About 2700 B.C., the Egyptians created an instrument called the zummara (sometimes referred to as the memet). The zummara was a single-reed instrument, much like the modern day clarinet, but it had a double bore like the double-reeded Greek instrument aulos. The zummara’s two pipes were parallel so that with each finger the player covered two holes, one on each pipe. The pipes were said to be out of tune with each other and produced a very dissonant beating sound.
In India, there was an instrument people now call the double-clarinet but in India it was called the pungi or the magudi. The difference between this instrument and the zummara was that the reed was enclosed in a wooden chamber and the left-hand pipe was drone, and the right-hand pipe was melodic.
Single reed instruments of this type have been found in many cultures throughout the world, as it is a simple way of producing sound. The reeds are called idioglot reeds and are cut out of part of the instrument that is placed inside the mouth to sound. A simple way of reconstructing one of these idioglot reeds is to cut a small triangular slit in a straw, when this is placed in the mouth it produces a buzzing sound. Instruments with these idioglot reeds are first mentioned in dictionaries in France in the Sixteenth century (for example Estienne (1511)) and are decribed in more detail in the Seventeenth Century treatises of Mersenne and Trichet.
The man universally credited for actually inventing, or making, the clarinet was Johann Christoph Denner (1655-1707) of Nuremberg, Germany. J.C. Denner was well-known and well-respected for the high quality woodwind instruments he made. Denner was said to have a creative mind; he toyed with the instruments he so finely crafted and it would seem the clarinet was the result of such tinkering. There is no documented proof that Denner alone developed the clarinet since two of his contemporaries--Klenig, and Oberlender, also made clarinets.
However, it must also be mentioned that (apart from a single instrument at Berkley whose attribution is much disputed) there are no extant clarinets by J.C.Denner, only chalumeaux. It has been suggested by some scholars that the first clarinets were made by Jacob Denner (his son), but again this opinion is greatly contested by academics.
Scholars first believed the clarinet was developed around 1690, but further research has lead scholars and music historians to believe it was developed around 1701-1704. It is also believed the clarinet was first called a mock trumpet. There is a music book discovered by a scholar, Thurston Dart, for mock trumpet which was published in 1698, and this was followed by three similar volumes throughout the next decade. Doubt still remains about who made the clarinet and how.
The accepted hypothesis is that Denner crafted the clarinet, and he did so sometime around 1700. J.G. Doppelmayr, a contemporary of Denner, wrote a Report on the Mathematicians and Artisans of Nuremberg in 1730, twenty-three years after Denner’s death. The report indicates Denner developed the clarinet a little after 1700. Before this historical text was discovered, historians and scholars only had a piece written in 1778 by C.G. Murr, "Description of the Distinguished Features of Nuremberg," wherein Murr wrote that Denner created the clarinet in 1690.
What made the clarinet a clarinet was Denner's great improvement to the old chalumeau. The usual material used for early examples of both instuments is boxwood (a common material in instrument making) with a heteroglot reed (that is seperate to the instrument)tied to the upper side of the mouthpiece therefore vibrated by the upper lip . To change the chalumeau to a clarinet he added a 'speaker key' (also known as the register key) causing the instrument to over-blow , creating a new and higher register for the instrument. This register is known as the clarino register (a reference to a style of trumpet playing) and is thought to be the origin of the name of the instrument. Many modern clarinettists still refer to the overblown register of the clarinet as the clarino register, and to the lower register as the chalumeau.
Acoustically the clarinet acts like a closed cylindrical tube and overblows at the twelfth. He also equipped it with a bell by enlarging the bore.The mouthpiece and barrel joint are made in one piece and, with Denner's aditional key the earliest clarinets are two-keyed instruments. Extant chalumeaux have single keys at the front of the instrument.
The Clarinet's Early Days
There is no mention of the name clarinet until 1712, nearly a decade after Denner made the first playable clarinet. In 1712, four clarinets that were made out of boxwood were bought by the Nuremberg Town band (Ratsmusik). Since Denner worked in Nuremberg and that’s where they first appeared in the band, it is said that Denner gave the instrument its name
The Flute, in music, is the generic term for such wind instruments as the fife, the flageolet, the panpipes, the piccolo, and the recorder. The tone of all flutes is produced by an air stream directed against an edge, producing eddies that set up vibrations in the air enclosed in the attached tube. In the transverse flute, the principal orchestral flute today, the edge is on the mouth hole on the side of the instrument, over which the player blows. The transverse flute is an extremely old instrument, universal in ancient and primitive cultures. It was known in Europe by the 9th century. During the baroque period both the recorder and the transverse flute were used in the orchestra.
In the classical period the transverse flute replaced the less-powerful recorder, which could not match its dynamic range. In the 19th century the transverse flute assumed substantially its present form after the improvements of Theobald Boehm who ascertained the acoustically correct size and placement of the holes and devised an ingenious system of keys to cover them. The flute was originally made of wood but is now most often of silver. It is the most brilliant and agile of the orchestral woodwinds, and it also has a considerable solo and chamber-music literature. The transverse flute has been made in several keys, but the C flute has long been standard. The alto flute in G, a fourth below the regular flute, is notated as a transposing instrument.
The piccolo is a type of transverse flute that is pitched an octave above the concert (or standard) flute. It has a range of nearly three octaves and reaches the highest pitches of a modern orchestra. It is usually used for special effects in orchestras but is more widely used in concert and marching bands. It is played in the same manner as a flute would be played.
The piccolo was originally made out of wood and was featured in man prominent composers' works. One of the earliest pieces to use the piccolo was Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. However, the most familiar use of the piccolo is in the end of John Philip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever."
The Development of the Oboe as we know it to-day has mainly taken place over the past 350 years. Prior to the late 17th Century its earlier ancestor was as a Shawm that was used mainly for outdoor dancing events and military occasions. The shawm was a wooden instrument played with a double reed inside the top of the instrument, slightly similar to a bassoon reed, rather than the one we use inserted in the top of the Oboe to-day. The Shawm was of a conical shape, as is the Oboe, but with a larger bore (i.e.it is wider!). It was exceedingly loud and strident which was fine out doors, but not so good when an instrument was required for indoor performances.
In 1655 two Frenchmen adapted the shawm to make it more indoor friendly. They arranged to split it into three separate jointed pieces for ease of carrying it about. They reduced the size of the bore and changed the reed into one attached to a staple and looking more familiar to those of us who play the Oboe to-day. They named it the hautbois (high wood) which changed over time to hoboy and eventually oboe. This meant that, when Bach, Handel and other Baroque period composers were writing their great works, they had available this instrument with enormous potential for a very special solo type of sound. Bach often used it in his major choral works to accompany the Soprano and Alto soloists, as well as a solo instrument in its own right. There were many solo works written for it by Albinoni, Vivaldi and many, many other composers of the period.
It was quite a simple instrument with the standard recorder finger holes and only the beginnings of some very basic keywork to simplify the intricate fingering needed to play these difficult works. There are manufacturer's to-day replicating these Baroque Oboes so the works can be performed and heard as they would have been heard in the 18th century.
The pitch of the Baroque oboe was approximately set at a sharper level than the modern day Oboe possibly giving a slightly brighter sound. The original pitch was around A=415Hz whereas to-day's generally accepted concert pitch level of A=440 Hz.
The saxophone was developed circa 1840 by Adolphe, a Belgian-born instrument-maker, flautist, and clarinetist working in Paris. Although he had constructed saxophones in several sizes by the early 1840s, he did not receive a 15-year patent for the instrument until June 28, 1846. It was first officially revealed to the public in the presentation of the bass saxophone in C at an exhibition in Brussels in 1841. Sax also gave private showings to Parisian musicians in the early 1840s. He drew up plans for 14 different types of saxophones, but they were not all realized.
The inspiration for the instrument is unknown, but there is good evidence that fitting a clarinet mouthpiece to an ophicleide is the most likely origin (Sax built ophicleides among other instruments in the late 1830s). Doing so results in an instrument with a definitely saxophone-like sound. The Hungarian/Romanian tarogato, which is quite similar to a soprano saxophone, has also been speculated to have been an inspiration. However, this cannot be so, as the modern tarogato with a single-reed mouthpiece was not developed until the 1890s, long after the saxophone had been invented.
Sax's intent, which was plainly stated in his writings, was to invent an entirely new instrument which could provide bands and orchestras with a bass to the woodwind and brass sections, capable of more refined performance than the ophicleide, but with enough power to be used outdoors. In short, Sax intended to harness the finesse of a woodwind with the power of a brass instrument. However, as Sax often offended rival instrument manufacturers, the resulting prejudice toward the man and his instruments led to the saxophone not being used in orchestral groups. For a long time, it was relegated to military bands, despite Sax's great friendship with the influential Parisian composer Hector Berlioz.
For the duration of the patent (1846-1866), only the Sax factory could legally manufacture or modify the instruments, although this and Sax's numerous other patents were routinely breached by his rivals. After the patent expired in 1866, many different manufacturers introduced competing models, including many different modifications to Sax's original design
