The heckel-clarina, also known as clarina or patent clarina, is a very rare woodwind instrument

Woodwind instrument

A woodwind instrument is a musical instrument which produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator to vibrate...

, invented and manufactured by Wilhelm Heckel

Wilhelm Heckel

Wilhelm Heckel GmbH is a manufacturer of woodwind instruments based in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is best known for its bassoons, which are considered some of the finest available....

 in Wiesbaden-Biebrich

Wiesbaden-Biebrich

Biebrich is a borough of the city of Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany. With over 36,000 inhabitants, it is the most-populated of Wiesbaden's boroughs. It is located south of the city center on the Rhine River, opposite the Mainz borough of Mombach...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. Heckel received a patent for the instrument on 8 December, 1889. It was apparently intended to be used for the shepherd’s pipe solo in Act III of Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's Tristan und Isolde

Tristan und Isolde

Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...

. It was used beginning in 1891 at the Festspielhaus

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

The or Bayreuth Festival Theatre is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, dedicated solely to the performance of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner...

, Bayreuth as a substitute for Wagner's Holztrompete

Holztrompete

A Holztrompete , an instrument somewhat resembling the Alpenhorn in tone-quality, designed by Richard Wagner for representing the natural pipe of the peasant in Tristan und Isolde...

. The clarina was found more practical and more effective in producing the desired tone-colour.

The heckel-clarina is a single reed

Single-reed instrument

A single-reed instrument is a woodwind instrument that uses only one reed to produce sound. Examples include clarinets, saxophones, and some bagpipes. In a single-reed instrument, the reed is attached to a mouthpiece that is blown into to vibrate the reed, producing the sound...

, conical bore

Bore (wind instruments)

The bore of a wind instrument is its interior chamber that defines a flow path through which air travels and is set into vibration to produce sounds. The shape of the bore has a strong influence on the instruments' timbre.-Bore shapes:...

 instrument made of metal, resembling a soprano saxophone

Soprano saxophone

The soprano saxophone is a variety of the saxophone, a woodwind instrument, invented in 1840. The soprano is the third smallest member of the saxophone family, which consists of the soprillo, sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, contrabass and tubax.A transposing instrument pitched in...

.
It has the fingering of the oboe and the clarinet single-reed mouthpiece. Two versions, one a transposing instrument

Transposing instrument

A transposing instrument is a musical instrument for which written notes are read at a pitch different from the corresponding concert pitch, which a non-transposing instrument, such as a piano, would play. Playing a written C on a transposing instrument will produce a note other than concert C...

 in B♭ and one in E♭, were produced. According to Heckel's promotional materials, the heckel-clarina's tone resembled that of a cor anglais

Cor anglais

The cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....

 in its low register

Register (music)

In music, a register is the relative "height" or range of a note, set of pitches or pitch classes, melody, part, instrument or group of instruments...

, a saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

 in the middle, and a clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

 in its upper range. The compass of the B♭ instrument is:

Notation.	Real sounds.

The clarina was found very effective as a solo instrument. The instrument is not to be confused with the heckelphone-clarinet

Heckelphone-clarinet

The heckelphone-clarinet is a rare woodwind instrument, invented in 1907 by Wilhelm Heckel in Wiesbaden-Biebrich, Germany. Despite its name, it is essentially a wooden saxophone with wide conical bore, built of red-stained maple wood, overblowing the octave, and with clarinet-like fingerings...

, also a very rare conical bore single reed woodwind by Heckel but lower in pitch and made of wood.

External links

• Diagram of heckel-clarina, heckelphone-clarinet, and saxophone from 1931 Heckel catalog.