 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: sando
Date: 2002-07-19 07:20
Been playing a lot of 'Bass Clarinet in A' parts recently and wondered if this instrument ever even existed. Has anyone seen or played one?
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Author: Susan Taylor
Date: 2002-07-19 09:09
I've heard of them. I read somewhere that the reason the standard Bb bass clarinet has a low Eb key is so that you can transpose from the A parts.
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Author: RogerD
Date: 2002-07-19 12:16
Back in 93 there was a guy on prodigy bb who was a pro in San Franciso who owned a bass clarinet in A.
I have also heard that there are parts written for bass clarinet in A on the bass clef.
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Author: Arthur
Date: 2002-07-19 13:26
Yes, there are bass clarinets in A. One was listed in the classified part of Sneezy several months ago. Many orchestra bass clarinets parts are in bass cleft. There are commerically available books with transcriptions, but players are expected to read bass cleft. The bass clarinet solos--what few there are-are sometimes in A and in bass cleft. So if you are a band player and you show up to read in a community orchestra, it is better to get the music ahead of time ( as it always is). Arthur
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Author: graham
Date: 2002-07-19 13:32
Recently i had to do a concert with one bass part in A, another in B flat, and a b flat clarinet part as well. I was cursing having to write out the A part for B flat and wondered if I ought to order a Bass in A until the thought crossed my mind that i would have to take two basses and a clarinet to rehearsals, and would need a second bass clarinet stand. I am not that much of a pack animal. it was easier to write out the part.
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Author: William
Date: 2002-07-19 14:14
I remember seeing a bass clarinet in A for sale in the Sneezy Classifieds. The seller was Charles Bay, who--in addition to being a supurb mouthpiece craftsman--is an accomplished bass clarinetist as well. But as far as owning one and carrying it to orchestra practice (plus stand and all my other intruments)--I have to vote with Graham.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2002-07-19 14:51
Learning to read bass clarinet parts in A in both treble and (horrors) bass clef is part of the gig.
If you want to play professionally, (or just to save yourself from embarrassment in front of your fellow musicians) - learn how to read it.
I've also heard that there is an underground network among bass clarinetists where they trade among themselves their handwritten "bass clef in A" parts.
Probably just a rumor...GBK
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2002-07-19 15:11
A selmer Bass clarinet in A for sale (and I think it sold) on eBay within the last year. As I recall, the seller was (or had been) with the Toronto Symphony. This was a modern one and the seller claimed that it was one of only six that Selmer had made in the last 50 (?) years or since 1950 (?) -- in any case in a very long time.
Best regards,
jnk
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Author: graham
Date: 2002-07-19 15:42
Ref GBK's post I have Rach 2 handwritten transpositions, Bax's Tintagel as well. Any offers?
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2002-07-19 16:03
I agree with Susan re: providing the low Eb for our "standard" bass cl keying configuration for the trans. from A. My 1970's Selmer-Paris bass [to Eb] also has 2 "Full Boehm" additions [artic. C#/G# and left lever Ab/Eb] that the soprano FB Bb's have, which would assist transposition. It does not have the "fork" Eb/Bb which, I presume, is at least undesireable structure-wise, maybe impossible, due to the [interconnected] plateau left fingered keying. I find this difficult to describe, but it is prob. why I can't recall description of our better BC's as "Full Boehms". Happily, I've never had to read-transpose a BC part in A, which I would [try to] do by "flatting every note", where the A part's accidentals would make life quite difficult. With parts in A bass clef, I'd sure rewrite them!! Don
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Author: GBK
Date: 2002-07-19 16:12
graham...I know that our bass clarinetist just did "Ride of the Valkyries" (bass clef in A) as I heard his endless complaining for about a month.
I know that he even went as far as calling Clark Fobes to see if he had already done it, and could borrow/purchase a copy.
He eventually assigned it as a "project" to one of his own bass clarinet students.
Very clever...GBK
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2002-07-19 16:31
There has been a lot of discussion of the bass in A on the Klarinet board over the years. The one that was sold on eBay recently was a Selmer custom-ordered by Dan Leeson and used by him for many years. As I recall, he sold it to the BC player in Toronto, who put it up on Ebay, where it went for about $5,500.
Wagner wrote almost exclusively for bass in A, which is why all Bb bass clarinets have a low Eb. I've read that the Festspeilhaus in Beyreuth owns a bass in A for use in its orchestra.
Ravel used bass in A for, I believe, La Valse, which is wicked on the bass in Bb. Richard Strauss used bass in A and in Bb together in the same pieces. Stravinsky also used it.
Any bass in A will be a custom order, at a custom order price. See http://www.woodwind.org/Databases/Logs/2002/01/000425.txt.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: rmk
Date: 2002-07-19 17:40
GBK writes:
>I've also heard that there is an underground network among bass >clarinetists where they trade among themselves their >handwritten "bass clef in A" parts.
Most orchestra librarians have transposed parts which they trade with each other. I recently got a transposed La Valse part from the NY Phil that was copied shortly after the piece was written by the same copyist who worked for Dvorak on the "New World" Symphony.
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Author: John Moses
Date: 2002-07-19 18:40
FYI
In NYC, a fine Bass Clarinet player named Dennis Smylie has an "A" Bass Clarinet. He bought it years ago, and has used it professionally with me many times. It sounds fine, just a bit "darker" than his regular Bass.
JJM
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2002-07-19 21:28
Dennis Smylie has any number of odd low clarinets, including a bass in C that I would give my first-born (if I had any children) to get. There lives no better player of low clarinets.
Ken Shaw
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Author: James
Date: 2002-07-19 23:16
Oiii!! I'm sorry but it really isn't that hard to transpose to Bb. There is no point in even trying to find a bass clarinet in A. If you are a good player you should be able to do it. My gosh.... I mean the parts aren't like transposing aren't that difficult.
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Author: rmk
Date: 2002-07-20 03:53
OK, James, why don't *you* try playing, say, La Valse in front of 3,000 people during a live broadcast with a music director from hell and a $300,000 mortgage?
Life is interesting enough!
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Author: Jerry McD
Date: 2002-07-20 21:10
I have to disagree with James. I am working on La Valse right now and I am a pretty good player (not great yet, but pretty good) and I am going to transpose the part. It IS difficult, no matter what key it is in.
rmk - can I get a copy of your transposed part? I'll trade 'ya Rach #2 for it!
;^)
Jerry McD.
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Author: nzdonald
Date: 2002-07-20 21:35
many of the easier or less involved parts are not such a strain to do "at sight" (by which i mean, practising the transposition, but not bothering to actually write it out)
....the more difficult parts i wouldn't mess around with, i'd just write it out after i'd tried to get a transposed copy..... but when this is diffucult is when you have a part that has EASY bass in A, but you also have to swap to other instruments etc... ie Bflat clarinet, A clarinet, C clarinet, Bass in A..... you start to go nutty, you end up transposing the Bass clarinet as though it was C clarinet, or the C clarinet as though it were bass in A, and making a complete dork of yourself....
yeah, just write it all out (or get the transposition from some source or other), and photocopy it and LEAVE A COPY in the part for the next guy who uses your music.
donald
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Author: James
Date: 2002-07-21 00:00
I really don't want to be a jerk. Honestly. But I think this is crazy. John Yeh or Lawrie Bloom don't use basses in A. And i have played la valse. Everyones always looking for a way out of something because its difficult. Take it as a challenge and master is. If you are a good player than you can do it. Yes, playing infront of 3,000 people and having a huge morgage are stressful things and maybe I will come to understand. But you should be able to function non the less. If i came to a lesson with a bass in A i bet you my teacher would knock me over the head. I sounds like a lot of gear acuisition syndrom.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2002-07-21 03:16
James wrote:
>
> John Yeh or Lawrie Bloom don't use basses in
> A.
And sometimes they use written-out transpositions, like other mortals.
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Author: HAT
Date: 2002-07-21 13:55
Kalmus now publishes a b-flat bass clarinet part to La Valse.
Bloom and Yeh may use transposed parts at times (if they are available, why not use them), but I know either of them could transpose a bass clarinet parts in either clef at sight if necessary.
If you transpose every day, it won't be such a huge deal.
David Hattner, NYC
www.northbranchrecords.com
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Author: rmk
Date: 2002-07-21 14:07
>Kalmus now publishes a b-flat bass clarinet part to La Valse.
This is true, but you have to ask for it. It doesn't ship with the set. (At least this was true when we performed it this year.)
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Author: John Moses
Date: 2002-07-21 15:01
I'm forced to transpose often in my studio work, "lets try that spot up a third", and it's not all that difficult, if you do it all the time.
When I play in orchestra, including the NY Phil., we all use transposed parts whenever necessary or convenient. It's really a matter of personal choice.
You don't need an "A" Bass Clar., but it's nice to have a rare one to play with.
I have an Eb Contra-alto Clar. for commercial work, but sometimes transpose the part on Bass because it sounds better. It some cases it's a matter of personal taste or musical needs for the spot.
We should all know how to transpose, it comes with the Clarinet turf.
Good luck,
JJM
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Author: David Pegel
Date: 2002-07-21 23:44
I find I can transpose by ear if the song isn't overly difficult and I know it very well already. I HAVE grown used to transposing a fourth (for French Horn) and a fifth (for Contra) by sight, but it's not perfect.
I guess I'm mortal.
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Author: diz
Date: 2002-07-25 02:23
Transposing tip - if the "concert key" is 5 sharps (B major). Then transposing for a B flat instrument (bass clarinet) would mean having to play in 7 sharps (C sharp major). In this case it would be easier to read in D flat. Make sure you look at enharmonic alternatives. For some reason, I'm much happier playing in oddles of flats, and I'm not so happy playing in oddles of sharps, go figure!?
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2002-07-27 17:56
My last encounter with the wacky world of A bass clarinet playing was with a piece by one Chadwick (English or American) in a piece called Jubilee. Written apparently in the 1930’s, the piece was an odd mixture of “styles”. Notation was in bass clef, and the A bass was apparently used since the clarinets were in A. All of the written out markings were in Italian, rather than the German you would have thought that s/he would have effected.
The sad thing about it all was that this particular piece of music was written at a time when there had not been an A bass clarinet outside of Germany for about a half century. I can understand a lot of the wierd things done in the musical world, but that pretty well took the cake. It’s almost as if the composer was trying to make things less accessable. (Assuming he was going for the Italian style, he should have known that it implies writing the bass in treble clef, but maybe he missed that day of composition class.)
Having said all of that, the piece wasn’t too bad, even including a nice melodic line for the bass clarinet in the middle. It was complex enough that I jammed it through the music software and transposed a part to drop out the bass clef and the key. I DID NOT include my part in the return of the rental music...I’ve known someonw who got a snotty letter back once from doing that and I’ll not take the same chance.
A couple of years back, I was called at the last moment to sub in a local community group that was doing an “easy” concert (or so the music director told me). Most I had played in the past (Bernstein’s Candide was the reason that their regular bass clarinet gal “called in sick”, apparently), but there were a few “new to me” numbers on the bill.
One was of Czech or Hungarian derivation, a single page of music printed on both sides. All nice and slow, not even something to worry about when sight reading. But, when I got to the bottom of the page and the eight bar rest, I flipped it over and saw that I was going to be playing a bass clarinet part in A in about fifteen seconds or so. It was there to get the low E on the A bass, so it wasn’t some conceit on the part of the composer.)
Mind you, it wasn’t really all that hard. Half and quarter notes, with a moving eighth here and there and nothing more, as I recall. And, no bass clef. But, my stomach churned for a few seconds before I got things under control and (need I say it) aced the passage.
Since then, I’ve always turned all pages of a bass clarinet part before the downbeat, just in case...
As for my time on A horns:
My grandfather (Bavarian, a free thinking kind of guy and open to new “foreign“ ideas prior to WWI) had two matched pairs of clarinet, soprano and bass, all from Buffet. When they emigrated over here during the Red revolutions following WWI, he brought all of them along as portable capital. He could pawn the A and Bb sopranos, even though they were “Alberts”, and the Bb bass as well. But, no one would touch the A bass, double manual octave keys and range to low E and all.
So, guess what little Terry was started on when it became time for him to be musical like the distaff side of the family? I only played it for a year as a sixth grader (and the reach on the fingers was hell on my larger than average hands), whereupon we traded it for a intermediate soprano horn (a “real” clarinet, as my mother told me she was told). Haven’t the foggiest idea of where it went, but I sure would like to have it back.
(I ran into a similar Buffet bass of the same vintage (only in Bb) while attending school in Springfield MO in the 1960’s. It was buried in the instrument room, but I dug it out, overhauled it myself (100 year old pads are a joy to take off, I tell you), and played it in college and the Springfield Symphony for the rest of the year. One sweet instrument, as old and unplated as it was when I played it. Tried to buy it at the end of the year but they wouldn’t sell.)
With modern basses in A, I’ve played the Selmer demo horn at various Clarinet Conferences back in the 1980’s. To the player, it sounds like a “mellow” Bb bass (just like the same sensation on the soprano), but otherwise it’s much the same. One great reason to own one would be for the On The Trail solos in Grofe’s suite. They fall in C major on the A bass...like falling off of a log.
Being a baritone sax/tenor sax/alto sax player as well as a clarinettist/bass clarinettist, I have to smile at those who talk about the “extra weight” that an A horn would entail. Of course, I’ve heard flute players bitch about having to carry the extra weight of a piccolo, so I guess it takes all kinds...
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The Clarinet Pages
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