Berlioz says: “The clarinet is little appropriate to the Idyl. It is an _epic_ instrument, like horns, trumpets and trombones. The voice is like that of heroic love. This beautiful soprano instrument, so ringing, so rich in penetrating accents, when employed in masses, gains, when employed as a solo instrument, in delicacy, evanescent shadowings and mysterious tenderness what it loses in force and powerful brilliancy. Nothing so virginal, so pure as the tint imparted to certain melodies by the tone of a clarinet, played in the medium by a skilful performer. It is the one of all the wind instruments which can best breathe forth, swell, diminish and die away. Thence the precious faculty of producing _distance_, echo, the echo of _echo_, and a _twilight_ sound. What more admirable example could I quote of the application of some of these shadowings than the dreamy phrase of the clarinet accompanied by a _tremolo_ of stringed instruments in the midst of the _Allegro_ of the Overture to _Freischütz_! Does it not depict the lonely maiden, the forester’s fair betrothed, who, raising her eyes to heaven, mingles her tender lament with the noise of the dark woods agitated by the storm? O Weber! Beethoven, bearing in mind the melancholy and noble character of the melody in A-major of the immortal _Andante_ in his _Seventh Symphony_, and in order the better to render all that this phrase contains at the same time of passionate regret, has not failed to consign it to the medium of the clarinet. Gluck, for the _ritornello_ of Alceste’s air, ‘_Ah, malgré moi_,’ had at first written it for the flute; but perceiving that the quality of tone of this instrument was too weak and lacked the nobility necessary to the delivery of a theme imbued with so much desolation and mournful grandeur, gave it to the clarinet. “Neither Sacchini, nor Gluck, nor any of the great masters of that time availed themselves of the low notes of the instrument. I cannot guess the reason. Mozart appears to be the first who brought them into use for accompaniments of a serious character, such as that of the trio of masks in Don Giovanni. It was reserved for Weber to discover all that there is of the terrible in the quality of tone of these low sounds.” Mozart was the first to appreciate the beauties and capabilities of the clarinet. He wrote a Concerto for it with orchestra[24] and his _Symphony in E-flat_ is so full of prominent work for it that it is often called the “Clarinet Symphony.” Beethoven loved it also and developed music for it far beyond Mozart’s ideas. It sings particularly lovely melodies in the _Larghetto_ of the _Second Symphony_. In the _Pastoral Symphony_, where the flute sings the nightingale and the oboe pipes for the quail, the clarinet gives the cuckoo’s notes, or, rather, two clarinets together say “cuckoo, cuckoo.”