Developement Of The Clarinet

Denner was very creative and inquiring. It is thought that the clarinet was the result of apparent experimentation with the chalumeau. Denner greatly improved the old chalumeau by making the clarinet out of boxwood with replaceable reeds tied on with string. This caused the instrument to play higher harmonics, creating a whole new and higher register for the instrument. He also made a bell for the clarinet and enlarged the bore, made the mouthpiece and barrel one piece, then added two keys that worked as a register key. It is the presence of that register key that marks the most historically and musically important difference between the old chalumeau and Denner's new clarinet (Pino 198).
             Now that the clarinet had a new sound with the ability to play in two registers and composers willing to compose music for the clarinet it would find its permanent place in music history. .
             The earliest mention of a piece of music composed for the clarinet is four concertos for the clarinet. Composed by Johann M. Molter and are significant because they are the oldest solo clarinet music in existence. The wind sections of most orchestras continued to grow throughout the seventeen hundreds. In 1749 Jean-Philippe Rameau introduced the clarinet to the sophisticated people of Paris when he included the clarinet in the score of his opera Zoroastre (Pino 202). Johann Christian Bach introduced the clarinet in London in 1751 by using it in several of his compositions. Most notably the great composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven, wrote music for the wind section for what would become the basis for the wind section of the normal classical orchestra. It would be the composer Mozart that is noted for putting the clarinet on the map so to speak. .
             Mozart wrote his famous concerto for his good friend, Anton Stadler who was a virtuoso. Mozart himself became interested in the clarinet in the early 1760's because of his friend and began composing for it in 1771 (Pino 207).