Musical Legacy of the Clarinet
That the clarinet has become inextricably linked with such an impressive variety of styles and that it captured the hearts of so many master composers in its relatively short lifespan must be a testament to the instrument’s chameleon versatility, if not also to some universal appeal of its fundamental voice. It was, in fact, the instrument that most closely resembled the human voice according to Mozart, who himself can be said to have invented the soul of the clarinet. With his miraculous Concerto and chamber music, Mozart liberated the clarinet from its early-Classical trumpet-like role, and realized for the first time its lyrical, cantabile potential, its agility, and the vocal, operatic qualities inherent in the contrast between its registers. The uniquely vocal qualities of the clarinet found resonances in successive composers as well, as Schubert, that peerless architect of German art songs, singled out the clarinet to elevate to an equal plane as his soprano in Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock). For their part, Mendelssohn and Weber styled more operatic interpretations of the instrument’s persona, but clearly very much in line with the tradition initiated by Mozart. The clarinet would intersect with opera again in the second half of the 19th century, as clarinetist-composers engaged by Verdi and Mascagni milked the pyrotechnic capabilities of the instrument to create dazzling fantasies on beloved opera themes for advertising purposes.
Musicians outside the classical canon also embraced the clarinet for its vocal potential. The clarinet is virtually inseparable from the aesthetic identity of Jewish klezmer music, which uses it as a melodic instrument for its ability to imitate human laughs and sobs. As the Jews and Roma lived side-by-side in Eastern and Central Europe, so did their klezmer and Romani musical traditions rub against each other, and so the clarinet unsurprisingly figures prominently into gypsy music as well. Certain Hungarian classical composers provided notated estimations of the clarinet’s function in their native folk idiom, such as in the gypsy-inspired cadenzas in Zoltán Kodály’s orchestral suite, Dances of Galanta, or in Béla Bartók’s trio, Contrasts, for clarinet, violin and piano. Even Brahms, often judged a musical purist by his contemporaries, referenced the clarinet’s gypsy-klezmer heritage in the folksy, rhapsodic second movement of his Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115.
It is worth pausing to consider Brahms’ intimate, serendipitous relationship with the clarinet. Like Mozart before him and Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Poulenc and Nielsen after, Brahms came to the clarinet late in life, having intended to put down his pen after the triumph of the great G major Viola Quintet, Op. 111. It was only upon hearing the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld — in a performance of works by none other than Mozart and Weber — that Brahms was inspired to come out of retirement expressly to write for the clarinet. It is therefore to Mühlfeld that we owe those crowning masterpieces from Brahms’ twilight years, the glowing embers of his mature genius: not just the four sublime clarinet works (a Trio for clarinet, cello and piano, Op. 114, the Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115, and two Sonatas, Op. 120), but the treasured piano music, Chorale Preludes and Four Serious Songs written in those years as well.
One of Brahms’ affectionate nicknames for Mühlfeld was “nightingale of the orchestra,” and he was neither the first nor the last to draw the comparison between the clarinet and birds. Whether channeling perky chirping or honeyed birdsong, composers from Beethoven (Pastoral Symphony) to Mahler (First Symphony) and Respighi (Pines of Rome) to Messiaen (Quartet for the End of Time) looked to the clarinet to play the role.
In France, the clarinet profited from a storied woodwind pedagogical tradition at the Paris Conservatory, and the school’s annual Concours nourished the instrument’s repertoire as composition professors penned new contest pieces each year. Incredibly, it was these rather prosaic conditions that gave birth to Debussy’s otherworldly Première Rhapsodie, a spellbinding work that the composer ultimately declared “one of the most pleasing [he had] ever written.”
Meanwhile, Debussy’s fellow Impressionist Maurice Ravel (who also availed himself of the clarinet in his chamber music: Introduction and Allegro and Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé) became acquainted with George Gershwin and fascinated by jazz, in which the clarinet also found itself at home. Indeed, in the collective conscious, Gershwin and the clarinet are practically synonymous, thanks to the iconic, wailing clarinet glissando that opens his Rhapsody in Blue. In addition to his sensational performances in the jazz idiom, Benny Goodman was also behind several of the most important clarinet commissions of the 20th century; Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, Poulenc’s Clarinet Sonata, and Bartók’s Contrasts are among some of the works written for the “King of Swing.” It is telling that the clarinet’s robust repertoire also sports such 20th-century landmark works as Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire; that the instrument so often finds itself in the hands of such masters surely points to its unique expressive qualities.
The diversity of the clarinet instrumental family also contributes to its versatility, and nowhere is the breadth of the clarinet’s relatives put on display like in the clarinet choir. If Mozart did, in fact, invent the soul of the clarinet, so, too, did his music for clarinet ensembles breathe life into the future genre of the clarinet choir. While still a far cry from the 27-piece clarinet assemblage that sprouted in Brussels 100 years after his death, Mozart’s works for three to five mixed members of the clarinet family seem to respond to the same homogeneity of timbre and extensive range that made the full-sized clarinet choir attractive in later centuries. Indeed, its uniform, reedy texture throughout its formidable range of up to six octaves has prompted some to point to the organ-like qualities of a full-range clarinet choir, an association that Guido Six tests in his arrangement of Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor featured on this summer’s “Clarinet Critical Mass” program.
The aforementioned Belgian band of clarinets was created in 1896 by Professor Gustave Poncelet at the Brussels Conservatory, and is generally considered the earliest true clarinet choir. It was after hearing Poncelet’s group — in an arrangement of none other than Mozart’s G minor Symphony — that Richard Strauss was inspired to include the entire instrument family in his orchestras: he did so in his 1909 opera Elektra, which calls for eight players of various clarinets and its derivatives.
In the United States, New York Philharmonic Principal Clarinetist Simeon Bellison spearheaded the most significant clarinet choir of its time, growing the ensemble from its humble beginnings as a quartet of his students in 1927, to a 75-member, mixed-gender choir by 1948. Sponsored by the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Bellison’s Clarinet Ensemble appears in New York Philharmonic’s program archives as early as 1931 for performances at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall, and received financial support from the orchestra for instrument commissions and member scholarships.
The Clarinet Ensemble’s repertoire consisted of works written specifically for it, supplemented by arrangements of music of the great composers done by Bellison himself. One New York Philharmonic program from 1936 asserts that “the clarinet is the only wind instrument which can be assembled as an orchestral unit, owing to its colorful tone approximating the human voice, its technical flexibility and its long range.” Chamber Music Northwest’s Clarinet Celebration was designed to honor and affirm the storied tradition of the clarinet and its repertoire in a similar fashion to Bellison’s programming: an eclectic array of originals and adaptations bookended by Mozart, to whom we owe all of the instrument’s magnificent heritage.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest
That the clarinet has become inextricably linked with such an impressive variety of styles and that it captured the hearts of so many master composers in its relatively short lifespan must be a testament to the instrument’s chameleon versatility, if not also to some universal appeal of its fundamental voice. It was, in fact, the instrument that most closely resembled the human voice according to Mozart, who himself can be said to have invented the soul of the clarinet. With his miraculous Concerto and chamber music, Mozart liberated the clarinet from its early-Classical trumpet-like role, and realized for the first time its lyrical, cantabile potential, its agility, and the vocal, operatic qualities inherent in the contrast between its registers. The uniquely vocal qualities of the clarinet found resonances in successive composers as well, as Schubert, that peerless architect of German art songs, singled out the clarinet to elevate to an equal plane as his soprano in Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock). For their part, Mendelssohn and Weber styled more operatic interpretations of the instrument’s persona, but clearly very much in line with the tradition initiated by Mozart. The clarinet would intersect with opera again in the second half of the 19th century, as clarinetist-composers engaged by Verdi and Mascagni milked the pyrotechnic capabilities of the instrument to create dazzling fantasies on beloved opera themes for advertising purposes.
Musicians outside the classical canon also embraced the clarinet for its vocal potential. The clarinet is virtually inseparable from the aesthetic identity of Jewish klezmer music, which uses it as a melodic instrument for its ability to imitate human laughs and sobs. As the Jews and Roma lived side-by-side in Eastern and Central Europe, so did their klezmer and Romani musical traditions rub against each other, and so the clarinet unsurprisingly figures prominently into gypsy music as well. Certain Hungarian classical composers provided notated estimations of the clarinet’s function in their native folk idiom, such as in the gypsy-inspired cadenzas in Zoltán Kodály’s orchestral suite, Dances of Galanta, or in Béla Bartók’s trio, Contrasts, for clarinet, violin and piano. Even Brahms, often judged a musical purist by his contemporaries, referenced the clarinet’s gypsy-klezmer heritage in the folksy, rhapsodic second movement of his Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115.
It is worth pausing to consider Brahms’ intimate, serendipitous relationship with the clarinet. Like Mozart before him and Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Poulenc and Nielsen after, Brahms came to the clarinet late in life, having intended to put down his pen after the triumph of the great G major Viola Quintet, Op. 111. It was only upon hearing the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld — in a performance of works by none other than Mozart and Weber — that Brahms was inspired to come out of retirement expressly to write for the clarinet. It is therefore to Mühlfeld that we owe those crowning masterpieces from Brahms’ twilight years, the glowing embers of his mature genius: not just the four sublime clarinet works (a Trio for clarinet, cello and piano, Op. 114, the Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115, and two Sonatas, Op. 120), but the treasured piano music, Chorale Preludes and Four Serious Songs written in those years as well.
One of Brahms’ affectionate nicknames for Mühlfeld was “nightingale of the orchestra,” and he was neither the first nor the last to draw the comparison between the clarinet and birds. Whether channeling perky chirping or honeyed birdsong, composers from Beethoven (Pastoral Symphony) to Mahler (First Symphony) and Respighi (Pines of Rome) to Messiaen (Quartet for the End of Time) looked to the clarinet to play the role.
In France, the clarinet profited from a storied woodwind pedagogical tradition at the Paris Conservatory, and the school’s annual Concours nourished the instrument’s repertoire as composition professors penned new contest pieces each year. Incredibly, it was these rather prosaic conditions that gave birth to Debussy’s otherworldly Première Rhapsodie, a spellbinding work that the composer ultimately declared “one of the most pleasing [he had] ever written.”
Meanwhile, Debussy’s fellow Impressionist Maurice Ravel (who also availed himself of the clarinet in his chamber music: Introduction and Allegro and Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé) became acquainted with George Gershwin and fascinated by jazz, in which the clarinet also found itself at home. Indeed, in the collective conscious, Gershwin and the clarinet are practically synonymous, thanks to the iconic, wailing clarinet glissando that opens his Rhapsody in Blue. In addition to his sensational performances in the jazz idiom, Benny Goodman was also behind several of the most important clarinet commissions of the 20th century; Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, Poulenc’s Clarinet Sonata, and Bartók’s Contrasts are among some of the works written for the “King of Swing.” It is telling that the clarinet’s robust repertoire also sports such 20th-century landmark works as Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire; that the instrument so often finds itself in the hands of such masters surely points to its unique expressive qualities.
The diversity of the clarinet instrumental family also contributes to its versatility, and nowhere is the breadth of the clarinet’s relatives put on display like in the clarinet choir. If Mozart did, in fact, invent the soul of the clarinet, so, too, did his music for clarinet ensembles breathe life into the future genre of the clarinet choir. While still a far cry from the 27-piece clarinet assemblage that sprouted in Brussels 100 years after his death, Mozart’s works for three to five mixed members of the clarinet family seem to respond to the same homogeneity of timbre and extensive range that made the full-sized clarinet choir attractive in later centuries. Indeed, its uniform, reedy texture throughout its formidable range of up to six octaves has prompted some to point to the organ-like qualities of a full-range clarinet choir, an association that Guido Six tests in his arrangement of Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor featured on this summer’s “Clarinet Critical Mass” program.
The aforementioned Belgian band of clarinets was created in 1896 by Professor Gustave Poncelet at the Brussels Conservatory, and is generally considered the earliest true clarinet choir. It was after hearing Poncelet’s group — in an arrangement of none other than Mozart’s G minor Symphony — that Richard Strauss was inspired to include the entire instrument family in his orchestras: he did so in his 1909 opera Elektra, which calls for eight players of various clarinets and its derivatives.
In the United States, New York Philharmonic Principal Clarinetist Simeon Bellison spearheaded the most significant clarinet choir of its time, growing the ensemble from its humble beginnings as a quartet of his students in 1927, to a 75-member, mixed-gender choir by 1948. Sponsored by the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Bellison’s Clarinet Ensemble appears in New York Philharmonic’s program archives as early as 1931 for performances at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall, and received financial support from the orchestra for instrument commissions and member scholarships.
The Clarinet Ensemble’s repertoire consisted of works written specifically for it, supplemented by arrangements of music of the great composers done by Bellison himself. One New York Philharmonic program from 1936 asserts that “the clarinet is the only wind instrument which can be assembled as an orchestral unit, owing to its colorful tone approximating the human voice, its technical flexibility and its long range.” Chamber Music Northwest’s Clarinet Celebration was designed to honor and affirm the storied tradition of the clarinet and its repertoire in a similar fashion to Bellison’s programming: an eclectic array of originals and adaptations bookended by Mozart, to whom we owe all of the instrument’s magnificent heritage.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest