Bass Clarinet: The Dark Voice of the Clarinet Family

Overview

The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B♭ clarinet, it is usually pitched in B♭, meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as a B♭. It plays notes an octave below the soprano B♭ clarinet. Bass clarinets in other keys, notably C and A, also exist but are very rare — in contrast to the regular A clarinet, which is quite common in classical music. Bass clarinets regularly perform in orchestras, wind ensembles and concert bands, occasionally in marching bands and jazz bands, and they take an occasional solo role in contemporary music and jazz in particular. A player of the instrument is called a bass clarinettist or bass clarinetist.

Origin and History

There are several instruments that can arguably be considered the first bass clarinet. Probably the earliest is a dulcian-shaped instrument in the Museum Carolino Augusteum in Salzburg. It is incomplete, lacking a crook or mouthpiece, and appears to date from the first half of the 18th century. Its wide cylindrical bore and its fingering suggest it was a chalumeau or clarinet in the bass range. Four anonymous bass chalumeaux or clarinets, dating from the 18th century and having from one to six keys, are among the other earliest examples; one in particular has been suggested to predate 1750, although the authenticity of at least one of these instruments has been questioned.

In the Munich Stadtmuseum there is an instrument made c. 1770 by the Mayrhofers of Passau, who are often credited with the invention of the basset horn. It resembles early sickle-shaped basset horns but has a larger bore and is longer, playing in low B♭. Whether this should be considered a low basset horn or a bass clarinet is a matter of opinion. A 1772 newspaper article describes an instrument called the basse-tube, invented by G. Lott in Paris in 1772; the article has been frequently cited as the earliest record of a bass clarinet, but it has more recently been suggested that the basse-tube was in fact a basset horn.

The Klarinetten-Bass by Heinrich Grenser, c. 1793, had a folded, bassoon-like shape and an extended range, and was presumably intended to serve as a bassoon replacement in military bands. Desfontenelles of Lisieux built a bass clarinet in 1807 whose shape was similar to that of the later saxophone, with thirteen keys at a time when most soprano clarinets had fewer. Other 19th-century designs were developed by Dumas of Sommières (1807), Nicola Papalini (c. 1810; an odd serpentine design carved out of wood), George Catlin of Hartford (c. 1810), Sautermeister of Lyons (1812), and Gottlieb Streitwolf, among others.

The instrument has been regularly used in orchestral and concert-band scoring since the mid-19th century, becoming much more common during the middle and latter part of the 20th century.

Construction and Materials

Most modern bass clarinets are straight-bodied, with a small upturned silver-coloured metal bell and a curved metal neck. Early examples varied considerably in shape; some had a doubled body that made them look similar to bassoons. The bass clarinet is fairly heavy and is supported either by a neck strap or by an adjustable peg attached to its body. Although Adolphe Sax imitated its upturned metal bell in his design of the larger saxophones, the two instruments are fundamentally different.

Bass clarinet bodies are most often made of grenadilla (African Blackwood), or, more commonly for student instruments, plastic resin. Saxophones are typically made of metal; metal bass clarinets exist but are rare. More significantly, all clarinets have a cylindrical bore that is essentially the same diameter along the body. This cylindrical bore differs from the saxophone’s conical bore and is what gives the clarinet its characteristic tone, causing it to overblow at the twelfth (octave plus a fifth) rather than at the octave as the saxophone does.

A majority of modern bass clarinets, like other clarinets in the family, use the Boehm system of keys and fingering. However, bass clarinets are also manufactured in Germany with the Oehler system of keywork, which is most often known as the “German” system in the United States because it is commonly used in Germany, Austria, Eastern Europe and Turkey. Bass clarinets produced with the Oehler system’s predecessor, the Albert system, are still in use, particularly in those areas. German-system bass clarinets frequently have a bore that is significantly narrower than most Boehm-system instruments, resulting in a somewhat different sound and playing characteristics. Some modern makers have produced Boehm-system bass clarinets with a German bore, but these are not in widespread use. Most modern Boehm-system bass clarinets have an extension key that allows them to play down to the written low E♭. This key was originally added to allow easy transposition of parts for the relatively rare bass clarinet pitched in A, but it now finds significant use in concert-band and orchestral literature.

Playing Technique

The bass clarinet is fingered using essentially the same system as the soprano clarinet (Boehm or Oehler, depending on the instrument), so a clarinettist can usually pick up the bass instrument with a relatively short adjustment period. Differences include the wider mouthpiece and reed (which require a slightly more open embouchure and more air), the supporting peg or neck strap, and a few keywork differences specific to the lower instrument. Bass clarinettists typically read parts in either treble clef (sounding a major ninth lower than written) or bass clef, depending on the country and period of the score.

The bass clarinet has an appealing, rich, earthy and inky tone, quite distinct from other instruments in its range, drawing on and enhancing the qualities of the lower register of the soprano and alto instruments. The cylindrical bore preserves the same characteristic clarinet tone-quality at lower pitches, including the smooth even response across the chalumeau, throat and clarion registers and the unmistakably “clarinet” sound of the lowest fundamentals.

Cultural Context

A bass clarinet is not always called for in orchestral music, but it is almost always called for in concert-band music. In recent decades the instrument has acquired a substantial body of solo literature including pieces for unaccompanied bass clarinet and works with piano, orchestra or other ensembles. It is also used in clarinet choirs, marching bands and film scoring, and it has played a persistent role in jazz.

Among the earliest solo passages for bass clarinet — indeed, among the earliest parts for the instrument at all — are those in Mercadante’s 1834 opera Emma d’Antiochia, in which a lengthy solo introduces Emma’s scene in Act 2 (Mercadante actually specified a glicibarifono for the part). Two years later, Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote an important solo for bass clarinet in Act 4 of his opera Les Huguenots. The French composer Hector Berlioz was one of the first Romantics to use the bass clarinet in his large-scale works, including the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale, Op. 15 (1840), the Te Deum, Op. 22 (1849), and the opera Les Troyens, Op. 29 (1863). Later French composers to use the instrument included Maurice Ravel, who wrote virtuosic parts in his ballet Daphnis et Chloé (1912), La valse (1920), and his orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1924).

The operas of Richard Wagner make extensive use of the bass clarinet, beginning with Tannhäuser (1845). Wagner incorporated the instrument fully into the wind section as both a solo and a supporting voice and pioneered the use of its dark, sombre tone to represent sadness and melancholy.

Notable Players and Examples

Bass clarinettists with substantial solo, orchestral or jazz careers include Henri Bok, Harry Sparnaay, Eric Dolphy (a major figure in modern jazz, who established the bass clarinet as a serious jazz solo instrument), and many present-day players in modern symphony orchestras. The instrument has acquired a steadily growing repertoire of contemporary solo and chamber music written specifically for it, and has been a vehicle for extended techniques (multiphonics, slap-tongue, microtones) in much new music since the 1970s.

Music written for the bass clarinet in A, encountered in some Wagner operas and in Mahler or Rachmaninov symphonies, tends to be written in bass clef (although not invariably; Ravel’s La valse is one exception). Probably the first bass clarinet in A was made by Johann Adam Henkel around 1850, and a number of greater and lesser-known makers continued to produce examples over the next 70 years (Stengel, Moritz, Kruspe, and others). Buffet made some instruments in the 1920s, but the bass in A was never produced in great numbers; after the 1920s very few were made (although Fritz Wurlitzer experimented with one in the 1940s). Despite its rarity, important works by some prominent composers featured the bass clarinet in A, and from the early 20th century makers regularly offered B♭ bass clarinets equipped with a low E♭ extension key so that bass parts in A could be transposed onto the B♭ instrument. In the 1970s there was a mild revival, and Selmer of Paris produced a few Boehm-system instruments pitched in A, keyed to low E (even though the original parts seldom descend below written low E). These instruments were expensive, however, and many players were reluctant to carry two heavy bass clarinets to rehearsals; Selmer ceased production of the bass clarinet in A in the late 1980s, and today very few players own one. Bass-clarinet-in-A parts are now generally played on the B♭ instrument, transposed down a semitone.

Comparison with Related Instruments

The bass clarinet sits between the soprano and alto clarinets above and the contra-alto and contrabass clarinets below in the modern clarinet family. Compared with the soprano clarinet, it is roughly twice as long, sounds an octave lower, uses a metal neck and an upturned bell, and requires a peg or neck strap for support. Compared with the contra-alto and contrabass clarinets it is much smaller and lighter and is the standard “low clarinet” of the modern orchestra and band.

In the orchestral context the bass clarinet’s nearest functional neighbours are the bassoon (a double-reed conical instrument with a darker, rounder, woodier tone), the bass oboe (rare; double-reed and brighter than the bass clarinet), the saxophone family (single-reed but conical-bored, producing a smoother and less “woody” tone), and the lower brass — bass trombone, tuba and French horn — which it often doubles or contrasts with for harmonic foundation. The bass clarinet’s cylindrical bore and overblowing at the twelfth give it a sound profile that none of these neighbours can replicate, which is why composers from Wagner onwards have reached for it specifically when they want a low woodwind voice that is dark, grainy, and capable of both menace and lyricism.