FR: Reworked Clarinet Section

The clarinets in available in Dorico’s instrument picker are currently quite messy with several members in wrong or misleading categories and several extant members are missing or, in the case of the lower clarinets, sometimes have “presentation” options that are missing or not ideal.

This is how they are currently arranged in the instrument picker:

  • Clarinet
    • A
    • A-flat
    • B-flat
    • C
    • D
    • E-flat
  • Piccolo Clarinet
    • A-flat
  • Sopranino Clarinet
    • A-flat
    • E-flat
  • Soprano Clarinet
    • A
    • B-flat
    • C
    • D
  • Basset Horn
  • Alto Clarinet
    • Default
    • Bass Clef Full Score
  • Bass Clarinet
    • A
    • A Bass Clef Full Score
    • A Sounds 8va bassa
    • Bb
    • Bb Bass Clef Full Score
    • Bb Sounds 8va bassa
  • Contra Alto Clarinet
    • Default
    • Bass Clef Full Score
    • Sounds 8va bassa
  • Contrabass Clarinet
    • Default
    • Bass Clef Full Score
    • Sounds 15ma bassa

Ideally, the upper clarinets should be restructured to (note that order that they appear within each type in now sorted by pitch, rather than alphabetically):

  • Clarinet
    • A-flat
    • E-flat
    • D
    • C
    • B-flat [Default selection]
    • A
  • Piccolo Clarinet
    • A-flat [Default selection]
    • E-flat [Possibly language/region dependent]
    • D [Possibly language/region dependent]
  • Sopranino Clarinet
    • E-flat [Default selection]
    • D
  • Soprano Clarinet
    • E-flat [Possibly language/region dependent]
    • D [Possibly language/region dependent]
    • C
    • B-flat [Default selection]
    • A

The missing extant upper clarinets are as follows:

  • Clarinet
    • G (sounding a perfect fourth below middle C) [Common in Turkey and surrounding countries, a/k/a Clarinette d’amour]
  • Clarinette d’amour
    • G (sounding a perfect fourth below middle C) [Common in Turkey and surrounding countries]
  • Basset Clarinet
    • C (concert pitch, range down to written C) [Rare]
    • Bb (sounding a major second below middle C, range down to written C) [Rare]
    • A (sounding a minor third below middle C, range down to written C) [Common]

The existing lower clarinets are correctly categorized, but there are a still a few missing.

  • Bass Clarinet
    • C (sounding an octave below middle C) [Rare]
  • Contrabass Clarinet
    • E-flat [a/k/a Contra Alto Clarinet, should be included here as both names are acceptable]
    • C (sounding two octaves below middle C) [Extinct]
    • A (sounding two octaves and a minor 3rd below middle C) [Schoenberg wrote for it, but it may never have existed]

The lower clarinets usually have two or more options on how they appear in concert pitch, but some of the options are not ideal, missing or are useless as software defaults which can make working with them in a score awkward. I’ve marked two defaults for each type below using a + and a ++ respectively, for the sake of consistency, I’d recommend that Dorico stick to either all + defaults (Bass clef concert pitch with octave adjustment - ideal for orchestras and commercial settings where a “score in C” is the default) or all ++ defaults (Treble clef with octave adjustments - ideal for clarinet choirs, concert bands, etc.) for the sake of consistency (even better would be to have it a a global preference that can be changed by the user).

  • Basset Horn:
    • +Treble Clef, sounds 8va bassa [Useful in conjuction with Bass Clarinet with same concert pitch view]
    • ++Bass Clef, sounds 8va alta [Pitches don’t move much when switching layouts]
    • Bass Clef, sounding at pitch [Legacy - not particularly useful, but does at least keep the chalumeau (and basset) register in the staff in concert pitch, even if that’s at the expense of the clarion and altissimo registers]
    • Treble Clef, sounding at pitch [Legacy (current Default)- not very useful as it pushes the chalumeau (and basset) register too far below the staff in concert pitch] *
  • Alto Clarinet:
    • +Treble Clef, sounds 8va bassa [Useful in conjuction with Bass Clarinet with same concert pitch view, maintains the same range as a Bb Clarinet]
    • ++Bass Clef, sounds 8va alta [Pitches don’t move when switching layouts]
    • Bass Clef, sounding at pitch [not particularly useful, but does at least keep the chalumeau (and basset) register in the staff in concert pitch, even if that’s at the expense of the clarion and altissimo registers]
    • Treble Clef, sounding at pitch [Legacy (current Default)- not very useful as it pushes the chalumeau (and basset) register too far below the staff in concert pitch]
  • Bass Clarinet:
    • +Treble Clef, sounds 8va bassa [Maintains the same range as a Bb Clarinet]
    • ++Bass Clef, sounding at pitch [Useful when working with Bassoon, Cello, etc.]
    • Treble clef, at pitch [Legacy (current Default) - practically useless as all notes below the altissimo register sit under the middle of the staff in concert pitch]
  • Contra Alto (Eb Contrabass) Clarinet:
    • +Treble Clef, sounding 15ma bassa [Maintains the same range as an Eb Clarinet]
    • ++Bass Clef, sounding at pitch [Pitches don’t move when switching layouts, especially useful when writing a part that works for both Eb and Bb Contra]
    • Treble clef, at pitch [Legacy (current Default) - practically useless as all notes below the altissimo register sit under the staff in concert pitch]
    • Treble Clef, sounds 8va bassa [Not very useful as it pushes the chalumeau register too far below the staff]
  • Contrabass clarinet:
    • +Treble Clef, sounding 15ma bassa [Maintains the same range as a Bb or Bass Clarinet]
    • ++Bass Clef, sounding 8va bassa [Bb Contra has roughly the same range as a Contrabassoon]
    • Bass Clef, sounding at pitch [Useful when writing a part that works for both Eb and Bb Contra]
    • Treble clef, at pitch [Legacy (current Default) - practically useless as all notes below the upper altissimo register sit under the staff in concert pitch]

I’m aware that this would likely be a lot of work for the developers, but it would also be great if some of the low clarinets (particularly the Bass Clarinets) had the option to also choose how the Transposed layout displays (possibly best handled in the Notation or Engraving Options dialogs). This would make it considerably easier to transpose parts written in older notations (so called German, Russian and Italian notations, see this blog post for more info) without having to remember to use the correct octave clef each time there is a clef change. If this work was done, this same system could be used for Horn parts written in old notation.

Finally, the Basset Horn is currently the only member of the clarinet family that does not appear when searching “clarinet” in the picker (in English at least). It would be great it something could be done under the hood so that this is no longer the case.

5 Likes

Thanks very much for taking the time to put this together. I can’t promise that I will be able to take care of this in the immediate future, but I have made a note of this, and the next time I’m able to take a proper look at the default instrument definitions I will try to implement some of these suggestions.

6 Likes

So, at least in 4.0, this can be made to work with very little manual effort, at least for the piccolo’s

see: Proper Handling of Piccolo Clarinets - #3 by TylerE