THE DOUBLE-BASSOON
The double-bassoon is an octave below the bassoon. It doubles the bass of the bassoon as the double-bass doubles the violoncello.
The double-bassoon is a conical wooden pipe of hard wood—often maple—more than sixteen feet long and doubled back four times on itself. The crook, or mouthpiece, into which the double reed is fastened, is much like that of the bassoon; but the metal bell points downwards.
Though the instrument is not a transposing one, the music is written an octave higher than it sounds to avoid the use of ledger lines. Its compass is from the middle C to the deep sixteen-foot C.
The double-bassoon was used in the Orchestra in Handel’s time. Haydn calls for it in The Creation; Brahms, in his C-Minor Symphony; Mendelssohn, in his Hebrides Overture; and Beethoven reinforces the march in the Finale of his Fifth Symphony with it. He assigns it a leading part in the Ninth Symphony.
THE CLARINET
The clarinet is also a descendant of the Bombardino-Chalumeau Family of which, as we have seen, there were so many members. The great difference between the ancestor of the oboe and the ancestor of the clarinet was that the oboe’s ancestor was conical in bore and played with a double reed and the clarinet’s ancestor was cylindrical in bore and played with a single reed. That fact was the parting of the ways and was destined to make all the difference in the world. It would seem at first that the tone of the two old chalumeaux (the one double-reeded and the other single-reeded) was at first much alike; but as time went on and the single-reeded chalumeau developed into the modern clarinet, the old rough, reedy voice disappeared for a rich, warbling voice that has more of the bird in it than of the reed.
“The clarinet is one of the most beautiful voices in the orchestra,” Lavignac thinks. “It is the richest in varied timbres of all the wind instruments. It possesses no less than four registers, perfectly defined; the chalumeau, which contains the deepest notes and recalls the old rustic instrument of that name; the medium, warm and expressive; the high, brilliant and energetic; and the very high, biting and strident. All these registers, thanks to the progress of manufacture, are able to melt into one another in the happiest manner possible and furnish a perfectly homogeneous scale. Almost as agile as the flute, as tender as, and more passionate than, the oboe, the clarinet is infinitely more energetic and richer in color.”
About 1690 Johann Christopher Denner of Nuremberg added the twelfth key. He bored a small hole nearer the mouthpiece on a chalumeau type of instrument, and made a key to it to be manipulated by the thumb of the left hand. By this he increased the compass of the instrument by more than an octave. It may be said that from this date the clarinet came into existence. From the crude instrument of two keys and seven holes has evolved the present-day clarinet with seventeen keys and twenty-one holes, of which seven are covered directly by the fingers and the others by the keys.
The clarinet is a cylindrical piece of wood, or a tube, about two feet long, ending in a bell. It is made in sections: (1) mouthpiece; (2) barrel joint; (3) left-hand, or upper joint; (4) right-hand, or lower joint; (5) bell. The lowest note is emitted through the bell. The right-hand thumb supports the instrument.