Chapter VI: Reed Position and Embouchure

    A long-lasting clarinet-playing tradition in France was playing with the reed against the upper lip. This type of embouchure derived from the fact the first clarinetists were most likely double reed players doubling on this novelty instrument. While this reed position was common all over Europe, in the wake of the nineteenth century, and with the rising numbers of specializing clarinetists, musicians in the German-speaking countries increasingly preferred playing with the reed against the bottom lip. They claimed that playing with the reed down gives them more stability in the tone, a better grip of the instrument, and makes articulating with the tongue easier. Many words were written on the subject of the reed position by great pedagogues for nearly a century since the first methods for the instrument, discussing the merits of each.

    In Article II - “On the Embouchure” - in his 1785 Méthode Nouvelle et Raisonnée pour La Clarinette, Amand Vanderhagen gives a detailed description of how to form the embouchure:

"We must not then engage the instrument except as I have said previously, by supporting the mouthpiece on the teeth, and covering the reed with the upper lip without the teeth of the upper jaw touching in any circumstance. Because the teeth support, and give strength to the upper lip for holding in the high notes, it is also necessary that the sides of the mouth be very firm in order not to allow wind to exit the sides of the embouchure."1

In this excerpt, Vanderhagen describes the formation of the reed-above embouchure but does not specify that the bottom lip should curl over the teeth as well and form a double embouchure, so the teeth would come in contact with neither the reed nor the mouthpiece itself.

In his 1799 Methode Vanderhagen provides a similar description:

"We must not, consequently, have an embouchure around the reed except for as I have said above, by supporting it on the teeth and covering the reed by the upper lip so that the teeth do not touch it at all. Being covered by the lip the teeth give strength for pinching or for modifying playing. It is also necessary to take care that the sides of the mouth are closed tightly so that we do not hear wind exiting from the sides of the embouchure." 2

Vanderhagen was only one of many French clarinetists who used, wrote about, and taught the reed-above embouchure. In his 1796 Nouvelle Method de Clarinette, Frédéric Blasius instructs the reader to cover the reed with the upper lip while avoiding contact of the teeth with the reed. The fingering chart at the beginning of the book also illustrates a five-key clarinet with the reed clearly facing up.3 Michel Yost also provided a similar description of the embouchure in the opening essay of his Méthode de Clarinette.4
Jean-Xavier Lefèvre, who studied with the great French clarinetist Michèl Yost, wrote of the embouchure: “…. To form the correct embouchure for the mouthpiece of the clarinet, it should be held between the lower and upper lips so that they are slightly pulled back, half a centimeter from the tip of the reed. This is the way to achieve a firm embouchure and to prevent the teeth from touching the tip;”5.

In Johann Georg Heinrich Backofen’s method, Anweisung zur Klarinette nebst einer kurzen Abhandlung über das Bassett-Horn, an illustration of the clarinet shows the reed facing up, consistent with the common playing tradition in France. However, he also writes the following remark:

"I don't want to decide whether it's better to hold the reed to your upper or lower lip when playing - what the clarinetists call playing above or below - I've heard good people talk about both methods. Habit makes everything here."6

    In the wake of the nineteenth century playing with the reed down became more common in the German-speaking countries, which also produced some of the most highly regarded clarinet virtuosi. Traveling virtuosi like Joseph Beer, Heinrich Baermann, and Bernhard Crusell bewildered audiences across Europe with their fine tone, magnificent musicality, and astonishing technique and articulation. The French audience was as mesmerized and impressed, and French clarinetists started to reflect and consider the advantages of playing with the reed against the bottom lip.

Over the next few decades, writers of clarinet methods acknowledged the existence of the two playing techniques, often favoring one or the other. Friedrich Berr, who taught at the Paris Conservatory and strongly advocated for the reed below embouchure, wrote in his Méthode complète de clarinette:

"Since the origin of the clarinet, the Germans played the reed below, and the most famous artists adopted this practice. It is quite strange that the benefits of this reed placement, to the performer, haven't been understood right away by the French. However, it seems quite natural to someone who never played clarinet before, to put the mouthpiece on the bottom lip, on the side that isn't bevel cut. Furthermore, the upper lip has less strength and mobility than the other, and it couldn't hold the mouthpiece without flinching. The reed below being also more immediately placed in front of the tongue, one can easily play the various kinds of detached sounds. If we reproach to the Germans to draw little sound from the clarinet, it is the habit to bite on the mouthpiece and the weakness of their reeds who are in cause.7 […] German clarinetists had the upper hand for a long time, and this partly came from their way of playing the reed below."

Further on, he also suggests that French clarinetists who had chosen to embrace the German reed position improved their playing and their style.8

    Heinrich Baermann, who played in Paris in 1818, excited the French with his clear articulation, and large dynamic range, especially in soft dynamics.9 The following year, as Vanderhagen published his last clarinet method, he illustrated Baermann’s instrument, made by Jean-Jacques Baumann, and described the special barrel:

"This is the instrument with which Mr. Baermann, musician to the King of Bavaria, gave so much pleasure in Paris. He had also added to his clarinet a sleeve of about six ligne [13.5 mm], which perched in the middle of the barrel, which for this purpose was divided into two, and gave the facility of agreeing by lengthening the barrel by means of the sleeve which [...] prevented the water from collecting there as it happens when you are too sharp and you have to pull the barrel to lower it [the pitch]. It is easy to add this little device to the Twelve Key Clarinets. and even to old clarinets [of five or six keys]; but then it takes longer at the Barrel. The luthier will take his dimensions on this subject by shortening from the first body what he is obliged to give to the Barrel."

 

In other words, Vanderhagen explained the purpose of the divided barrel as helpful particularly when tuning; instead of pulling out the barrel a few millimeters out of the left-hand joint in order to lower the pitch of the instrument, the player pulls apart the two sections of the divided barrel. This allows condensation water to flow down the sleeve and prevents it from building up between the barrel and the joint (examples 6.2-6.4).

    As evident by these examples, the French school favored the reed-above position well into the nineteenth century, even as the German way of playing with the reed down proved to have many advantages. By the time Vanderhagen wrote his Nouvelle Méthode de Clarinette Moderne à Douze Clés in 1819, playing with the reed above was no longer in consensus even in France. Vanderhagen, at the time aged 66 and past his professional prime, very likely kept playing with the reed above until his death in 1822. Nonetheless, he was clearly aware of changing fads and their advantages, as proven by his intentional avoidance of describing the embouchure in his last treatise, not specifying nor favoring either way. However, the illustration of the clarinet at the back of the method provides an insight into the conflict many great French clarinetists of Vanderhagen’s generation faced in the first decades of the nineteenth century; Here is a clarinet introduced by a great German virtuoso, but Vanderhagen once again illustrated it with the reed above according to the old practice that many clarinetists had abandoned by 1819.

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