Though the instrument is not a transposing one, the music is written an octave higher than it sounds to avoid the use of ledger lines. Its compass is from the middle C to the deep sixteen-foot C. The double-bassoon was used in the Orchestra in Handel’s time. Haydn calls for it in _The Creation_; Brahms, in his _C-Minor Symphony_; Mendelssohn, in his _Hebrides Overture_; and Beethoven reinforces the march in the _Finale_ of his _Fifth Symphony_ with it. He assigns it a leading part in the _Ninth Symphony_. THE CLARINET The clarinet is also a descendant of the Bombardino-Chalumeau Family of which, as we have seen, there were so many members. The great difference between the ancestor of the oboe and the ancestor of the clarinet was that the oboe’s ancestor was _conical_ in bore and played with a _double reed_ and the clarinet’s ancestor was _cylindrical_ in bore and played with a _single reed_. That fact was the parting of the ways and was destined to make all the difference in the world. It would seem at first that the tone of the two old _chalumeaux_ (the one double-reeded and the other single-reeded) was at first much alike; but as time went on and the single-reeded _chalumeau_ developed into the modern clarinet, the old rough, reedy voice disappeared for a rich, warbling voice that has more of the bird in it than of the reed. “The clarinet is one of the most beautiful voices in the orchestra,” Lavignac thinks. “It is the richest in varied _timbres_ of all the wind instruments. It possesses no less than four registers, perfectly defined; the _chalumeau_, which contains the deepest notes and recalls the old rustic instrument of that name; the _medium_, warm and expressive; the _high_, brilliant and energetic; and the _very high_, biting and strident. All these registers, thanks to the progress of manufacture, are able to melt into one another in the happiest manner possible and furnish a perfectly homogeneous scale. Almost as agile as the flute, as tender as, and more passionate than, the oboe, the clarinet is infinitely more energetic and richer in color.” About 1690 Johann Christopher Denner of Nuremberg added the twelfth key. He bored a small hole nearer the mouthpiece on a _chalumeau_ type of instrument, and made a key to it to be manipulated by the thumb of the left hand. By this he increased the compass of the instrument by more than an octave. It may be said that from this date the clarinet came into existence. From the crude instrument of two keys and seven holes has evolved the present-day clarinet with seventeen keys and twenty-one holes, of which seven are covered directly by the fingers and the others by the keys. The clarinet is a cylindrical piece of wood, or a tube, about two feet long, ending in a bell. It is made in sections: (1) mouthpiece; (2) barrel joint; (3) left-hand, or upper joint; (4) right-hand, or lower joint; (5) bell. The lowest note is emitted through the bell. The right-hand thumb supports the instrument.