The orchestra and its instruments

“Its compass, the greatest possessed by any wind-instrument chromatically, has a great deal to do with giving it this richness of expression; but the diversity of timbre belonging to its lower, middle and higher registers must be regarded as the real superiority of the clarinet.”

Berlioz says: “The clarinet is little appropriate to the Idyl. It is an epic instrument, like horns, trumpets and trombones. The voice is like that of heroic love. This beautiful soprano instrument, so ringing, so rich in penetrating accents, when employed in masses, gains, when employed as a solo instrument, in delicacy, evanescent shadowings and mysterious tenderness what it loses in force and powerful brilliancy. Nothing so virginal, so pure as the tint imparted to certain melodies by the tone of a clarinet, played in the medium by a skilful performer. It is the one of all the wind instruments which can best breathe forth, swell, diminish and die away. Thence the precious faculty of producing distance, echo, the echo of echo, and a twilight sound. What more admirable example could I quote of the application of some of these shadowings than the dreamy phrase of the clarinet accompanied by a tremolo of stringed instruments in the midst of the Allegro of the Overture to Freischütz! Does it not depict the lonely maiden, the forester’s fair betrothed, who, raising her eyes to heaven, mingles her tender lament with the noise of the dark woods agitated by the storm? O Weber! Beethoven, bearing in mind the melancholy and noble character of the melody in A-major of the immortal Andante in his Seventh Symphony, and in order the better to render all that this phrase contains at the same time of passionate regret, has not failed to consign it to the medium of the clarinet. Gluck, for the ritornello of Alceste’s air, ‘Ah, malgré moi,’ had at first written it for the flute; but perceiving that the quality of tone of this instrument was too weak and lacked the nobility necessary to the delivery of a theme imbued with so much desolation and mournful grandeur, gave it to the clarinet.

“Neither Sacchini, nor Gluck, nor any of the great masters of that time availed themselves of the low notes of the instrument. I cannot guess the reason. Mozart appears to be the first who brought them into use for accompaniments of a serious character, such as that of the trio of masks in Don Giovanni. It was reserved for Weber to discover all that there is of the terrible in the quality of tone of these low sounds.”

Mozart was the first to appreciate the beauties and capabilities of the clarinet. He wrote a Concerto for it with orchestra[24] and his Symphony in E-flat is so full of prominent work for it that it is often called the “Clarinet Symphony.” Beethoven loved it also and developed music for it far beyond Mozart’s ideas. It sings particularly lovely melodies in the Larghetto of the Second Symphony. In the Pastoral Symphony, where the flute sings the nightingale and the oboe pipes for the quail, the clarinet gives the cuckoo’s notes, or, rather, two clarinets together say “cuckoo, cuckoo.”

Weber also wrote much chamber-music for the clarinet and gave it dreamy melodies in the Overture to Oberon and also some difficult arpeggios in company with the flute, known as “drops of water.”

Mendelssohn also used the clarinet for the idea of water. It is very evident in the Hebrides Overture and in the Overture of Melusine it suggests the rolling waves. It is conspicuous in Dvořák’s New World Symphony and it plays a solo in Tschaikowsky’s Francesca da Rimini.

And how Wagner enjoys it! Often he gives it a motive, or lets it sympathize with what is taking place on the stage! And in the third scene of Act I of Die Götterdämmerung, he has two clarinets play a duet for thirty bars!

THE BASSET-HORN

The basset-horn is a tenor clarinet with two additional keys and a longer bore than the clarinet. The last three notes are worked by the thumb of the right hand. The basset-horn is not a horn. It takes its name from a German maker named Horn, who made a little bass clarinet in 1770 and called it little bass horn as a modest compliment to himself. Its part is written a fifth higher than the actual sounds. Gevaert says its tone is one of “unctuous sweetness”; and those adjectives certainly describe its rich voice very accurately.

The basset-horn was new in Mozart’s time and he liked it very much, so much indeed that he gave it an obbligato to the aria Non più di fiori in his opera of Clemenza di Tito. In his Requiem he calls for two basset-horns.

BASS-CLARINET

This instrument is made like the ordinary clarinet only the bell points upward and outward something after the fashion of a big dipper. It is a slow-speaking and hollow-toned instrument. Wagner uses it a great deal. Liszt has a good part for it in his Mazeppa; and it is conspicuous in the Danse de la Fée Dragée in Tschaikowsky’s Nut-cracker Suite and also in the Don Quixote Variations by Strauss.

The bass-clarinet is doubled by the contrabass clarinet.

The contrabass clarinet is an octave below the bass-clarinet. The tube is partly conical and partly cylindrical. It is over ten feet long, and ends in a big metal bell turned upward like that of the bass-clarinet. It has thirteen keys and rings. It stands in the key of B-flat. The instrument is also called pedal clarinet. Its middle and upper registers are reedy, something like the ordinary clarinet tones, and the lower registers are deep rumbles. It might be described as a rival to the double-bassoon.