me worry when I walk out onstage. I would argue that the 18th century makers were the same way, keeping notes and scribbles of what worked and what didn't and their guesses as to why, as well as the steps they took to rectify certain issues on their instruments. That these notes by and large don't survive is unfortunate.
However, we can learn a lot about how these makers worked through surviving correspondence with individual players. My favorite example is that between the Meiningen clarinet section and Ottensteiner when they first received their instruments. Reif and Mühlfeld wrote about the good tone of the instruments, but complained about the metal facing mouthpieces as well as intonation in the top of the clarion register going into the altissimo. Ottensteiner wrote back that those notes were made purposely high because over time they would go flat as the instruments broke in, offered to send new mouthpieces based on whichever model they decided would work for them (presumably those are the mouthpieces in Mühlfeld's case now) and also told them with practice, everything would come into focus.
it would seem makers back then as of now occasionally got tired of the constant complaints which could easily be solved by some time in front of Baermann Book 3.
Thomas Carroll
Historical Clarinets and Chalumeaux
http://carrollclarinet.com
lotzofgrenser@gmail.com
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