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The Development of the Boehm System Clarinet

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[edit] Background: Pre-Boehm Clarinet

“From very early days the need has been felt to provide wind instruments with a more extensive and musically useful scale than the mere harmonic series proper to a tube of fixed length. The use of keys to create a chromatic scale probably began about the last quarter of the 18th century, firstly with the transverse flute.” Before keys were employed on woodwind instruments, semitones were created by resistance fingerings (such as fork-fingerings and half-hole fingerings). Woodwind instrument makers added keys to their instruments to create a more accurate chromatic scale and to provide woodwind players with a more natural, dexterous fingering system. In fact, woodwind instruments have gone through many improvements throughout history. The development of the Boehm system clarinet is just one piece of woodwind instrument evolution.

The clarinet was an inelegant instrument in the early 1800s in spite of the eight keys it had acquired. In 1812, Iwan Müller remodeled the instrument and raised the number of keys to thirteen. Other instrument makers improved on this design through slight details in workmanship, but the mechanism of the clarinet was not brought to its full potential until the mid-1800s when the Boehm system clarinet was created.


[edit] Innovators involved in creating the Boehm System Clarinet

Three people were the major contributors to the formation of the Boehm system clarinet: Theobald Boehm, Hyacinthe Elanore Klosé, and Louis-August Buffet.

  • Theobald Boehm (1794-1881) was a German goldsmith whose passion for playing the flute led him to try to improve the instrument’s keywork.
  • Hyacinthe Elanore Klosé (1808-1880) was a French clarinet player and professor at the Paris Conservatoire that decided to use Boehm’s keywork innovations to improve the clarinet. As a specialist in clarinet performance, he enlisted the help of Louis-August Buffet, an instrument-making technician, to construct the Boehm system clarinet.
  • Louis-August Buffet (also known as Buffet jeune) (1789-1864) grew up in a family of woodturners in France. He became a successful woodwind instrument maker, especially through his clarinet-making partnership with Klosé.


[edit] Historical Timeline

The historical timeline of the Boehm system clarinet is important for understanding its development.

  • Between the years of 1839 and 1843

Louis-August Buffet and Hyacinthe Elanore Klosé collaborated on the development of the Boehm system clarinet.

Buffet exhibited a flute, piccolo, and clarinet patterned after the Boehm flute keywork system at the Paris Industrial Exhibition.

On December 15th, 1843, Buffet applied for French patent no. 9759 for the construction of his clarinette à anneaux mobiles or ‘clarinet with moving rings’.

His application was approved and the patent was granted on February 19th, 1844.

The ‘clarinet with moving rings’ adopted the name ‘Boehm clarinet’ in the 1860s.

The only alteration to Klosé and Buffet’s clarinet that has wide currency is the Full Boehm system clarinet which was introduced by Buffet in the 1870s. During the 1870s, the Boehm system clarinet gained popularity in Italy, Belgium, the United States, and France (the Boehm system was nearly the only type of clarinet used in France by this time).

Manuel Gómez, a prominent clarinetist in London used the Boehm system and the Full Boehm system clarinet exclusively and established these instruments in England around 1890.


[edit] How the instrument was changed

The pre-Boehm clarinet was adapted and enhanced through a process involving several people and inventions, some not even directly relating to the clarinet.

  • Boehm's three tasks to improve the flute

In order to improve the flute, Theobald Boehm set three tasks for himself. According to Benade, the first was “to find the best reproportioning of the familiar cylindro-conical bore to suit a revised set of tone holes laid out in a uniform sequence.” Next, Boehm “sought an orderly way of calculating the correct positions of his postulated set of tone holes. The design was to require full venting; that is, there would be no closed holes below an open one for any note in the lower two octaves of the playing range. Boehm also took on the task of devising mechanisms for conveniently controlling a set of at least thirteen holes with only nine available fingers (an immobile right thumb being required to assure firm support for the instrument).”

  • Boehm's new mechanism for flute

Boehm responded to the rising performance demands of woodwind players by creating an interdependent keywork system where keys acting on different tone holes were linked. The brille, a mechanism based on a ring surrounding a side hole, helped to equalize the tone of fork-fingered notes. Boehm combined a pair of rings with a satellite pad cup on his flute of 1831. By allowing three fingers to control four open holes, the brille provides far more dexterity for the physical limitations of the hand. On Boehm’s new keywork system for the flute, raising the right-hand fingers consecutively creates the pattern: tone, semitone, tone (D, E, F, G).

  • How Boehm's flute innovations helped the development of the clarinet

The ring keys that Boehm created when constructing his flute gave other instrument inventors the means to devise logical fingering systems that allow for more physical agility. As previously stated, Hyacinthe Elanore Klosé and Louis-August Buffet worked together to design an instrument modifying Boehm’s flute-making innovations for the clarinet. They did, however, refrain from incorporating Boehm’s concept of full venting. Ring keys and needle springs were the two major features in the design of their new clarinet.

    • Ring keys

Shackleton wrote, “The new clarinet was named clarinette à anneaux mobiles and it was the ring keys that overcame the chief mechanical difficulties…Klosé used them [ring keys] to eliminate the limitation of cross-fingering altogether.” These rings surround the tone holes so that when a finger covers the tone hole, it also pushes a metal ring down to a level flush with the top of the hole. The ring, in turn, is connected to a long axle, or brille (borrowed directly from Boehm’s flute), which then causes another hole, somewhere else on the instrument, to be covered by a padded key. It is likely that the clarinette à anneaux mobiles became known as the Boehm system clarinet because of its similarities to the Boehm flute and the fact that the Boehm flute was so well known.

    • Needle Springs

As an original invention for the clarinette à anneaux mobiles, Buffet created the needle spring in order to control the opening and closing of keys. The needle spring is mounted on posts screwed directly into the wooden body of the clarinet and is used for all keys other than those with extremely short pivoting axles. “Interestingly, virtually the only immediately detectable mechanical difference between his [Buffet’s] earliest instruments and those made today is an increase in the number of these needle springs (from four in the earliest example known to eleven in a typical modern instrument).”


[edit] End Results

  • Pictures
  • Full Boehm Clarinet

The Full Boehm system clarinet is the only extensively accepted modification of Klosé and Buffet’s 1843 Boehm system clarinet. It features four improvements creating an even more streamlined fingering system. The first improvement was to include a seventh ring on the instrument; adding a cross-fingered E flat’/B flat’’ to the range. Next, an articulated C sharp’/G sharp’’ key was added; permitting a B/C sharp’ and F sharp’’/G sharp’’ trill to be made in nearly perfect pitch with a much simpler fingering pattern. An E flat key was also added because it is a note that did not exist on previous clarinets and it is required by some composers. The addition of the E flat key is also convenient when A clarinet parts must be transposed at sight on the B flat instrument, so that the E (often called for because it is part of any clarinet system’s practical range) may be played a half-step lower (E flat). Finally, an alternative A flat/E flat’’ key for the left hand fourth finger was added which gave a more efficient fingering pattern in certain kinds of passages.

  • Range of the Full Boehm and Boehm System Clarinet

Because of the addition of the E flat key on the Full Boehm system clarinet, its lowest note (written E flat/sounding D flat for a B flat instrument) is one half-step lower than that of the standard Boehm system clarinet (written E/sounding D for a B flat instrument). The limit is less clearly defined at the upper end of the Full Boehm and Boehm system clarinets. Most professional clarinetists are prepared to play up to a C’’’’ and some virtuosos can perform higher pitches, however, clarinet players are not generally asked to play above G’’’.

  • Major differences between Boehm and pre-Boehm Clarinet

The acoustics, tone, and technique of the Boehm system clarinet are decidedly different than the pre-Boehm clarinet.

    • Acoustics

Shackleton writes, “In particular, it is easy to perceive that the pre-Boehm clarinet, with rather small tone holes spaced about 2 cm apart, should have very different characteristics from the Boehm instrument carrying tone holes every centimeter or so.” The tone of individual notes and the intonation of the scale depend on the precise relationship between the resonances. For example, if the second prominent resonance is not exactly an octave plus a fifth above the fundamental, the resonance will not be properly built and will therefore result in a less vibrant tone. Modern acoustical research has shown that the tone hole spacing on the Boehm system clarinet is ideal.

    • Tone

The tone of the Boehm system clarinet is more open sounding than its predecessors’ veiled sounding tone. Forked-fingerings and cross-fingerings create a greater number of closed holes which is another cause of the pre-Boehm clarinet’s dull sounding tone. Due to the advancements in keywork, the Boehm system clarinet does not rely on many forked-fingerings and cross-fingerings, therefore allowing for more open holes and a more vibrant tone.

    • Technique

Furthermore, Boehm keywork advancements greatly improved the technical facility of its players. Boehm clarinetists are able to manipulate their instruments in a more sequential fingering pattern and therefore can play faster passages more accurately.

  • Summary

The result of the development of the Boehm system clarinet is an instrument with superior acoustical properties, tone quality, and technical facility. The original Boehm system clarinet created in 1843 remains almost completely unchanged. Like the first instrument, the modern Boehm system clarinet has seventeen keys, six rings, and nearly identical acoustical measurements. Pino states, “The invention of the seventeen-key, six-ring clarinet remains the single most remarkable development in clarinet history since the introduction of the instrument itself. The Boehm system clarinet is by no means the only system in the world today, but it is by far the most widespread.”