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Re: Viennese facings on Boehm mouthpieces?

Author: Bob Barnhart ★2017
Date: 2019-01-08 22:52

When Michele Zukovsky had just switched to here Wurlitzer Oehler clarinets, she came down to the San Diego Clarinet Society (of which I was then the president) and gave a talk on her experience. One thing I remember her saying was that the whole resistance concept was different for the Oehler instruments than for our common Boehm instruments. Whereas we tend to have resistant mouthpieces and non-resistant clarinets, the opposite was true for the German (or Viennese) instrument: the clarinet provides the resistance and the mouthpiece/reed has relatively little resistance. (If so, this would explain why she might say that the high-resistance PlayEasy mouthpieces don't work on Oehler instruments. This also seems consistent with comments that Germans use relatively softer reeds) I also recall her saying that this was the reason that Oehler clarinets needed to be replaced periodically as their resistance would diminish over time.

To me this sounds a little like the "acoustic suspension speaker" concept where the air in an enclosed cabinet provides (a significant part of) the "spring" required in a speaker.

My attempts to get a German/Viennese sound on a Boehm clarinet by using heavier reeds generally result in more work and poorer response. However, I think I actually get my best results when using a (softer) reed whose design/stiffness matches the mouthpiece in such a way that I can (begin to) feel whatever resistance the clarinet has. In this way one might get an approximation of the Oehler "acoustic suspension" effect on a Boehm instrument.

I have to wonder whether a (low resistance) German/Viennese mouthpiece/reed combination would really be helpful when used with a low-resistance Boehm clarinet. I would imagine this to be a very free-blowing combination--perhaps too much so. Perhaps a more resistant instrument like a Selmer Signature or Recital(?) might be a better match for such mouthpiece/reed combinations.

Maybe someday I'll get a chance to find out...

Bob Barnhart

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