Books › A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891 › scan 127
Scan 127
A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891
6 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 107. See the scan on archive.org.
1The clarinet, although invented in 1700, appears to have made but slow progress in England, and Grassineau's Musical Dictionary (1740) makes no mention of it, although describing particularly other wind instruments then in use. The chalumeau appears in the scores of Gluck, and this name possibly applied to the earlier forms of clarinet. The first composer who seems to have made much use of the clarinet is Mozart, although Haydn had used it sparingly before.
3The desire which prevailed during the 16th and 17th centuries to arrange music for complete families of instruments, led to the construction of deeper toned clarinets, but it was not until about 1777 that any of these experiments met with success. According to M. Lavoix (Histoire de l'Instrumentation), a maker named Horn invented at Passau an instrument which became to the clarinet what the cor anglais or "taille" was to the oboe. This instrument took the name of its inventor, and was known as the Basset Horn. By a singular misnomer it became known in France as the cor de basset, and in Italy the corno di bassetto. The instrument after undergoing some modifications at the hands of Lotz, of Presbourg, in 1782, was employed by Mozart in "Die Zauberflöte," and other operas. Its adoption in England and in France was not general until some fifty or sixty years ago, when it became known as the alto clarinet. The difference, however, between the alto clarinet and basset horn of the present day, consists in the extension of the scale of the latter chromatically from e to c, by means of four keys worked by the thumb of the right hand.
5The invention of the bass clarinet followed rapidly upon that of the basset horn, and the first instrument of the kind was made by Grenser, of Dresden, in 1793; and an instrument made by this maker, in the shape of a bassoon, probably as an experiment, was to be seen in this Exhibition. The difficulty of bringing the finger-holes together, so that they could be conveniently covered, was from want of properly constructed key-work very great, and numerous endeavours were made to overcome it. Sometimes the bore was made in a serpentine shape, and instruments thus constructed were introduced by the Italian maker Piana, of Bologna. About 1807 a jeweller named Dumas brought out a bass clarinet with 13 keys, but which met with small success. A later attempt was made by Streitwolf, of Göttingen, in
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