Talk:Chalumeau

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I removed the lingering statement about the chalumeau having three finger holes. After some research I have found no basis whatsoever for this claim, but any further information is quite welcome. I forgot to log in, but the edit from 217.215.66.62 is mine. (EldKatt 17:46, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC))


Wait, wait, my sources say Denner invented the CLARINET in the late 17th century by IMPROVING the already-established chalumeau. Huh?

This is true (except for a slight chronological error, see below). So is the text in the article. As far as we know, Denner invented the chalumeau in the late 17th century (where he got the idea, though, nobody knows; no similar instrument appeared to have existed before Denner). He then invented the clarinet by improving his chalumeau at some point in the beginning of the 18th century. By this time, the chalumeau was indeed well-established. EldKatt (Talk) 10:00, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Speaker / B flat key

The clarinet was developed from the chalumeau primarily by displacing the back key (speaker key) up towards the mouthpiece, where it produces B flat rather than B natural,

I don't know much about chaumeaux, but this sounds wrong (or at least incomplete) to me. Simply displacing the key (or rather the hole) closer to the mouthpiece should produce a higher note, not a lower one. Perhaps what's meant is that the hole was displaced toward the mouthpiece and reduced in size; the reduction in size would make it function better as a register key, and it would lower the pitch, presumably more than enough to compensate for the change in position, with a net pitch change downwards? That would be my guess, but it's only a guess. -- Rsholmes 13:11, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I've been reading about chalumeaux, but unfortunately I still haven't been able to find out whether its uppermost note originally was B or B flat. Fingering chart on the Moeck site shows their chalumeaux play B flat with both keys open, and there is no fingering at all shown for B natural. I would guess baroque chalumeaux were the same but I am not sure. I think nevertheless the quoted passage needs to be revised, since as it stands its implication is nonsensical. -- Rsholmes 04:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
OK, now I am (nearly) sure: In "Some Light on the Chalumeau" (The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 14 (Mar., 1961), pp. 41-44) Edgar Hunt shows fingerings for a modern chalumeau in C4 going up to F5 natural; he also shows the range of notes in a Graupner suite for three chalumeaux, two ranging from C up to F and one from F up to B flat. So at least in the late baroque the chalumeau (in F) had B flat and not B natural as its top note. Since the quoted passage above refers to the development of the clarinet earlier in the century, I suppose it's possible the original baroque chalumeaux went up to B natural but I doubt it. Hunt also quotes a passage from Majer (1732) that I think is agreeing with the above, but I don't read German so I'm not sure. -- Rsholmes 18:31, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reeds being part of the wood

I read somewhere that the reed of a chalumeau is cut out of the actual body of the instrument. I dont' have a really reliable source for this, but it makes sense given that ligatures and separate reeds didn't really come into use till decades after the chalumeau became a common instrument... correct me if I'm wrong...

Some excerpts from Colin Lawson, The Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995:
A recent listing [includes] the Egyptian double pipe, or 'memet', with its reed cut in a separate tube, inserted in the top of the pipe and taken entirely into the mouth. Pipes with idioglot reeds (not separate pieces of cane, but cut in the tube itself) have been identified from later civilizations ... Such instruments also occur in a variety of pictorial evidence from the Middle Ages onwards and survive today in folk culture. ...
[In 1636] ... Mersenne describes several different reed-pipes as chalumeaux, among which are two simple instruments with idioglot reed ... Such definitions of the chalumeau are also found in at least one contemporary treatise and even as late as the first half of the eighteenth century. ...
Appended to Bonanni's chapter on the oboe [in 1722] is a description of an instrument called the scialumò, a simple pipe ... with a thumb-hole and six finger-holes. More sophisticated is his calandrone, with two keys at the mouthpiece end ... one may deduce ... that this instrument had by now a separate ('heteroglot') tied-on reed...
Figure 1.1 of that book is a photo of a tenor chalumeau by Denner (who died in 1707). It has no idioglot reed, and the mouthpiece clearly has grooves to accommodate tying a reed on with string. This was the standard way of securing a heteroglot reed up until the first part of the 19th century, when the ligature was invented, and is still widely used by German clarinetists.
In summary, there were and are instruments, some called chalumeaux, with idioglot reeds; but from the surviving examples and descriptions from the late 17th / early 18th centuries (which is when the chalumeaux became fairly widely used in classical -- versus folk -- music), the chalumeaux of that era -- which is what this article mainly discusses -- had heteroglot reeds. -- Rsholmes 23:28, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Well it seems natural that the first appearances of the chalumeaux would have a more primitive reed set up (that of the cut out reed) and that that evolved to a primitive ligature. Wouldn't it make sense to at least mention the existence of those types of instruments? If nothing else, the mentioning of an evolution from idioglotic to heteroglotic reeds could add a little more useful information. Gentry Davies 04:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Sure, though it wouldn't make much sense to mention this aspect in isolation; it'd be better to have it as part of a paragraph or three on folk and popular predecessors to the baroque chalumeau. -- Rsholmes 10:49, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some comments

  • Like the recorder, the instrument was built in families, from bass to sopranino.
Were there sopranino chalumeaux in the baroque period? Majer's Museum Musicum referred to four sizes: Discant (soprano), alt or quart, tenor, and bass. These apparently were pitched in F4, C4, F3, and C3, respectively. Confusingly, they are the same sizes as sopranino, soprano, alto, and tenor recorders, respectively. Also confusingly, Moeck's chalumeaux in these keys are called sopranino, soprano, alto, and tenor, respectively; Dietch seems to call them soprano, alto, tenor, and bass; Musikhandwerk advertises soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, but I can't tell from the web site what their sizes are; and Guntram Wolf (whose web site seems to be down now) used to show instruments in the above four sizes identified by their lowest note only -- plus one in F2 which they called a bass chalumeau, though it's modelled on an instrument van der Meer says is really a clarinet. But from what I can tell it looks as though Moeck's terminology is not consistent with baroque usage.
  • As the instrument developed through the 18th century, the terms chalumeau and clarinet were used interchangeably,
This statement appears to be controversial. If you look in the literature there are varying opinions as to whether chalumeau and clarinet were used by knowledgeable musicians to denote separate instruments throughout the 18th century -- with some erroneous use by ignorant writers -- or not. Perhaps the question has been settled by now, but I haven't seen anything to indicate it is. I would suggest dropping this assertion unless someone has sources to back it up.
  • although the clarinet quickly proved itself to be the more versatile of the two
Again, this doesn't seem to agree with at least some writers' interpretations. Lawson mentions works scored for chalumeau as late as the 1770s. Of course if "chalumeau" were synonymous with "clarinet" this wouldn't prove much, but Lawson argues that they were not synonymous.

I'm going to plan on revising the above three quoted passages, unless there's some evidence I'm unaware of, in which case please post a citation! -- Rsholmes 04:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed revisions

(Perhaps needs more work on references.)

The chalumeau (pl. chalumeaux) is a wind instrument, the immediate ancestor of the clarinet. While the word was in use in French from the twelfth century to refer to various sorts of reed pipes, the specific instrument that became known as the chalumeau seems to have been developed in the late seventeenth century. It represents the link between the recorder and the clarinet, and is essentially a cylindrical bore recorder with the mouthpiece of a clarinet and two additional "throat" keys controlling notes at the top of the fundamental register. Like the recorder, the instrument was built in families, from bass to soprano. The chalumeau has a large repertoire in 18th century orchestral and chamber music.

The chalumeau and clarinet were two distinct instruments during the baroque period, although the clarinet eventually became the more versatile of the two, leading to the demise of the chalumeau by about the mid 1780s. The unusual acoustic properties of both instruments, behaving like a cylindrical bore closed at one end, result in the instrument overblowing at the twelfth, meaning that the upper register sounds one and a half octaves higher than the lower, unlike most other woodwind instruments, which overblow at the octave. The chalumeau, with its two opposing keys to extend the range by two semitones, was primarily used only in its fundamental range, therefore having a compass of only slightly more than an octave.

According to a description in Majer's Museum Musicum (1732) the chalumeau was made in four sizes: Soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Comparison with surviving chalumeaux and with music written for chalumeaux suggests these sizes correspond to instruments in, or near, the keys F4, C4, F3, and F2. (At one time it was believed that the bass chalumeau was in C3. However, there are no extant historical chalumeaux of this size, while two larger instruments have since been identified as chalumeaux.)[1] Confusingly, at least one modern maker of reproduction chalumeaux (Moeck) calls the first three of these sizes sopranino, soprano, and alto, and makes an instrument in C3 which they call a tenor. The soprano, chalumeau had eight finger holes (one or more of them sometimes doubled for accidentals) to produce the notes F4, G4, A4, B♭4, C5, D5, E5, F5, and G5 while the two keys extended the range upward to A5 and B♭5. Alto and tenor chalumeaux were constructed analogously to produce pitches from C4 to F5 and F3 to B♭4 respectively. Of the two extant bass chalumeaux, one has only one key, controlling the lowest note, while the other has, besides the two throat keys, additional keys to extend the range downward by a fourth.[1]

The clarinet was developed from the chalumeau primarily by displacing the B♭ key up towards the mouthpiece, reducing the size of the hole and inserting a register tube; here it still produces B♭, but functions in addition as a register key, allowing the upper range to be easily sounded.[1] In addition the clarinet's mouthpiece was modified to improve performance in the upper register, and the chalumeau's straight foot joint was replaced by a flared bell. ...

Both the improvement of the chalumeau and the invention of the clarinet have been attributed to Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg, although his contributions are uncertain and in particular the clarinet may have been an invention of his son Jacob Denner. Although only about eight original chalumeaux are known to have survived, modern craftsmen are now producing replicas based on these original instruments. Makers of replica chalumeaux include Daniel Deitch, Guntram Wolf, Stefan Beck, R. Tutz, and Peter van der Poel, while Moeck makes modern chalumeaux with slightly different acoustical characteristics.

...

References

  1. ^ a b c Rice, Albert R. (1992). The Baroque Clarinet. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 15-38. 
One issue that has always intrigued me is this: It is widely accepted today that the first clarinetists played with the reed on top. If the chalumeau is the link between recorder (acoustically too weak) and the clarinet (wider ambitus) how to explain the reed on top, unless oboe players would be the first ones to adopt the clarinet/chalumeau?brian stormen 13:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

-- Rsholmes 14:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC); amended 11 Oct 2006

[edit] repertoire and discography

I think this needs a section on repertoire to demonstrate the chalumeau may have been an onstrument in its own right. And similarly for those curious why this baroque instrument was so ingnored a discography a CD might be useful (Bach did win from Graupner but his music is worthwhile listening to too). brian stormen 13:26, 23 October 2007 (UTC)