 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2023-11-14 22:20
Recently, I've been wondering more about the topic of wood instruments, cracking, warping, etc. in the context of history...going back a few hundred years.
We live in pretty plush times as far as humidity and temperature control go. Even 100 years ago, it would have been somewhat difficult to make a trip of more than a half hour or so without fairly substantial swings in heating/cooling/humidity.
How, then, did folks manage during those times, and earlier?
Then, once a player had arrived at the venue - perhaps a large cathedral, it might be downright chilly compared to what we consider suitable playing temperatures today.
Were cracks just more accepted/less feared back then? It makes me wonder how beautiful/awful an orchestra/band sounded back then.
I am beginning to see museums offer up AI-generated images (based on foggy old tin-types). Folks are oooo-ing and ahhhh-ing about the insights provided by the now clear photos. However, there's no more historic data than there ever was...there's just new manufactured data added to fit what our modern sensibilities desire. Have we done the same thing (pre-AI) with our "photo" of early music as well?
I'd be interested in any books/articles/whatever that speak to such issues.
Thanks in advance,
Fuzzy
;^)>>>
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Author: Julian ibiza
Date: 2023-11-15 00:51
Hi Fuzzy,
The only thought that comes to mind regarding your muse, is the fact that the careful selection and seasoning of wood is not what it used to be. The general consensus regarding cracking seems to be that is comes from flaws in the wood. This is something that the old craftsmen would no doubt have had a much keener eye for avoiding. True master craftsmen and their almost supernaturally insightful abilities are dying out.
Julian Griffiths
Tel. 34 696 798 853
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Author: crazyclari
Date: 2023-11-15 10:19
A little off track and ...
From Sphors autobiography. Sphor lost his Stradivarius off the back of his coach in snow in Russia. Never to be seen again, weather wasn't the problem. I bet the cold did not do it any good. Happy peasant though.
There's a ton of books on various players, interpretation, instrument etc. I think we have got a bit arrogant about what we think, believing we know stuff that is just not true sometimes.
If you want I can take it off-line and send you photos of the stuff I have.
I have a book by Tobias Mathay on interpretation, amazing stuff. His books on technique are the same. IMO we have ironed music flat with how we talk and think. 'Back Then' they were more liberal and I believe more articulate.
Its amazing to hear how period performance now usually sounds fantastic. 50-60 years ago what was acceptable was pretty challenging to me.
Its hard to know with the quality of things. Hand made is not necessarily good. On the other hand a Louis lot flute is stunning.
Computers (CNC) have the ability to make great product.
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Author: tyleman
Date: 2023-11-15 15:09
Julian: I've owned quite a number of 50-100 year old instruments, and a few have cracked and been repaired. So I'm skeptical that the older craftsmen were able to discern which wood wouldn't crack, although it's a known fact that they had access to better quality wood in the old days.
I once owned a fabulous Selmer Balanced Tone from the 1930s that had been cracked and repaired. It was a wonderful instrument. As a sometime seller on ebay people shy away from a cracked and repaired instrument. They can be just as good as they were before the crack!
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Author: Julian ibiza
Date: 2023-11-15 19:00
Hi Tyleman,
If you're a piece of wood that gets made into a wind instrument, it's a bit like doing active service in the Special Forces. Getting old isn't going to help your resistance to cracking because you will be losing your elasticity. Wood tends to crystallize with age, which is something that is considered to improve tone in string instruments.
When you run-in a clarinet because it's new, or been unplayed for some time, you're basically putting the wood fibers through progressive stretching exercises.At my age I know that how far I can get with stretching excercises isn't quite what it once was . Ha-ha...Aaarg !
That an old instrument with a crack pinned sounds great doesn't surprise me.
It's had its weak point fixed, but probably has heightened tone from its crystallization.
Julian Griffiths
Tel. 34 696 798 853
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2023-11-15 19:17
My vintage clarinet must have been played to extinction in its day, in non-centrally heated conditions, but it didn't crack at all until it was here in my centrally heated house. The crack happened because I kept it on a stand for a week unswabbed, back in the days when I didn't know I was meant to swab it.
I also have a cracked cello and it plays beautifully. It would have been £1000 uncracked but was £250 with a crack. The flaw makes no difference at all to the sound.
I kind of wonder if clarinets then were more like PCs today? I mean instruments must have been essential to life, because there was no other source of music. Maybe people were happier to just buy another one when one packed up, because they were earning a good living from it and it was a tool of the trade?
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Author: Julian ibiza
Date: 2023-11-15 21:09
As for Sphor's lost Stradivarious, as I understand it, the cold isn't a problem for string instruments so much as heat. Luthiers deliberately use glues with low melting points, as this allows them to take the instrument appart for repairs using heat.The unions are also designed to be the weak point so that they burst if the intrument takes a knock, rather than the wood splitting.
Probably most people know that Stradivarious chose the trees out of the forest to make his instruments ( the maple coming from a particular region of Bosnia).
What is probably less know, is that choseing trees in the forest was pretty much standard practice for most wood workers in those days. There was a lot of "which moon" to cut the timber on and also throughout the stages of the seasoning process( which was a LONG one).
Another thought on this topic is ..... Just imagine the word when music was, by definition.....live.
Julian Griffiths
Tel. 34 696 798 853
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Author: Julian ibiza
Date: 2023-11-15 21:44
Hi Jen,
You must have posted while I was writing. I hate to appear dismissive of others comments.
It's definitely true that wooden things that have been stable for years can react badly to being exposed to central heating. I suppose because it's a dry heat and wood likes a degree of humidity ( or the degree of humidity that keeps it in the shape that it's supposed to be in ).
For example, the worst thing you can do to a wooden boat is leave it out of the water.
Julian Griffiths
Tel. 34 696 798 853
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Author: graham
Date: 2023-11-15 23:42
My 120 year old clarinet has at least two pinned cracks. I have a 100 year old clarinet with at least four fairly drastic repairs. All of these appear to have happened long ago.
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Author: SunnyDaze
Date: 2023-11-16 00:00
That's really good to know. I have switched on our humidifier again. We got it for the piano, but it is good for people too.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2023-11-16 01:10
Quote:
The only thought that comes to mind regarding your muse, is the fact that the careful selection and seasoning of wood is not what it used to be. The general consensus regarding cracking seems to be that is comes from flaws in the wood. This is something that the old craftsmen would no doubt have had a much keener eye for avoiding. True master craftsmen and their almost supernaturally insightful abilities are dying out.
Could be. But one of my former teachers plays Seggelke clarinets and owns a number of them. And some of his horns, the boxwoods in particular, have cracked despite Jochen's incredible craftsmanship and attention to detail.
Moreover, one of my former institutions had a music library with a number of old clarinets, including 5-key instruments, a number of which had cracked. (But I don't know when or how they cracked.) A historical oboist once told me that instrument makers would pre-crack their horns. The thinking was that once they cracked, the instruments would "settle" and most likely wouldn't crack again. The cracks were filled with wax or some other adhesive, I suppose. At any rate, I don't know if this practice was actually a practice or not. But it seems as if older instruments did indeed crack despite solid craftsmanship.
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Author: Julian ibiza
Date: 2023-11-16 10:49
I guess there is no proving that old clarinets were any less prone to cracking over the same time period as the ones today. Making a piece of wood into a tube and wetting it repeatedly on the inside is a lot to ask of it. It always has those two points in the radius where the grain runs straight through the wall.
I imagine that whoever first made a woodwind, had some old guy come along shaking his head saying " No-no-no-no-no !....you can't do THAT !.....just use a piece of bamboo." And to some degree he was right.
Julian Griffiths
Tel. 34 696 798 853
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