Instrument
Clarinet
A single-reed woodwind with an unusually wide range and smooth, rounded tone.
The clarinet, pictured above resting on its sheet music, uses a single reed - one thin strip of cane clamped against a fixed mouthpiece and set vibrating by the player's breath - producing a smoother, more rounded tone than the double-reed oboe and bassoon elsewhere in the woodwind family.
Range and tone
Among the woodwinds, the clarinet has an unusually wide range, and its tone color shifts noticeably across that range - dark and rich in its lowest register (the "chalumeau"), bright and clear at the top - which composers frequently exploit deliberately. It's also unusually agile for its size, capable of extremely fast passagework and wide leaps with relatively little strain. It can play extraordinarily softly, too, fading to almost nothing - an effect composers love for moments of hushed intimacy.
Two clarinets at once
The clarinet is a transposing instrument: its written notes sound at a different pitch from the concert pitch of a piano. It's also built in more than one size for practical and tonal reasons - orchestral parts are usually written for either a B-flat or an A clarinet, and the player switches instruments mid-piece depending on which better suits a passage's key, which is why you'll often see a clarinetist with two instruments on stands beside them. A larger relative, the bass clarinet, extends the family's dark, rich low register even further and has its own place in the orchestra, while the small, shrill E-flat clarinet adds a bright edge.
A short history
The clarinet arrived later than the flute, oboe, and bassoon (invented around 1700, standardized through the 1700s), and Mozart was among the first major composers to write extensively and idiomatically for it, including his well-loved Clarinet Concerto, composed for a slightly lower-pitched basset clarinet built specially for his clarinetist friend Anton Stadler. Carl Maria von Weber's concertos, written for the virtuoso Heinrich Baermann, became Romantic cornerstones.
Late in his life, Brahms was so taken with the playing of clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld that he came out of a planned retirement from composing to write four major chamber works featuring the instrument. In the 20th century the clarinet became a star of jazz and swing - Benny Goodman was a household name - and composers such as Copland wrote concertos for jazz players.
Essential clarinet music
- Mozart - Clarinet Concerto (1791) and Clarinet Quintet (1789).
- Weber - Clarinet Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 (1811).
- Brahms - Clarinet Quintet (1891) and the two sonatas, Op. 120.
- Rachmaninoff - Symphony No. 2, whose slow movement opens with a long, glorious clarinet solo.
- Copland - Clarinet Concerto (1948), written for Benny Goodman.
- Prokofiev - Peter and the Wolf, where the clarinet plays the cat.
Where to start listening: the opening clarinet glissando (a rapid upward slide) at the start of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is one of the instrument's most famous entrances. Brahms's Clarinet Quintet shows the instrument's warmer, more autumnal chamber-music side, and the slow movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto is one of the loveliest melodies he wrote.