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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CHR-CLI |
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CLARINET and AULOS. The construction of the bass clarinet demands the greatest care. The bore should theoretically be strictly cylindrical throughout its length from mouthpiece to bell joint ; the slightest deviation from mathematical accuracy, such as an undue widening of the bell from the point where it joins the body
instrument and to destroy correct intonation.The origin of the bass clarinet must be sought in Germany, where Heinrich Grenser of Dresden, one of the most famous instrument -makers of his day, made the first bass clarinet in 1793. The basset horn (q.v.) or tenor clarinet, which had reached the height of its popularity, no doubt suggested to Grenser, who was more especially renowned for his excellent fagottos, the possibility of providing for the clarinet a bass of its own. One of these earliest attempts in the form of a fagotto, stamped " A. Grenser, Dresden," with nine square-flapped brass keys working on knobs, is in the Grossherzogliches Museum at Darmstadt and was lent to the Royal Military Exhibition, London 1890.1 Two other early specimens,' belonging originally to Adolphe Sax and to M. de Coussemaker, are now respectively preserved in the museums of the Brussels Conservatoire and of the Berlin Hochschule (Snoeck Collection). The tubes are of great
instruments
Attempts were made in Italy to overcome the mechanical difficulties by making the bore of the bass clarinet serpentine. A specimen by Nicolas Papalini of Pavia 3 in the museum of the Brussels Conservatoire has the serpentine bore pierced through two slabs of pear- wood
finger
Joseph Uhlmann of Vienna 4 constructed a bass clarinet, also termed " bass basset horn," with twenty-three keys and a compass from Bb through four complete octaves with all chromatic ' See Captain C. R. Day, Descriptive Catalogue (London, 1891), No. 266, p. 125. a See Victor Mahillon, Catalogue descriptif, vol. ii. (1896), pp. 224-226, No. 940.3 See Captain C. R. Day, op. cit. p. 123, pl. V. B. and p. 123, No. 262. ' See Dr Schafhautl's report on the Munich exhibition, Bericht der Beurtheilungscommission fiir Musikinstrumente (Munich, 1855), P. 153 semitones. These instruments
joint bent up in front and the crook almost at right angles backwards, but the bore of the saxophone is conical.Georg Streitwolf (1779-1837), an ingenious musical instrument-maker of Gottingen, produced in 1828 a bass clarinet with a compass extending from Ab to F, nineteen keys and a fingering the same as that of the clarinet with but few exceptions. In form it resembled the fagotto and had a crook terminating in a beak mouthpiece. The Streitwolf bass clarinet was adopted in 1834 by the Prussian infantry as bass to the wood
It was, however, the successive improvements of Adolphe Sax (Paris, 1814-1894), working probably from Grenser's and later from Streitwolf's models, which produced the modern bass clarinet, and following up the work
Milan , differing in construction from the Sax model, was independently introduced into the orchestra? Wagner employed the bass clarinet in Bb and C in Tristan and Isolde,4 where at the end of Act II. it is used with great
V<`T etc. P f I aim. P (K. S.) End of Article: CLARINET If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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