The Grenadilla Myth

9/27/2013

Having just enjoyed a postprandial glass of wine, I'm going to take a chance on a topic I might not otherwise address: the ostensible primacy of grenadilla wood as the clarinet construction material of choice!

Now, I know that I will probably ruffle some feathers with this, but I've played (and restored) a lot of clarinets in my day and have noticed a couple things: 1) the performer's mouthpiece, reed, oral cavity, articulation, breath support and tonal concept seem to have more to do with the resultant tone than a specific clarinet, and 2) the material from which the instrument is constructed plays less of a role in its tone than the quality of said construction plus setup and its interaction with all the factors mentioned in #1.

The first point is fairly easy to establish in your own practice: if you play classical music, use a narrow tip, large chamber mouthpiece with a stiff, French file cut natural reed and are channeling Reginald Kell as your Tone God, you will have approximately the same dark, focused tone on a Buffet, Leblanc or Thibouville Freres. Likewise, if you play Jazz, use a Vandoren 5JB with a 2.5 Fibracell reed, and love Peanuts Hucko, the bright, flexible tone will shine out from an Orsi to an A. Robert. The ergonomics of key-work and the back-bore pressure will vary, it is true, along with other, subtler factors, but many of these are attributable to the quality of the pad work and the interaction of your mouthpiece with the bore size/taper of the instrument at hand. A change in mouthpiece or brand of reed would result in a more noticeable change of tone!

The second can only be demonstrated with access to a number of instruments over time, which access most teachers and performers don't have, unless they are the kind of hardened collector who has the luxury of both copious funds and unencumbered hours. Being exactly that type myself, I have had the chance to play a variety of wood, hard rubber, metal, and composite clarinets in different keys and different fingering systems and believe that the material has a limited impact on the tone, intonation and play-ability of the instrument.

To be continued....

4 Comments

Timothy Tikker link

9/27/2013 01:04:11 pm

I completely agree.

jeremy

9/27/2013 01:45:18 pm

Thanks Tim, I'd welcome a guest column on metal clarinets, if you are ever so inclined...

Cassio

9/29/2013 08:06:17 am

Yes, totally agree.
The biggest points going for wood are tradition and status due to the fact that wood is a noble material. Any object made in plastic would look much more classy in wood. The clarinet is no exception.
Add to that the fact that most brands have student models made of synthetic materials and their pro models in wood. This sends a message that plastic is cheap/bad and wood is expensive/good.
However as far as acoustics go it is almost impossible to say and I personally think the material is irrelevant. The only way to be 100% sure though would be to make two identical clarinets, one of synthetic material and the other wood. However this is an impossible feat. Clarinets made of the exact same materials by the same people can sound very different, due to several factors. So, not a viable experiement.
Tom Ridenour has been talking about the Grenadila myth for years and trying to promote his hard rubber pro clarinet. Ironically even he had to surrender to the forces of the market and started to produce grenadilla clarinets in recent years.

Ted Ridenour link

8/27/2014 03:02:53 am

Hi,

We did not "surrender" to the forces of the market. The G1 is a all but nonexistent in our product line and we will likely discontinue it publicly in the very bear future. It was something we decided to offer because we could.....not because market forces made us.

The market is actually beginning to accept the idea that hard rubber is acoustically on par with wood (it obviously has a litany of advantages in that its dimensionally stable and machines to tighter tolerances making for a much more consistent product).

If we had never offered the G1, which I sometimes wish we hadn't as its created this misperception, our business would be doing just as well as it is today.

*We have students winning, and making the finals, of highly competitive national contests on our hard rubber clarinets. At the OU Clarinet Symposium in 2013 a girl playing our 576bc won 1st place in the young artist contest. All of the other finalists, their were five total, were using high dollar wood clarinets including instruments that cost as much as $10,000. In 2014 the same girl finished 2nd in the OU young artist contest and she also, along with another student from the same school also playing on a hard rubber 576bc, made the finals of the International Clarinet Associations young artist contest.
*Their are upwards of a dozen principle clarinetists in major symphonies using our C clarinet and numerous other college professors/professional clarinetists using our hard rubber clarinets as their primary instrument.
*The only band in the state of Texas, Texas is considered the premier state in the country in regards to the quality of their high school band programs (I'm not making this up, Texas bands spend an enormous amount of money to be the best and band directors, much like football coaches, are expected to win), that uses our hard rubber clarinets is Marcus HS from Flower Mound, TX. Some individuals have been rather critical of their decision to drop the R13 in favor of the Lyrique 576bc. At the Texas Music Educators convention last month the semi annual honor band competition was held. Marcus HS is a 5A school which is the classification for the largest schools in Texas. To the best of my knowledge every other band in the top ten was using wood clarinets most of them R13's......Marcus, the only school in the state using hard rubber clarinets exclusively was named the #1 Honor band in the state. Obviously that's an award the entire band won but you can't win that competition with a bad or even average clarinet section.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. My point is that hard rubber as a material for making clarinets has gained enormous ground in recent years. The G1 was offered because we could......we put very little effort into promoting it.....we don't sell many (we don't want to, woods a pain to deal with during production and after the fact with the potential for cracking).......when Tom wrote "The Grenadilla Myth" 10 years ago he believed that within 50 years wood clarinets would be sitting next to wood flutes in musical instrument museums. The events since then have only made him more certain about that.

I can see why you might think that the presence of a wood clarinet in our line would indicate that the market is not accepting hard rubber as a legitimate material for making professional clarinets but that's not the case.

Ted Ridenour
Ridenour Clarinet Products

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The Grenadilla Myth

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