Clarinet: Underrated Musical Instruments

The clarinet is perhaps the most underrated musical instrument. It was introduced to the orchestra during the classical period1. Since then it has been a very integral part of modern music such as jazz and can produce tones rapidly and has a wide range of dynamics and tone color2. The clarinet does not have direct ancestry to any other instrument. Though the chalumeau; the earliest European single reed instrument is the closest one3. Clarinet’s roots can be traced back to ancient Egypt, but the instrument maker Johan Christian Denner invented the modern day clarinet in 1700 in the German city of Nurnberg4 by adding a register key to the chalumeau.
It is a single reed instrument of the woodwind family and consists of a closed tube with a single beating reed5. The clarinet is of essentially a cylindrical bore and is made in a variety of sizes and tonalities. The soprano clarinet is tuned in B flat, with the “Boehm system” of keywork and fingering6. It is also a transposing woodwind instrument,
The earliest known soloist was a military musician by the name of Charles Hoffman from Philadelphia in 1769 and the first female clarinetist to appear in America was Margaret Knittel9. Notable music composed for the clarinet in orchestral works includes Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Copeland’s Appalachian Spring and Salon El Mexico10. Handel too composed twice for the clarinet; The Overture in D and also he used chalumeaux in the opera Ricardo Primo11. Mozart did not use the clarinet till 1780 and even after that he did not include it in many of his compositions. This comes as a surprise because of Mozart’s remark in a letter to his father saying ‘Alas, if only we also had clarinets’. Mozart’s Idomeneo requires clarinets, Kegelstatt Trio’ k498, the Quintet k581 and the Concerto k622 used