Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-07-12 21:25
Djudy,
I don't have a general theory for matching mouthpieces to Albert clarinets, so if I were trying to play an Albert I would have to resort to trial and error. Try a bunch and see what works. The bore on Alberts varies. I've heard the one Johnny Dodds played had a very small bore, but others may be 15.00 mm or larger, and the bore taper and tone holes also vary. I've always played Boehms, but there used to be a few collectors in New Orleans that sold Alberts, and out of curiosity (or sometimes the collector's urging), I tried a few. My right hand felt stretched far beyond the comfort zone, and the scale on all I tried was uneven, not so much in tuning but in tone color, resistance, and response. For jazz players, this feature might afford more color and tonal variability; for classical it seemed to me to be a problem to be solved--one I didn't want to do all the necessary work to solve. But these were old instruments. I have no idea how a new Albert that was set-up well would play. Many of the Alberts originally came with wooden mouthpieces. My impression is that the older jazz players often replaced these with something more suitable for jazz. (Most wooden mouthpieces had a more subdued and softer sound than rubber, plastic or glass, though the rather rare rosewood pieces were reputed to have more "oomph" to the tone. I don't know if any of the jazz players used rosewood--that could be just an urban legend). In one photo, Sidney Bechet had a white plastic Brillhart mouthpiece on his Albert. (You can see that Bechet photo (which Christopher Tyle says is wrongly identified as a Selmer Goldentone) and other pertinent photos and info on Alberts by going to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_system and clicking on the external link to Oscar Font's "Albert System: The Jazz Clarinet" (archived 2012-02-28) from way-back internet.
Growing up in New Orleans, I heard Harry Shields, Ray Burke, Louis
Cottrell and several other traditional jazz clarinetists many times live playing on Albert system instruments. Like hot weather, hurricanes, and shot gun houses, they "came with the territory." If you plan to play jazz on an Albert,
your best bet would be to contact a jazz player who either uses an Albert as their main instrument (try Evan Christopher, or Fuzzy on this board) or a jazz player who collects them and tries to emulate their sound on Boehm (Dr. Michael White, for example). If you're trying to play classical music on them, you might have to contact a maker of historical replica clarinets (like Steven Fox) or learn to resurrect the dead . One player to resurrect would be Henry Lazarus, whose performances on the simple system instrument garnered the praise of the curmudgeonly critical George Bernard Shaw. I once heard a little presentation by a musical archivist about one of Lazarus's instruments (made in Belgium by Eugene Albert). She played a few notes on the instrument and they were exceedingly colorful and musical. Maybe some player (jazz or classical) could make a name for themselves by performing on a replica of Lazarus's clarinet. Would probably cost a lot though. Crowd-funded maybe? But beware, because some of Eugene Albert's clarinets (including Lazarus's?) may have been high-pitch at A=452). The later ones by E.J. Albert were reportely more around A=440.
In the late 1990s, one of the most dedicated collectors world-wide of Albert system clarinets was Eberhard Kraut. I don't know if he is still around or what the status of his collection might be. You could try searching him out.
There is one caveat to buying old clarinets. Some are not pitched in the A=440 to 442 range; some Alberts have very low pitch (or very high pitch) which would rule out their general use for most players today. In the US, the Vintage Clarinet Doctor (Jeremy Soule) regularly gets a few Albert system instruments in his shop. He restores them and sells them (usually for under $1,000) on his website.
Post Edited (2020-07-20 17:45)
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
