I hadn’t thought of this before, but musical instruments need to be invented. Hold on to your hats. There still may be more of those instruments to come. I’ve seen the bar scene in Star Wars. Yet. This is January 14, and on this date, in 1690, the clarinet was invented.
Now, just looking at a clarinet, I’d think it was French, or even Italian, maybe. But no. The clarinet was born in Nuremberg, Germany, so long ago. I can’t imagine sitting around the dinner table one night, eating potato soup, and saying, “What the world needs now, is more clarinet.” But there it was.
A man named Johann Christoph Denner came up with the idea. I should, in full disclosure, tell you that Johann was an “instrument maker” by profession. He got it naturally. His father, Heinrich, made horns and animal calls. They don’t expand on what kind of animal calls Heinrich made. I’m guessing duck. Bird. I mean, you can’t really call a rabbit. Or, what on earth would you say to a chipmunk to get it come running? “Nuts Here! Get your fresh nuts here!” You’d need a bull horn for that.
Since I mentioned the bull horn. All these years, I’ve wondered about SWAT scenes, where the gunman is holding a hostage inside, and the police pull out a bull horn to talk to the guy. Never. Not ever, does a bull come running. Along those same lines, why would the police use a bull horn to talk to a human? Unless, of course, the gunman was like me, and the police are going by the Zodiac. Perhaps the criminal is a Taurus the Bull. Then, maybe, I can see the logic.
I’m not sure what the most popular animal call is these days, but you can buy a variety of them at Amazon. Perhaps, even the “Icotec GEN2 GC300 Electronic Predator Call – Play 2 Sounds Simultaneously – Attracts Multiple Species – Fixed Sounds” — all of this can be yours for a mere $90.
I’m getting off track. A long time ago, we were talking about clarinets and the invention thereof. The guy, Johann Christoph Denner, learned instrument building, with his father as a role model.
But, a lot of instruments were already floating around. So, he spent much of his time improving already existing woodwind instruments. They say there were several other types of single-reed instruments back then. They were very popular, especially in folk music. One of these, called the “chalumeau” led to his invention of the clarinet.
It made me wonder about when the first instrument was born. That day, when some person was sitting on a rock in the woods and decided to make a little music, by shaping something that would. The top four oldest instruments ever found — from all around the world — are all flute-types.
The most ancient one found was 42,000 – 43,000 years old, and they located this in the Geisenklösterle Cave, in Blaubeuren, Germany. That is about 50 miles west of Zurich. The flute was made out of Mute Swan bone and Mammoth Ivory. The old mute swan, always swimming, always silent.
Anyway, they found three flutes there at the Geisenklösterle Cave archaeological site. Two of the flutes are made from the bones of mute swans, and the other flute is made from mammoth ivory.
And I know all of this begs the question, what about the trombone. Who wouldn’t want to know? It came around sometime in the middle of the 15th century. They aren’t sure when, exactly, or who came up with the idea. But I’m guessing the guy was trying to get back at the person who sat in the front row of the musical group. A whole lot of ducking happens in the front row when somebody is playing the trombone behind them.
I guess that is all any of us can do when trouble comes our way. Keep playing our good music, but remember to duck at the same time.
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“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”
― Albert Einstein
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“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
― Aldous Huxley
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“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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You are music to my ears.
