bass clarinet

Bass clarinets regularly perform in orchestras, wind ensembles and concert bands, and occasionally in marching bands and jazz bands. They also play an occasional solo role in contemporary music and jazz in particular. Someone who plays a bass clarinet is called a bass clarinettist or a bass clarinetist.

• Name — Bass clarinet • Background — woodwind • Classification — woodwind instrument • Wind • Woodwind • Single-reed • Related — Clarinet family • Basset clarinet • Clarinet d'amore • Basset horn • Alto clarinet • Contra-alto/contrabass clarinet • Clarinet • Range — low C / low Eflat

The bass clarinet has been regularly used in scoring for orchestra and concert band since the mid-19th century, becoming more common during the middle and latter part of the 20th century. A bass clarinet is not always called for in orchestra music, but is almost always called for in concert band music. In recent years, the bass clarinet has also seen a growing repertoire of solo literature including compositions for the instrument alone, or accompanied by piano, orchestra, or other ensemble. It is also used in clarinet choirs, marching bands, and in film scoring, and has played a persistent role in jazz. 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 range of the soprano and alto instrument.

• Illustration — Tara Bouman playing bass clarinet It was not until the 1950s that classical performers began to adopt the bass clarinet as their primary instrument. The pioneer was the Czech performer Josef Horák (1931–2005), who is credited as having performed the first ever solo bass clarinet recital on March 23, 1955. This marked a turning point when the instrument first became thought of as a soloist's instrument. Because the repertoire of solo music for the bass clarinet was quite small, most bass clarinet soloists specialize in new music, while also arranging works composed for other instruments from earlier eras (such as the Bach Cello Suites). Beginning with Horák, many players have commissioned works for the instrument, and consequently there now exists a repertoire of hundreds of solo works, many by prominent international composers such as Brian Ferneyhough and David Lang. In addition to Horák, other specialist performers include Henri Bok (Netherlands), his student Luís Afonso (Brazil), Dennis Smylie (United States), Tommie Lundberg (Sweden), Harry Sparnaay (Netherlands, who has worked with important composers such as Luciano Berio, Iannis Xenakis, and Morton Feldman), Fie Schouten (artistic director Basklarinet Festijn; worked with o.a. Georges Aperghis, Michael Finnissy, Theo Loevendie, Louis Sclavis, Rozalie Hirs) Jason Alder, Evan Ziporyn (United States), and Michael Lowenstern (United States); the latter two are also composers. In October 2005, the First World Bass Clarinet Convention was held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, at which Horák was the guest of honor and played in one of the many concerts given by the leading bass clarinetists from around the world (including all the aforementioned performers, as well as many others). In April 2014, 70th birthday of Harry Sparnaay, the first Basklarinet Festijn was held in the Netherlands. Initiators and artistic leaders are former students of Sparnaay and active in contemporary composed and improvised music: Fie Schouten and Tobias Klein. At least two professional bass-clarinet quartets exist. Rocco Parisi's Bass Clarinet Quartet is an Italian group whose repertoire includes transcriptions of music by Gioacchino Rossini, Niccolò Paganini, and Ástor Piazzolla. Edmund Welles is the name of a bass clarinet quartet based in San Francisco. Their repertoire includes original "heavy chamber music" and transcriptions of madrigals, boogie-woogie tunes, and heavy metal songs. Two of the members of Edmund Welles also perform as a bass clarinet duo, Sqwonk.

While the bass clarinet was seldom heard in early jazz compositions, a bass clarinet solo by Wilbur Sweatman can be heard on his 1924 recording "Battleship Kate" and a bass clarinet solo by Omer Simeon can be heard in the 1926 recording "Someday Sweetheart" by Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers. Additionally, Benny Goodman recorded with the instrument a few times early in his career. Harry Carney, Duke Ellington's baritone saxophonist for 47 years, played bass clarinet in some of Ellington's arrangements, first recording with it on the song, "Saddest Tale" in 1934. He was featured soloist on many Ellington recordings, including 27 titles on bass clarinet. The first jazz album on which the leader solely played bass clarinet was Great Ideas of Western Mann (1957) by Herbie Mann, better known as a flautist. However, avant-garde musician Eric Dolphy (1928–1964) was the first major jazz soloist on the instrument, and established much of the vocabulary and technique used by later performers. He used the entire range of the instrument in his solos. Bennie Maupin emerged in the late 1960s as a primary player of the instrument, playing on Miles Davis's seminal record Bitches Brew as well as several records with Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi group. His style resembles Dolphy's in its use of advanced harmonies. While the bass clarinet has been used often since Dolphy, it is typically used by a saxophonist or clarinetist as a second or third instrument; such musicians include David Murray, Marcus Miller, John Surman, John Gilmore, Bob Mintzer, John Coltrane (to whom Dolphy's mother left some of Dolphy's instruments including his bass clarinet.), Brian Landrus, James Carter, Steve Buckley, Andy Biskin, Don Byron, Julian Siegel, Gunter Hampel, Michel Portal, Myron Walden, Yusef Lateef, Paul McCandless, Gianluigi Trovesi, and Chris Potter. Very few performers have used the instrument exclusively, but such performers include American Michael Pinz, Berlin-based bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, and French bass clarinetists Louis Sclavis and Denis Colin. Klezmer clarinetist Giora Feidman is known for idiosyncratic use of the bass clarinet on some klezmer and jazz tunes.

On The Beatles 1967 recording of George Harrison's "It's All Too Much", a prominent bass clarinet ostinato, scored and conducted by producer George Martin, is played by session musician Paul Harvey. Victor Hayden, AKA The Mascara Snake, was a member of Captain Beefheart's band in the late 1960s, playing bass clarinet on the 1969 album Trout Mask Replica. On Steely Dan's 1980 song "Babylon Sisters", bass clarinets are played by George Marge and Walter Kane. On Flight of the Conchords' 2009 song "Rambling Through the Avenues of Time", the instrument is used as a form of word painting when one is heard after Bret McKenzie sings the line "my heart played a bass clarinet". The part is played by David Ralicke. On Paramore's 2023 album This Is Why, the song "Figure 8" prominently features a bass clarinet. The part is played by Henry Solomon.

• Illustration — Glicibarifono by Catterini, 1838 • Illustration — The serpentine bass clarinet by Papalini, 1820 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 eighteenth 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 apparently dating from the eighteenth century and having from one to six keys also appear to be among the earliest examples, and one in particular has been suggested to date from before 1750. However, 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 Bflat. Whether this should be considered a low basset horn or a bass clarinet is a matter of opinion. In any case, no further work along this line is known to have been done. A 1772 newspaper article describes an instrument called the "basse-tube", invented by G. Lott in Paris in 1772. This instrument has not survived and very little is known of it. The article has frequently been 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. It had thirteen keys, at a time when most soprano clarinets had fewer. Additional designs were developed by many other makers, including Dumas of Sommières (who called his instrument a "Basse guerrière") in 1807; Nicola Papalini, c. 1810 (an odd design, in the form of a serpentine series of curves, carved out of wood); George Catlin of Hartford, Connecticut ("clarion") c. 1810; Sautermeister of Lyons ("Basse-orgue") in 1812; Gottlieb Streitwolf in 1828; and Catterino Catterini ("glicibarifono") in the 1830s. These last four, and several others of the same period, had bassoon-like folded shapes, and most had extended ranges. A straight-bodied instrument without extended range was produced in 1832 by Isaac Dacosta and Auguste Buffet. • Illustration — Adolphe Sax bass clarinet in B♭ Finally, Adolphe Sax, a Belgian manufacturer of musical instruments, designed a straight-bodied form of the bass clarinet in 1838. Sax's expertise in acoustics led him to include such features as accurately-placed, large tone holes and a second register hole. His instrument achieved great success and became the basis for all bass clarinet designs since. The instrument on which Anton Stadler first played Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's clarinet concerto was originally called a Bass-Klarinette, but was not a bass clarinet in the modern sense; since the late eighteenth century this instrument has been called a basset clarinet.

Orchestral music for bass clarinet is written using one of four systems: Music is occasionally encountered written for the bass clarinet in A, e.g., in Wagner operas, and Mahler or Rachmaninov symphonies. This music tends to be written in bass clef, although not invariably (e.g. Ravel's La Valse). 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: e.g., Stengel, Moritz, Kruspe, et al. Buffet made some instruments in the 1920s, but the bass in A was never produced in any great numbers, and after the 1920s very few instruments in A were made (although Fritz Wurlitzer experimented with one in the 1940s). Despite its relative rarity, important works by some prominent composers featured the bass clarinet in A, and in the early 20th century makers began regularly offering B♭ bass clarinets equipped with an Eflat extension key, so that bass parts in A could be transposed onto the B♭ instrument. In the 1970s there was a mild revival of interest in the instrument, and Selmer of Paris produced a few instruments pitched in A with Boehm system key work and keyed to low Eflat (even though the original parts seldom descend below written low E). However, these instruments were expensive and many players were reluctant to haul around two heavy bass clarinets to rehearsals and performances, so few of the modern bass clarinets in A were sold. Selmer ceased production of the bass clarinet in A in the late 1980s. Today, very few players own a bass clarinet in A and these parts are generally played on the Bflat instrument, transposing them down a semitone.