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About 2700 B.C., the Egyptians created an instrument called the zummara (sometimes referred to as the memet). The zummara was a single-reed instrument, much like the modern day clarinet, but it had a double bore like the double-reeded Greek instrument aulos. The zummaras two pipes were parallel so that with each finger the player covered two holes, one on each pipe. The pipes were said to be out of tune with each other and produced a very dissonant beating sound.
In India, there was an instrument people now call the double-clarinet but in India it was called the pungi or the magudi. The difference between this instrument and the zummara was that the reed was enclosed in a wooden chamber and the left-hand pipe was drone, and the right-hand pipe was melodic.
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The man universally credited for actually inventing, or making, the clarinet was Johann Christoph Denner with the help of his son, Jacob, of Nuremberg, Germany. J.C. Denner was well-known and well-respected for the high quality woodwind instruments he made.
Denner was said to have a creative mind; he toyed with the instruments he so finely crafted and it would seem the clarinet was the result of such tinkering. There is no documented proof that Denner alone developed the clarinet since two of his contemporaries - Klenig, and Oberlender, also made clarinets.
There is no mention of the name clarinet until 1690, right after Denner made the first playable clarinet. In this year, the Graf (Duke) of Gronsfeld in Nuremberg ordered two clarinets from Jacob Denner for the use of his musicians. In 1712, four clarinets that were made out of boxwood were bought by the Nuremberg Town band (Ratsmusik). Since Denner worked in Nuremberg and thats where they first appeared in the band, it is said that Denner gave the instrument its name.
Joanna Roller
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