Instruments of the Orchestra, a program for elementary
and junior high school to be presented by the
Wisconsin School of the Year, your television teacher is
Professor Richard C.
Schurk, and Doctor of the University of
Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.
[Piano music]
Hello, boys and girls.
I wonder how many of you know the name of the instrument
that I've been playing on.
What is it?
The clarinet.
That's right.
The clarinet is one of the most popular of the
woodwind instruments.
There are usually four clarinet players in a symphony orchestra,
and in a concert band you might expect to find
as many as 20 or more.
Let's see if we can find the clarinet up here in
our big picture of the orchestra conductor's score.
Here it is up with the woodwinds, right under
the oboe, and the flute, and right above the bassoon.
I think all of you know by now that whenever
we hear a musical sound, it's because something
is vibrating.
Last week we talked about the flute, and its little
baby brother, the pecklele.
And you remember that the air was made to vibrate
by blowing across a hole.
How many of you tried making a sound by blowing
across the top of a bottle?
Could you do it?
Well, if it didn't work out very well,
why don't you find somebody who plays flute in a junior
higher high school to help you because making a sound
on a bottle and making a sound on a flute
take exactly the same kind of blowing.
On our other three woodwind instruments, the oboe, the
clarinet, and the bassoon.
What is it that does the vibrating?
I'll read.
I'm going to explain about the clarinet read today.
The clarinet uses a single read.
So I thought we'd talk about it before we'd talk about
the oboe and the bassoon, which used double reads.
Now a read is made from a growing plant that looks
very much like bamboo.
Did you ever go fishing with a bamboo pole?
Well, a cane used for making a read is like the
bamboo in a fish pole, accepting that it's bigger
around, and pieces are cut off from all along the sides
of the cane to make each of the reads.
Would you like to have a close look at a clarinet read?
The read itself is rather small.
It looks like this.
So let's look at a drawing of a read.
Here you can see where the readmaker has cut through
the hard bark of the cane down into the soft inner part.
And in this side view here, you can see how that cut is tapered
so that the read is very, very thin at the tip.
Now let's look at our real read again.
Here you see the very thin tip right here.
In fact, it's so thin and fragile that the first thing you
learn about playing a clarinet is to be extremely careful
of the read and not bump it against anything.
Of course, you wouldn't want to bump or drop
any musical instrument but with any read instrument be
very, very careful of the read.
Well, now how does the read get onto the clarinet?
Let's look at the read.
As you can see, the mouthpiece is flat along
this side right here and then it curves down
a little bit at this end.
So there's an opening between the tip of the read and
the tip of the mouthpiece.
The player moistened the read before he puts
it onto the mouthpiece.
And the read is held in place with this metal ligature.
On a time, clarinet players used to tie the read onto
the mouthpiece with string.
But nowadays we use this metal ligature and we adjust the read
so that the tip of the read is exactly even with
the tip of the mouthpiece and then we tighten these
screws on this ligature to hold the read in place.
Now let's look at a drawing of a clarinet mouthpiece
with the read attached to it.
Here you can see an opening between the read and
the tip of the mouthpiece for the air to go through.
And when the player blows the read vibrates like this
right out here at the tip and this vibration of the
read right here is what makes the musical sound.
Well now we're ready to put the mouthpiece onto the clarinet.
And I think it would be nice if we heard some real
music on the clarinet.
Don't you?
We have a special guest who came today to play for you.
His name is Neil Hoffman and he's one of the clarinet
players in the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.
Neil is going to play part of a clarinet solo written
by the composer Mozart.
[Music]
Thank you very much.
Neil went to high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin
and his accompanist at the piano was Pamela Green.
Pamela incidentally plays the viola and the organ in
addition to playing the piano.
Now would you like to learn how to blow a clarinet?
Well if you'll watch me very closely I'm going to show you.
In the first place it's important to hold the lips and
the mouth just exactly right.
The lower lip is turned in slightly above half the red.
Over the lower teeth the form of thin cushion between the
lower teeth and the read.
And then the upper teeth rest lightly on the
mouthpiece like this.
It's also very important to hold the sides of the
mouth in very very firmly so that the air doesn't
escape out along the sides.
And it also is better if we don't puff our
cheeks out like this.
We hold them in like this.
Now if I hold my mouth just right and put the mouthpiece
just far enough into my mouth I should be able to make
a nice sound on the clarinet.
Let's try it.
[Bell]
Do you remember the last week I talked about that little
old-fashioned flute with the six holes along the sides?
Well here it is again.
Do you remember we said that whenever you blow into an
instrument the air tries to get out just as soon as it can.
And when I close more and more of these holes with my finger
it made the air go farther before it could get out.
Now as I close more and more holes did that make
the sound higher or lower?
That's right it made it lower.
Well now let's see if it works the same way on the clarinet.
Here you see six holes along the top of the
clarinet just the same as we had on the little flute.
There are some keys around them but there are just our
six holes just the same.
In the back we have another hole which the
thumb is going to cover.
Now would you like to finger a learn how to finger
a scale on the clarinet?
All right will you please pick up a pencil
with your right hand?
The last time we used a pencil we pretended it
was a conductor's baton.
Do you remember?
Well now we're going to pretend
that it's a clarinet.
Let's put it with the eraser and hop like that.
Now take your left hand and grasp the pencil between
the thumb and first finger way up here near the end.
Now I'll show you how that looks on a real clarinet.
I'm going to close that thumb hole and this hole right here.
Take your right hand and put it about halfway down
the pencil the way I put my thumb about halfway down
this real clarinet like that.
Now let's see what that tone sounds like if we blow it.
These other fingers now should be stretched out
hanging up over here like this because we're going to
use those to close the holes.
So when I put my finger down you put your finger down and
put the eraser end of the pencil between your lips not
too far in but just to help hold it and pretend you're
blowing gently along with me and put your fingers down with
me. Alright here we go.
We'll play this tone once more.
Now put one finger down to imagine you're closing a hole.
Now we'll keep these three fingers covering
those holes there and now we'll use our right hand.
We're going to put the first finger down first.
Now you do what I do.
We have six holes covered now and if I want to go any lower
I've got to use this key right here which closes a hole with
a pad over it so far down that I couldn't very well reach
it with that little finger.
So would you please put your right hand little
finger down on your pencil?
Alright, we'll try that.
To play the very lowest note on the clarinet I need this
key right here which closes a hole way down near that end.
So would you please put your little finger down too?
We'll play this lowest tone.
Well you just learn to finger scale on the clarinet.
You can put your pencil down now.
So far I've only been talking about the lower tones on
the clarinet.
As you heard earlier today it can play
higher too.
Now how do you suppose we play higher?
I'm going to show you.
Back here right above this thumb
hole is a special magic key.
Let's use to play the high notes with and if I press
that thumb hole and then tip my thumb so that that key
opens a hole we can play a higher tone.
Now watch this.
Isn't that sort of interesting?
These other keys are used to play the sharps and the flats.
So the clarinet player learns how to hold his mouth
and how to blow and which fingers to put down to get
all the different tones.
I hope some of you may want to learn to play
the clarinet sometime.
Would you like to see some of these other clarinets
different sizes that I brought along to show you?
Here's an interesting one.
It's a little E flat clarinet and because it's smaller
it plays higher tone.
Down here we have an alto clarinet and here is a bass
clarinet. Now because this bass clarinet is so much larger than
our regular clarinet we could expect it to play lower notes.
So let's just cut it away and listen to this.
Well what have we seen today now?
We've seen this bass clarinet and this alto clarinet
and our little E flat clarinet say I almost forgot something.
I brought something very special along.
I'll bet you've never seen a clarinet
this small.
Look at this.
This is a tiny A flat clarinet that's used in bands in Italy.
Well now we've talked about the clarinet read and the clarinet
mouthpiece and the ligature.
Next week we're going to talk about the ovals which
are in the woodwind family and have double read.
And we're going to also talk about another single read
instrument that doesn't appear in our score.
What do you think it is?
Wait and see.
See you then.
Goodbye.
[Music]
This has been instruments of the orchestra, a television
program for elementary and junior high school pupils.
Your television teacher is Professor Richard C.
Church, conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra.
This has been a Wisconsin School of the Air presentation.
[Music]