sound.htm

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This particular page is a continuation of the previous specs.htm one, and it deals mainly with the sound/tone produced by various clarinets, which is probably the main part of the "characteristics" of the instrument. If you want to hear the sound of a clarinet instrument online (and right now), please click on one of these two links: http://www.concertgoersguide.org/rafiles/clarinet.ra, http://www.concertgoersguide.org/wave/clarinet.wav, while the sites offering this are two following ones; http://www.amromusic.com/Band_Instruments/Clarinet/clarinet.htm, http://www.concertgoersguide.org/onstage/instruments/theclarinet.php. You will listen to Cheri Ann Egbers, Second Clarinet performing an excerpt from Nicolai Rimski-Kosakoff, Scheherazade.

The clarinet has a distinctive timbre, resulting from the shape of the cylindrical bore, whose characteristics vary between its three main registers: the chalumeau (low), clarion or clarino (middle), and altissimo (high), while it also has a very wide compass, which is showcased in a chamber, orchestral, or wind band writing. The tone quality varies greatly with the musician, the music, the style of clarinet, the reed, and humidity. The German "Oehler" clarinet generally has a darker tone quality than the French "Boehm" system. In contrast, the French clarinet typically has a lighter, brighter tone quality. The differences in instruments and geographical isolation of players in different nations led to the development, from the last part of the 18th century on, of several different schools of clarinet playing. The most prominent of these schools were the Viennese traditions and the so-called French school, centered around the clarinettists of the Conservatoire de Paris. Increasingly, through the proliferation of recording technology and the internet, examples of many different styles of clarinet playing are available to developing clarinettists today. This has led to decreased homogeneity of styles of clarinet playing. The modern clarinetist has an eclectic palette of "acceptable" tone qualities to choose from, especially when working with an open-minded teacher.

The A clarinet sound is a little darker, richer, and less brilliant than that of the more common Bb clarinet, though the difference is relatively small. The highest notes on a clarinet can have a piercing quality and can be difficult to tune precisely. Different individual instruments can be expected to play differently in this respect. This becomes critical if a number of instruments are required to play a high part in unison. Fortunately for audiences, disciplined players can use a variety of fingerings to introduce slight variations into the pitch of these higher notes. It is also common for high melody parts to be split into close harmony to avoid this issue. The tone of the Eb clarinet is quite a bit brighter than any other member of the widely-used clarinet family and is known for its distinctive ability to cut through even loud orchestral textures; this effect was utilized by such 20th century composers as Mahler, Copland, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky. The bass clarinet has a characteristically deep, mellow sound. Because the acoustics of the clarinet mean that the deeper the instrument is in pitch, the more "mellow" (less bright) it sounds, the C clarinet, which is the shortest and therefore brightest instrument of the three, eventually fell out of favour as the other two clarinets could play its range of keys between them and their sound was considered better.

As more technical improvements were made, and the clarinet became equal tempered, the need for two clarinets itself reduced. However the difficulties for the player playing in remote keys remains and thus the A has remained a useful orchestral instrument. There have been Eb and D instruments in the upper soprano range, B, A, and C instruments in the bass range etc., but over time the Eb and Bb instruments have become more or less predominant. The reasons why clarinets are predominantly in B, A, and Eb have to do partly with the history of the instrument, and partly with acoustics and aesthetics. The fixed reed and fairly uniform diameter of the clarinet give the instrument the configuration of a cylindrical stopped pipe in which the register key, when pressed, causes the clarinet to produce the note a twelfth higher, corresponding to the third harmonic. The clarinet is therefore said to overblow at the twelfth. (By contrast, nearly all other woodwind instruments overblow at the octave, or do not overblow at all; the rackett is the next most common Western instrument that overblows at the twelfth like the clarinet.) A clarinet must therefore have holes and keys for nineteen notes (an octave and a half, from bottom Eb to B) in its lowest register to play a chromatic scale. This fact at once explains the clarinet's great range and its complex fingering system. The fifth and seventh harmonics are also available to skilled players, sounding a further sixth and fourth (actually a very flat diminished fifth) higher respectively.

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