14 January: The Clarinet

The Clarinet was invented in Nurnberg, Germany on this date in 1690 - at least one of my sources said this, although most don't specify a specific date so I don't know how reliable the date is - but I found ten facts about clarinets, so here they are, anyway.

1. The clarinet belongs to the woodwind family of instruments. It has a single-reed mouthpiece, a straight cylindrical tube with an almost cylindrical bore (ie the empty space inside the instrument is the same diameter through the whole length, a feature unique to the clarinet - most reed instruments have conical bores which are narrower at the top end) and a flared bell.
2. The word clarinet comes from the French word “clarinette” which means "little trumpet".
3. The inventor of the clarinet was a famous woodwind instrument maker of the Baroque era called Johann Denner. His father had been a maker of game whistles and hunting horns.
4. What Denner did was take a different instrument called a chalumeau, a Baroque instrument similar to a recorder, and make improvements to it.
5. The clarinet was the last instrument to be included in a symphony orchestra, although by 1800, most orchestras included clarinets.
6. This would have been thanks to Mozart, who was the first major composer to write music specifically for the clarinet. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major is one of the most famous clarinet tunes. Mozart like the clarinet because he thought its tone was the closest of all the instruments to the tone of the human voice.
7. More recently, the instrument became a staple of jazz bands. A famous clarinet tune from more recent years is George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. There are relatively few clarinets in rock music, but it's not unknown. Jerry Martini played clarinet on Sly and the Family Stone's 1968 hit, Dance to the Music, for example. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Aerosmith, Billy Joel, and Tom Waits have used clarinets from time to time.
8. Famous clarinettists include Benny Goodman, Richard Stoltzman, Sabine Meyer, Eddie Daniels, Artie Shaw and Acker Bilk, who had several hits in the UK in the 1960s, including Stranger on the Shore. Celebrity clarinet players include Jimmy Kimmel, Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Alan Greenspan.
9. The smallest clarinet is the Ab piccolo clarinet. These aren't very common; if you want one, you'd need to order it specially from the LeBlanc company in France. The largest commonly used clarinet is the contrabass, but the LeBlanc company have produced a small number of octocontralto clarinets and one octocontrabass clarinet.
10. Clarinets are mostly made from the wood of the Mpingo or African blackwood tree, although other woods have been used, such as grenadilla, Honduran rosewood and cocobolo. Plastic, hard rubber, metal, resin, and ivory have also been used to make clarinets.

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Secrets and Skies

Jack Ward, President of Innovia, owes his life twice over to the enigmatic superhero, dubbed Power Blaster by the press. No-one knows who Power Blaster is or where he comes from - and he wants it to stay that way.

Scientist Desi Troyes has developed a nuclear bomb to counter the ever present threat of an asteroid hitting the planet. When Ward signs the order giving the go ahead for a nuclear test on the remote Bird Island, he has no inkling of Troyes' real agenda, and that he has signed the death warrants of millions of people.

Although the island should have been evacuated, there are people still there: some from the distant continent of Classica; protesters opposed to the bomb test; and Innovians who will not, or cannot, use their communication devices.

Power Blaster knows he must stop the bomb from hitting the island. He also knows it may be the last thing he ever does.

Meanwhile in Innovia, Ward and his staff gather to watch the broadcast of the test. Nobody, not even Troyes himself, has any idea what is about to happen.

Part One of The Raiders Trilogy.

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