Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Note to the Reader
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Clarinet Iconography
- 2 The Chalumeau and Clarinet before Mozart
- 3 From “Little Trumpet” to Unique Voice: The Clarinet in the Concert Orchestra
- 4 The Clarinet in Opera before 1830: Instrument and Genre Come of Age
- 5 The Clarinet in Nineteenth-Century Opera
- 6 Innovation and Convention in the Golden Age of the Clarinet Concerto, ca. 1800–1830
- 7 Joining the Conversation: The Clarinet Quintet in Classical and Romantic Chamber Music
- 8 Important Clarinetists since 1900: A Concise Introduction
- 9 Re-creating History? The Early Clarinet in Theory and Practice
- 10 The Clarinet in Vernacular Music
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
1 - Clarinet Iconography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Note to the Reader
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Clarinet Iconography
- 2 The Chalumeau and Clarinet before Mozart
- 3 From “Little Trumpet” to Unique Voice: The Clarinet in the Concert Orchestra
- 4 The Clarinet in Opera before 1830: Instrument and Genre Come of Age
- 5 The Clarinet in Nineteenth-Century Opera
- 6 Innovation and Convention in the Golden Age of the Clarinet Concerto, ca. 1800–1830
- 7 Joining the Conversation: The Clarinet Quintet in Classical and Romantic Chamber Music
- 8 Important Clarinetists since 1900: A Concise Introduction
- 9 Re-creating History? The Early Clarinet in Theory and Practice
- 10 The Clarinet in Vernacular Music
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
Context is everything in any iconographical study. In the case of the clarinet, images can provide essential clues about the instrument's origin, development, and amazingly diverse role in the history of musical life. Initially an anomaly, Johann Christoph Denner's prototypes from circa 1700 seem practically to have appeared out of thin air, notwithstanding slight and ambiguous connections with various folk instruments, organ pipes, and bagpipe drones, as well as the more established woodwinds. Early images of clarinetists start to bring the instrument into focus in a unique and informative way, providing details and context for this nascent stage. Prior to Denner's invention, an engraving by the Dutch artist Gerrit Clausz Bleker (1592–1656) shows a cowherd blowing on some sort of pipe, very possibly a single-reed instrument (fig. 1.1). Such simple, idioglot instruments had already made their way into Mersenne's highly regarded Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636), albeit somewhat dismissively referred to as “a shepherd's pipe.” In this description, these Dutch and French depictions find common ground.
By the early 1700s, we are on firmer footing, and perhaps no image better illustrates this than Johann Christoph Weigel's iconic “Clarinetist” from his Musikalisches Theatrum (fig. 1.2). The elegantly attired player stands in an impressive room, and the caption suggests a noble, if not military, context.
When the trumpet call is all too loud,
The clarinet knows how to please
Eschewing both the high and the lowest sound,
It varies gracefully; and thus attains the prize.
Wherefore the noble spirit, enamored of this reed,
Instruction craves and plays assiduously.
Similarly, Martin Engelbrecht's patrician (amateur?) musician, posed next to a table replete with woodwind instruments, entitled “Flöten, Hautbois, Flachinett, Fagot und Clarinett, &c.” (Augsburg, ca. 1725), shows the clarinet as an equal among its woodwind peers, again in a refined setting. And although they are quite pretty, the more utilitarian fingering charts from J. F. B. C. Majer (Museum Musicum, Schwäbisch Hall, 1732; fig. 1.3) and J. P. Eisel (Musicus Autodidaktos, Erfurt, 1738) do not go much beyond the merely informative. The relative importance of their being included in these important volumes at all should not be underestimated; a presence among the more ubiquitous and well-established woodwinds envisages a bright future for this new instrument.
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- The Clarinet , pp. 10 - 37Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021