sters. The first and last difficult to obtain with reeds as
made by us. He seeks the fundamental tones of the Maket pipes in the
first or low register, an octave below the normal pitch. By this the
fifths revert to twelfths. I offer no opinion, but will leave this
curious phenomenon to the consideration of my friends, Mr. Blaikley,
Mr. Victor Mahillon, and Mr. Hermann Smith, acousticians intimate with
wind instruments.

The clarinet was invented about A.D. 1700, by Christopher Denner, of
Nuremberg. By his invention, an older and smaller instrument, the
chalumeau, of eleven notes, without producible harmonics, was, by an
artifice of raising a key to give access to the air column at a
certain point, endowed with a harmonic series of eleven notes a
twelfth higher. The chalumeau being a cylindrical pipe, the upper
partials could only be in an odd series, and when Denner made them
speak, they were consequently not an octave, but a twelfth above the
fundamental notes. Thus, an instrument which ranged, with the help of
eight finger holes and two keys, from F in the bass clef to B flat in
the treble had an addition given to it at once of a second register
from C in the treble clef to E flat above it. The scale of the
original instrument is still called chalumeau by the clarinet player;
about the middle of the last century it was extended down to E. The
second register of notes, which by this lengthening of pipe started
from B natural, received the name of clarinet, or clarionet, from the
clarino or clarion, the high solo trumpet of the time it was expected
that this bright harmonic series would replace.

This name of clarinet, or clarionet, became accepted for the entire
instrument, including the chalumeau register. It is the communication
between the external air and the upper part of the air column in the
instrument which, initiating a ventral segment or loop of vibration,
forces the air column to divide for the next possible partial, the
twelfth, that Denner has the merit of having made practicable. At the
same time the manipulation of it presents a difficulty in learning the
instrument. It is in the nature of things that there should be a
difference of tone quality between the lower and upper registers thus
obtained; and that the highest fundamental notes, G sharp, A and B
flat, should be colorless compared with the first notes of the
overblown series. This is a difficulty the player has to contend with,
as well as the co