Hello there, I'm Peter Schickele, and this is Schickele Mix, a program dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal. Or as Duke Ellington put it, if it sounds good, it is good. And let's face it, goodness, at least when it comes to state-of-the-art communications, often costs money. Fortunately, our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this terrific radio station right here where I sit in technological splendor trying to come up with something deemed worthy of distribution all over the place by PRI, Public Radio International.
Okay, so, you're all sophisticated, highly educated people, right? I mean, even if you couldn't actually name the play, you'd be able to tell from stylistic considerations if a given quote were by Marlow or Shakespeare.
And you would never confuse a painting by Watteau with one by Fragonard, right? So here's the beginning of a piece by Handel, a nice bright Baroque overture. And there are three instruments playing here, one pair of one kind and one other instrument actually. Your mission, should you accept it, is to decide what two kinds of instruments are playing.
[music excerpt: Handel, "Overture Clarinet" (The Early Clarinet Family); Keith Puddy & Gary Brodie, clarinets/Susan Dent, Baroque horn]
Two trumpets and a French horn, right? The trumpets don't sound quite as big and bright as modern trumpets, but that's the way early trumpets were. Well, I've got news for you. The bottom instrument was a horn, all right. But the instruments on top were clarinets. Two clarinets in D, which is what Handel apparently wrote the piece for. And this performance uses authentic instruments.
Now, even though I knew that early trumpets were called clarinos, I never thought about what the name clarinet means. Little trumpet. And when you hear the beginning of that Handel overture, it's easy to see why. But trumpets are brass instruments with a cup mouthpiece, and clarinets are woodwind instruments with a single reed mouthpiece.
Let's listen to a little bit more of that Handel, and you'll notice that as the clarinet parts go lower and become softer, the instrument sounds less and less like a trumpet.
[music excerpt: Handel, "Overture Clarinet" (The Early Clarinet Family); Keith Puddy & Gary Brodie, clarinets/Susan Dent, Baroque horn]
Now if we go on to the fast part of the overture, we hear the opposite. The clarinets start out sounding like what we think of as clarinets, and then as they get higher and louder, they sound more and more like Baroque trumpets.
[music excerpt: Handel, "Overture Clarinet" (The Early Clarinet Family); Keith Puddy & Gary Brodie, clarinets/Susan Dent, Baroque horn]
Keith Puddy, Gary Brodie, and Susan Dent playing part of an overture by Handel from around 1740 on two D clarinets and a horn. Now, single-reed folk instruments go way back. But as an art music instrument, the clarinet was the last member of the regular classical orchestra to be developed.
Around the beginning of the 18th century, a family of instrument makers in Nuremberg started experimenting with the idea of putting a single-reed mouthpiece on the body of a recorder. This led to the chalumeau. Chalumeau, obviously a French word, C-H-A-L-U-M-E-A-U, Chalumeau, an instrument with severe technical limitations, but a distinctive sound.
It was most comfortable in a range corresponding to the bottom of a modern clarinet's range, and as a matter of fact, the lower range of the clarinet is still called the chalumeau register. Our first suite is called Got My Chalumeaujo Workin', and it contains two pieces, an 18th century work featuring a pair of actual chalumeaux, and a work in which you'll hear a modern clarinetist playing not exclusively, but primarily in the chalumeau register.
I'll see you in about five minutes.
[music excerpt: Telemann, Concerto for 2 Chalumeaux in D minor, 2nd Mvt.; Musica Antiqua Koln/Geobel]
[music: Papasov, "Proleten" (Balkanology); Ivo Papasov & His Orchestra]
Ivo Papasov. But to go back to the first number of our suite called Got My Chalumeaujo Workin', the first number was a Telemann concerto for two chalumeaux and strings, and that was Eric Hoeprich and Lisa Klevit, I guess it would be, playing the two chalumeaux, the Musica Antiqua Köln, conducted by, or led anyway, by Reinhard Goebel.
And, you know, when the strings would come in there, it almost sounded like there was an organ playing there, but that was the two chalumeaux holding sustained notes. And then Ivo Papasov and his orchestra from an album called Balkanology. That was a dance called Proleten Dance, and I have no idea how to pronounce that, but it's apparently a Greek dance, and this is one tremendous album. His band has clarinet, saxophone, accordion, guitar, bass, and drums. Ivo Papasov. The chalumeau doesn't have much variety of tone and it doesn't have much of a range either. Otherwise it's a great instrument. Now the clarinet has a truly flared bell at the end instead of the recorder like cylindrical hole of the chalumeau and it also has by now a lot of keys in addition to the finger holes. The range has been extended upwards incredibly as we hear in our second suite called How High the Tune. Another Schickele Mix specialty here, a suite with only two numbers. Together they last about six and a half minutes, after which I shall return.
[music: Trad., "Doina" (Freylekhs 21); The West End Klezmorim]
[music excerpt: Shaw, Concerto for Clarinet; John Bruce Yeh/DePaul University Jazz Ensemble I/ Lark]
How High the Tune. A couple of very high clarinet passages there. The first one was the West End Klezmorim. Klezmer bands, of course, are the Jewish bands of professional musicians, usually, who play at weddings and secular and religious functions. And as a matter of fact, they're having quite a revival now. And certainly the klezmer bands have one of the most distinctive clarinet styles anywhere.
That was Harold Seletsky playing the clarinet on that one, the West End Klezmorim. And as a matter of fact, Harold and I used to live across the street from each other in Brooklyn. His daughter, also a fine clarinetist, used to babysit our kids. The tune was called Doina. And then the second one was from an album called Ebony Concerto by John.
Bruce Yeh, the clarinetist, and this was the end of Artie Shaw's Concerto for Clarinet, which he wrote for himself. Actually, he wrote the band parts. He says that he pretty much improvised the clarinet part, and that has been reconstructed from the recording. Oh, and I guess I should mention, too, that was the DePaul University Jazz Ensemble, Robert Lark, conductor. Me, I'm Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's program is called Clarinet Marmalade. Now most instruments come in families ranging from little baby bear sized all the way up to big papa bear. And when it comes to clarinets, we're talking extended family here. Aunts, uncles, second cousins once removed the whole works. Just offhand, I can think of 11 different clarinets that have been used by well-known composers in the 20th century and I'm sure that there are some that I don't know about.
Now all but one of them are transposing instruments. Let's see, you've got clarinets in F, E-flat, D, C, B-flat, A, you've got your alto clarinet, your basset horn in several keys actually, your bass clarinet in B-flat, your bass clarinet in A, and your contrabass clarinet. I can't think of any other instrumental group that has...
[sound: phone rings]
Oh, brother. Just a second. Hello?
Okay, well, transposing instruments means that if you play a C on a B-flat clarinet, you actually get a B-flat. Whereas if you play a C on an A clarinet, you get an A. It just makes it easier. Look, you know, I don't have time. I'm in the middle of doing the program here. I don't really have time to talk, so I'm going to have to hang up, okay? Bye.
As I was saying, I don't know of any other family of instruments that has as many different sizes in use, especially when...
[sound: phone rings]
Oh, man. It is going to be one of those days.
[sound: phone rings]
Hello?
Okay, look. The reason it's easier is that on a clarinet, it's harder to play in the key of A than in the key of C. So if you want to play in the key of A, you should use a clarinet in A so that you can play in the key of C. You got that? Hey, listen, you want to know why there are transposing instruments? Because I said so, that's why. Man, I'm trying to do a show here. I mean, this isn't a one-to-one kind of situation, you know? It's just a kind of... This could
[sound: phone rings]
get annoying. Hello?
Yes, it is.
Oh, really? Really? Well yes, of course, I'm honored.
Well, I certainly will. Uh-huh. Look forward to it. Bye.
I've just been given the Outstanding Teacher Award by the American Educational Association. They said if more teachers had my attitude, school periods could be cut in half. Well, you just never know what's coming down the pike, do you? Anyway, let's get back to business here. I'm going to illustrate seven different sizes of clarinet. This is a sort of suite called the long and the short of it, although actually we'll go from the top down.
I call it a sort of suite because I'll identify the pieces as we go along, but I'll do it as succinctly as possible so that you can compare the sounds of the instruments. We'll start off with the little E flat clarinet.
Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Igor Markevitch, one of the two of them was conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra. I guess that must be the old Philharmonia Orchestra. Stokowski was with the new... Anyway, here's a pair of clarinets in C.
[music: Anon., "Duet" (The Early Clarinet Family); Keith Puddy/Gary Brodie]
The fifth of five anonymous duets published in Amsterdam in the second decade of the 18th century. They are not of great musical interest, to put it mildly, although I sort of like the way it ends there. But they are interesting historically in that they constitute the first publication to use the name clarinet, somewhere between 1712 and 1715. Now, the next two are by far and away the most often used members of the family at present.
Here's the B-flat clarinet.
[music excerpt: Schickele, “Elegies for Clarinet & Piano,” 1st Mvt.; Richard Stoltzmann, clarinet/Peter Schickele, piano]
The first of the Elegies for Clarinet and Piano by the recent winner of the American Educational Association's Outstanding Teacher Award and also the host of the popular radio program, Schickele Mix. Richard Stoltzman was the clarinetist with the composer at the piano. And here is the clarinet in A.
Part of the third movement of Mozart's Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, the second trio of that movement. Richard Stoltzman again, this time with the Tokyo Quartet. Now here's another instrument that Mozart had a real fondness for. It's a sort of low tenor or baritone clarinet called the basset horn.
[music: Danzi, Sonata for Cello or Basset-Horn & Piano in F, Opus 62 (The Early Clarinet Family); Keith Puddy, clarinet/Malcolm Martineau, piano]
The end of what is apparently the only major sonata for basset horn and piano. It's by Franz Danzi, published in 1824. Basset horn really has a very mellow, I mean, talk about your papa bear, it's really sort of
[sung: a snatch of a Smokey Bear jingle]
Anyway, the playing there on the basset horn was Keith Puddy, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau on a Broadwood Forte piano, by the way, number 7076 to be exact, the twin of the instrument sent to Beethoven in 1817. I must admit that it's hard for some of us to get used to the fact that Beethoven's piano sounded like the one in the high school cafeteria. And I mean the one they had before they started doing the musicals in there.
By the time I got... Okay, okay, okay, I really can't argue with the irrelevancy alarm. I said I was going to keep these IDs short. So here, to complete our quick and easy introduction to the clarinet family, is a solo that bass clarinetists have dreams about.
[music excerpt: Schuman, Symphony No. 3, last Mvt.; New York Philharmonic/Bernstein]
The beginning of the last movement of William Schuman's Third Symphony with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. Now, I should point out that although I think of the A clarinet as having a mellower tone than the B flat, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell in a blindfold test which was which, maybe if they were all by themselves.
But for instance if the player in that Rite of Spring excerpt happened to use his E-flat clarinet, instead of his D, and did the necessary transposition, I'm telling you, I wouldn't know the difference. The basset horn does sound quite different. And, uh, you know, no one clarinetist is really expected to play all of these. Any professional clarinetist has a B-flat and an A clarinet, but in orchestras, for instance, the bass clarinetist and the E-flat clarinetist are usually people who specialize in those instruments, just as many flutists don't like to play the piccolo. It's very similar, but not quite the same.
A clarinetist, on the other hand, probably could tell the difference between those different kinds. Man, I wish I could unplug this thing.
[sound: phone rings]
Hello, I am in the middle.
Oh, hi, Mom. Listen, I can't talk right now. I'm doing... What's that?
All right, here's how it goes. Especially on the older clarinets that didn't have a lot of fancy keys in addition to the finger holes, the farther you strayed from the key of C, the harder it became to play the fingerings of a scale smoothly. But what if the composer wants a piece to be in A major? Well, you can make the instrument any length you want. So you can make it so when the player does his normal fingering for C, it actually sounds A.
and that means that when he plays his easy C major scale fingerings it's going to come out an easy A major scale, or you can make a slightly shorter clarinet and it'll come out a B-flat major scale. See? Okay, now what I mean by it makes it easier is that with transposition the clarinetist doesn't have to memorize a whole different set of fingerings for each of those different instruments when he sees a C printed in his part. He does the fingering he's used to for C. And the transposition of that particular instrument takes care of putting it in the right key.
He can use... What? Oh, come on, Mom. Of course it's the same with a woman player. I was just... Okay, okay, okay. No, I haven't lost my sense of humor. It's just, you know, it's been one of those...
You know, I've often wondered about that myself. Well, it's longer than a regular clarinet, but it's either curved like a sickle or more often has a bend in it, a sort of an elbow joint. Right, right. It looks more like a dachshund than a basset hound. A dachshund looking around a corner.
Mom, I can't... Okay, I'll see if I can look up basset horn during the last suite, okay? Okay, bye, Mom.
Well, I know one thing. My name, it's Peter Schickele, and the program is Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International. We're talking about the clarinets, you know, the big family that lives down the street. When I was listening to recordings for this program, I had a bit of a shock, because the Mozart clarinet quintet was an important piece during my young musical life, and the section we heard Richard Stoltzman playing, I'm used to hearing it as he plays it.
Now here's the same passage with another fine clarinetist, David Shifrin. Remember that place when... Okay, here goes David Shifrin.
[music: Mozart, Clarinet Quintet (K 581), 3rd Mvt.; David Shifrin/Chamber Music Northwest]
Instead of...
[sung: the clarinet passage, one version]
It goes...
[sung: the clarinet passage, the other version]
So why is that? That's because Mozart wrote the piece for a special extended range clarinet that became obsolete almost immediately that is, nobody else used it. So somebody, almost two centuries ago, rewrote that and other passages so that they didn't go below the range of the normal clarinet. But now, someone has reconstructed or redesigned and constructed that special clarinet. You know, things haven't always been as standardized as they tend to be now. Well, actually, I guess it depends on the field. I mean, I guess in those days, it was sort of like electronic keyboards now. It seems like there are new ones being put on the market every few months.
But it isn't only the construction that makes different instruments sound different. It's also how you play the instrument, and I'll show you what I mean. This suite is called Varieties of Clarinetal Experience. It has three movements and lasts about six and a half minutes. I'll see you then.
[music: Trad., "Ciftetelli"; Klarnetci Sukru Tunar/"Masters of Turkish Music]
[music excerpt: Vaughan Williams, "Six Studies in English Folk Song, 6th Mvt."; Emma Johnson, clarinet/Malcolm Martineau, piano]
[music: Dominique, "Too Tight" (Clarinet Marmalade); Johnny Dodds & His Orchestra,]
Okay, Varieties of Clarinetal Experience. We began with, and you got to, just got to bear with me here on the old pronunciation, Klarnetci Sukru Tunar. Now, I think that's the name of the player, and I expect that the word klarnetci, whatever it is, is clarinet, and I guess the tune is Ciftetelli, or something like that, Turkish music. And then we had the clarinetist Emma Johnson playing the last of Vaughan Williams' Six Studies in English Folk Song, the last one Allegro Vivace, and the pianist was Malcolm Martineau, the same fellow who played on that Danzi Basset Horn Sonata. He sounds a lot better on this one. I mean, he's obviously been practicing, or it could be that he's playing a modern piano.
And then finally, from an album called Clarinet Marmalade, whence I stole the title for this show, we heard Johnny Dodds playing Too Tight, a recording from 1929.
And you certainly can see that the klezmer tradition and the Turkish tradition and the jazz tradition all feature a lot more sliding around on the part of the clarinetist than the classical tradition does. It's interesting because there's a fair amount of sliding around in string instruments classically but not so much in the wind instruments. Okay, looking at my watch here, if I'm right, it's about time.
[sound: phone rings]
Yep, there she is. Hello? Yeah, hi, Mom. Yes, I did, and I guess basset just means bass. I mean, not in the sense that it's as low as a bass clarinet, but in the sense that it has four extra notes on the bottom. It can go four notes lower than a regular clarinet. There's even, it turns out, another instrument called the basset clarinet that's higher but has the same four... Eh, it's not worth going into. Look, I've got to wrap things up here. I'll talk to you soon, okay?
Okay? Listen, I'll bet a wooden nickel is worth a lot more than a regular one now. Okay, bye.
Well, looking at the clock, our time is up. I think this clarinet family reunion is over. I'd like to thank my friend Sylvester Visek for steering me to some of the fine albums we used on today's program. And so now we're going to go to our theme, the slow movement from Mozart's 24th Symphony. It's an early symphony and you won't have any clarinets to kick around anymore.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
And that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this radio station and its members. Great thanks to you members. Our program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International. We'll tell you in a moment how you can get an official playlist of all the music on today's program with album numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number.
This is program number 83. And this is Peter Schickele saying goodbye and reminding you that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi. You're looking good. See you next week.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped self-addressed envelope to Schickele Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickele Mix. Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.
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