 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Jamie
Date: 2002-03-06 19:49
Hi- my name is Jamie and I go to Boston University. I'm writing a term paper for my conservation biology class on the effect of using grenedilla wood for clarinets on biodiversity in Africa, and I'm just starting my research so I don't know too much about the impact the use of the wood is currently having on African forests. I would appreciate any information any of you could offer, along with opinions as to if and why this wood is better than something synthetic. As a final request, I have to do a presentation of this paper in late april or early may, so if any grenedilla wood playing clarient-ists would be willing to come and do a short piece for my class to start off my presentation, that would be great.
Thank you!
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Author: diz
Date: 2002-03-06 21:19
Jamie, it's an intersting thesis (?) topic, considering trees certainly (hard wood trees) have a slow growth period does anyone know if grenadilla is grown anywhere else in the world? Australia has a diverse climate, everything from snowfields, through tropical, temperate to harsh desert - perhaps someone needs to think of planting a grenadilla tree farm?
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Author: diz
Date: 2002-03-06 21:41
Thanks Mark - what a beautiful tree and lovely wood - let's hope we can preserve it!
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Author: Wes
Date: 2002-03-07 05:36
AS far as I can tell, there seem to be two positions on the grenadilla wood situation. Conservationists appear to be trying to conserve it, plant new trees, and find substitutes.
One of the substitutes is, of course, the ground up wood used in the Buffet Greenline instruments. 30 to 40 percent of the wood that Buffet buys is rejected, so the Greenline instruments provide a use for that waste wood.
Some of the wood sellers say that there is a large supply of trees but that they grow in extremely inhospitable places making the harvesting of it difficult and costly. These areas in Africa are very hot, dry, extensive, and remote. The trees are hard to cut and the wood is heavy to carry back to civilization.
There have also been local political problems which interfere with wood harvesting. The Nagel company has been in the grenadilla wood business for 157 years and maintains now that when they take out the normal 1500 tons of wood in a year, it is a very tiny fraction of the trees. They see no problem in the supply side unless political interference becomes excessive.
Good luck!! This subject is broad and many opinions are held, frequently by people who have little experience in the wood business and who may have other social agendas.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2002-03-07 07:20
If I were a Sierra club member, conservation would mean that of biodiversity not 'maintaining grenadilla as clarinet or furniture materials' for wealthy people outside Africa.
Usually enivironmentalists' position might be this: Grenadilla after its decay become very good nutritions to the soil, where many botanical plants can grow up, which is the meaning of biodiversity. If grenadilla is indiscriminatly cropped for use outside Africa it would eventually deforest Africa's grenadilla forests. Evidently, this has the North-South problem involved. Besides, Congo has a very dark era described in a novel written by Conrad.
Buffet's R-13 greenline was a kind of answers to these questions. They decided to improve grenadilla yield using its sawdusts or cutdusts. This must have been a difficult choice for them, I guess.
Recycling of grenadilla materials may better be considered more seriously.
I would suggest you to search what biodiversity means. One example is Unberto Eco's site. The author of 'the Name of Roses' and a semiotics scholar at Bologna university. As a typical example of forest conservation failure, Germany's Black Forest' is famous. Their choice of conifer trees mainly for industrial purposes rather than mixture of conifer and broad leef trees made Schwartzbald soil to a disastrous situation by the lack of water holding capability of conifer trees.
Do you play clarinet as the introduction to your presentation?
Your teacher may expect otherwise.
IMHO
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2002-03-07 08:27
As I understand it the problem with grenadilla with respect to forest destruction is that the trees grow sparcely, so vehicle paths are cut through the forest to gain access. Then locals, with this new access, keep the newly-cleared areas clear - for crop production?
So I imagine that there is an inordinately large area of forest cleared for each tree harvested, and even then, only something like 1/20 of what is harvested is of high enough quality for clarinets, bagpipes and oboes. It is the clearing of forests for access that is damaging the forest as a functioning entity. It is a relatively fragile eco-system with enormous biodiversity, the significance of which science is only just beginning to comprehend.
I agree that when a forest is increasingly raped of the older trees that would have become decomposing matter, vital to the ecosystem, there must reach a point where the damage is irreversible.
But I could have got something wrong here.
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Author: Jamie
Date: 2002-03-07 14:42
Thanks very much for your suggestions and ideas. I have visited the blackwood conservation project site. I've also spoken to my professor about having a clarinet player at my presentation and he is very enthusiastic - he is an avid classical music listener and has already brought our class to the opera.
Jamie
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2002-03-07 19:26
The above discussions should help in your search of "why is the grenadilla -African Blackwood- other names" the best for clarinets, oboes, but not bassoons"!! Library books [on clarinet] by Brymer, pg 108+ and Rendall, ch. 5 and likely Groves Dict. of Music ----, will add to the info "pool". If you can get a clarinet-etc collector to demonstrate and add to your presentation, perhaps he/she can discuss the age-old question of the difference among wood, plastic and hard-rubber clarinets. Good luck, Don
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Author: Jim S.
Date: 2002-03-07 19:40
Hiroshi: Can you give me a specific work by Eco that deals with biodiversity and the Black Forest. I need ammunition in a campaign against my city's complaisancy regarding the cutting of maples in our parks in order to encourage the quicker return of conifers.
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