A good idea of the primitive chalumeau may be gained from a reproduction of one of the few specimens from the 16th or 17th century still extant, which belonged to Césare Snoeck and was exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition in London in 1890.[19] The tube is stopped at the mouthpiece end by a natural joint of the reed, and a tongue has been detached just under the joint; there are six finger-holes and one for the thumb. An instrument almost identical with the above, but with a rudimentary bell, and showing plainly the detached tongue, is figured by Jost Amman in 1589.[20] A plate in Diderot and d'Alembert's _Encyclopédie_[21] shows a less primitive instrument, outwardly cylindrical and having a separate mouthpiece joint and a clarinet reed but no keys. A chalumeau without keys, but consisting apparently of three joints--mouthpiece, main tube and bell,--is figured on the title-page of a musical work[22] dated 1690; it is very similar to the one represented in fig. 3, except that only six holes are visible.
[Illustrations: (From Diderot and d'Alembert's _Encyclopédie_.) FIG. 3. Chalumeau, 1767. (_a_) Front, (_b_) Back view.]
In his biographical notice of J. Christian Denner (1655-1707), J.G. Doppelmayr[23] states that at the beginning of the 18th century "Denner invented a new kind of pipe, the so-called clarinet, which greatly delighted lovers of music; he also made great improvements in the stock or rackett-fagottos, known in the olden time and finally also in the chalumeaux." It is probable that the improvements in the chalumeau to which Doppelmayr alludes without understanding them consisted (_a_) in giving the mouthpiece the shape of a beak and adding a separate reed tongue as in that of the modern clarinet, unless this change had already taken place in the Netherlands, the country which the unremitting labours of E. van der Straeten[24] have revealed as taking the lead in Europe from the 14th to the 16th century in the construction of musical instruments of all kinds; (_b_) in the boring of two additional holes for A and B near the mouthpiece and covering them with two keys; (_c_) in replacing the long cylindrical mouthpiece joint by a bulb, thus restoring one of the characteristic features of the tibia,[25] known as the [Greek: holmos]. There are a few of these improved chalumeaux in existence, two being in the Bavarian national museum at Munich, the one in high A, in a bad state of preservation, the second in C, marked J.C. Denner, of which V. Mahillon has made a facsimile[26] for the museum of the Brussels Conservatoire. There are two keys and eight holes; the first consists of two small holes on the same level giving a semitone if only one be closed. If the thumb-key be left open, the sounds of the fundamental scale (shown in the black notes below) rise a twelfth to form the second register (the white notes). This early clarinet or improved chalumeau has a clarinet mouthpiece, but no bulb; it measures 50 cm. (20 in.), whereas the one in A mentioned above is only 28 cm. in length, the long cylindrical tube between mouthpiece and key-joint, afterwards turned into the bulb, being absent. Mahillon was probably the first to point out that the so-called invention of the clarinet by J.C. Denner consisted in providing a device--the speaker-key--to facilitate the production of the harmonics of the fundamental. Can we be sure that the same result was not obtained on the old chalumeau before keys were added, by partially uncovering the hole for the thumb?