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Around 1690, a German man named Johann Christoph Denner, and his son Jacob, added two keys to the chalumeau, which was a Baroque single-reed wind instrument invented earlier in the century, around the same time as the double-reed oboe, then known...
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Around 1690, a German man named Johann Christoph Denner, and his son Jacob, added two keys to the chalumeau, which was a Baroque single-reed wind instrument invented earlier in the century, around the same time as the double-reed oboe, then known as the hautbois. The chalumeau itself was probably derived from the reedless woodwind known as the recorder and other single-reed hornpipes used in Europe and the Mideast since Medieval times, including the albogue, alboka, and double clarinet, which was called the mizmar or zamare. The Denners also improved on the bell and the mouthpiece of the chalumeau, and their seemingly small improvements (including a register key) added more than two octaves to the aerophone that originally only had a 1.5 octave range. While this new clarinet-like, middle-range instrument was adopted by composers in the early 1700s, the clarinet itself didn’t come along until the 1730s. Over the years, makers kept improving on the clarinet; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composing in the late 1700s, loved its sound. The classical clarinet Mozart wrote for had five keys and eight finger holes, and by the time of Ludwig von Beethoven in the early 1800s, it was a symphonic staple. Around the same time, Iwan Müller made several advancements to the clarinet, adding eight more keys, key pads, and other embellishments that made the woodwind easier to play. In 1839, Hyacinthe Klosé re-arranged the finger holes and keys, so inspired by Theobald Boehm’s system for flutes that he also named his arrangement the Boehm system. Now only musicians in Germany and Austria still use clarinets with the older Oehler system, while Dixieland jazz and klezmer music players often play Albert-system clarinets. When people today say clarinet, they’re usually referring to the four-octave B-flat soprano clarinet, the most common kind. However, the name actually describes a large family of more than a dozen instruments, from the super-deep BBB-flat octo-contrabass clarinet...
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