In search for hidden repertoire gems: A performer´s approach to Russian and Soviet clarinet music

In her doctoral research, Anne Elisabeth Piirainen sheds light on a little known aspect of the clarinet repertoire – clarinet music from Russia and the former Soviet Union. This performance-based research gives insight into a large variety of very valuable yet quite forgotten compositions with a special focus on clarinet works with Jewish themes. The thesis is published as a website and includes an extensive clarinet composition database that aims to close the research gap on this topic.

The Baroque Clarinet and Chalumeau

The second edition of The Baroque Clarinet (1992) is a history of the clarinet and chalumeau from antiquity to 1760 in six chapters: “Origins of the Chalumeau,” “Music for the Chalumeau,” “The Earliest Clarinets,” “Playing Techniques for the Baroque Clarinet,” “Music for the Baroque Clarinet,” and “Baroque Clarinet in Society.” There are five appendices: four checklists of extant chalumeaux, extant clarinets, chalumeau music and sources from 1694 to 1780, clarinet music and sources from about 1715 to 1760; and a fifth of chalumeau and clarinet concerts, rehearsals, and clarinets for purchase in newspaper advertisements from 1718 to 1760. The second edition has significant additions of makers, players, music, and iconography, that last in a chapter called “The Baroque Clarinet in Society.” Topics discussed include single-reed instruments in Egyptian antiquity and from the 10th through the 17th centuries; the mock trumpet; chalumeaux during the 17th and 18th centuries; Jacob Denner’s chalumeaux and clarinets; an organ pipe that sounds like a chalumeau; chalumeau players; chalumeau descriptions from the mid-18th century; later documented chalumeau makers; chalumeau reproductions; how and why Johann Christoph Denner improved the chalumeau and invented the clarinet, based on previous studies of mechanical inventions; chalumeau and clarinet music and composers; and the Baroque clarinet’s use by traveling musicians, in court and aristocratic music, church and civic music, and military music.