If used today, it would probably be used for “shock value”, as so many contemporary composers seem to get off on. One of the last composers of truly significant music, Dimitri Shostakovich, wrote tellingly well for only the usual trio - Bb(A), Eb piccy and bass.
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I played Eb on Shostokovitch 5, that was a nice part. Unfortunately few composers seem to understand it as you noted and like to use it for fireworks, but it’s got more going for it than that. The way to think of these is that as you go up/down the clarinet family you get thicker to thinner timbre’s or colors. The lower ones get more ‘Entish’, more ‘hoom-hoom’ with a thicker, richer tone that just thins out as you go up. They’ve all got full ranges, so if you care about the tone could pick the one that gives you more of that.
Mahler was also a master of orchestration. Something not done but would be a great pairing is to use the Eb to give more drive to the clarinets. Just parallel it up in the same or upper octave. Anyhow Mahler did this by pairing oboes with clarinets, like in the fifth, second movement, solo both with an intense crescendo. I’d have to pull the score, but anyhow the Eb/Bb would make a great alternative to that kind of effect.
I’m a clarinetist and just completed a 5-movement work in two versions: one for clarinet quartet (one on a part) and clarinet choir (could be an army?). I’ve played the Bb & A soprano clarinets, the Eb sopranino, a Bb bass, and an old “paper clip” shaped BBb contrabass clarinet. My Dorico for iPad put everything in correct score order for this ensemble, including the Eb alto clarinet (not to be confused with the Eb contra alto an octave lower). The best composer/arranger source material for all this an more is Samuel Adler’s Orchestration book. He was at Eastman when I was an undergrad and then went to Juilliard. Each instrument has it’s own unique characteristics, although they all share the same treble clef, fingerings and “written” range. The lower instruments do have various low extensions. The upper range beyond 3 octaves or so is more a function of the individual player’s ability.
The C Clarinets are sometimes available (rarely) but they are notorious for being impossible to tune with the ensemble (too sharp some say).
I routinely use an Eb, but I do wonder how standard it is among professional players.
very standard
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Probably only used in period ensembles like for the Beethoven symphonies. I have heard the same thing about the C clarinets being impossible to tune.
But I believe he general principle is that within an instrument family, the score order generally runs from high to low, so I would expect the A to appear below the Bb in the odd case where both are orchestrated.
Of course! But if you have an orchestration with a soprano clarinet in A, and a bass clarinet in Bb, the A clarinet goes up and the bass down, regardless the tuning.
I believe we agree on this . I would think that if an orchestration had a Bb, A, alto, bass, conta-alto and contra-bass, that is the order they should appear top to bottom.
Hello to all
for your information here is the order of the clarinets in an extract from Elektra by Richard Strauss. You can see that the Bb and A clarinets are used at the same time in the score. (which always causes problems with the unisons, but the blend is fantastic to listen to).
clario
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Actually he used both to avoid the problem of doing a half step trill on B (where the range splits).
B
as a composer (pianist and ex-bassoonist) I have to say that in that video, the only instruments that had any value to me “as clarinets” were the Bb bass, the Bb and A “clarinet”, and the Eb soprano.
those huge super-low ones stopped sounding like clarinets, and the tiniest ones were too screamy for my personal taste.
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I just wanted to mention that with doricolib files, this is a simple fix, and you don’t have to edit the factory files (and make backups, etc) at all. I just made a new Jazz score order where I fixed the erroneous clarinet positioning as well, but I remembered this thread and figured I’d post an Orchestral order with this fix too.
All you have to do is unzip this doricolib file and add it to your user DefaultLibraryAdditions folder. In Windows that lives at Users\yournamehere\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Dorico 4\DefaultLibraryAdditions. Once added, Clarinet in A will default to being positioned under Clarinet in Bb. If there are any additional edits that you’d like to make to the default Orchestral score order, obviously you can make those in the file as well.
OrchestralScoreOrder.zip (3.8 KB)
EDIT: I’m pretty sure this only will work with New files though. I think existing files have the score order embedded in them from when they were created.
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