Basset clarinet.

A soprano clarinet (see Clarinet, §II, 1) whose range is extended downwards to written c, in the manner of the basset-horn (it is classified as an Aerophone). The instrument was probably devised by Anton Stadler in collaboration with the Viennese instrument maker T. Lotz. Several of Mozart’s compositions were intended for a basset clarinet rather than for an instrument of conventional range: the Concerto k622 and the Quintet k581 required a basset clarinet in A, while the clarinet obbligato in La clemenza di Tito required a basset clarinet in B. Manuscript cadenzas to a concerto by Leopold Kozeluch [A-Wn 5853) are written for a basset clarinet, but little is known of the history of the instrument other than in Stadler’s hands. A basset clarinet dating from about 1840 (16 keys) by J.G.K. Bischoff is in the collection at Darmstadt (Kg61:116) and a later 19th-century example (with contemporary ‘simple-system’ keywork) can be found in the Bate Collection, Oxford (for a list of surviving instruments, see Lawson). The basset clarinet was revived (with modern keywork) in Prague in 1951 by Jiří Kratochvíl in order to perform Mozart’s concerto as the composer intended; since that date a number have been made, notably in England by E. Planus. Richard Rodney Bennett (Crosstalk, c1966) and Anthony Gilbert (Spell Respell, 1968) have composed for the instrument.

The term ‘basset clarinet’ has been preferred for the late 20th-century revival of the historical instrument because the term ‘bass clarinet’, used originally by Stadler for his extended soprano instrument, is now used to describe the instrument pitched an octave lower.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(see also Clarinet)

C. Lawson: Mozart Clarinet Concerto (Cambridge, 1996)

P.L. Poulin: ‘Anton Stadler’s Basset Clarinet: Recent Discoveries in Riga’, JAMIS, xxii (1996), 110–27

NICHOLAS SHACKLETON