Weber also wrote much chamber-music for the clarinet and gave it dreamy melodies in the _Overture_ to _Oberon_ and also some difficult arpeggios in company with the flute, known as “drops of water.” Mendelssohn also used the clarinet for the idea of water. It is very evident in the _Hebrides Overture_ and in the _Overture_ of _Melusine_ it suggests the rolling waves. It is conspicuous in Dvořák’s _New World Symphony_ and it plays a solo in Tschaikowsky’s _Francesca da Rimini_. And how Wagner enjoys it! Often he gives it a motive, or lets it sympathize with what is taking place on the stage! And in the third scene of Act I of _Die Götterdämmerung_, he has two clarinets play a duet for thirty bars! THE BASSET-HORN The basset-horn is a tenor clarinet with two additional keys and a longer bore than the clarinet. The last three notes are worked by the thumb of the right hand. The basset-horn is not a horn. It takes its name from a German maker named Horn, who made a little bass clarinet in 1770 and called it little bass horn as a modest compliment to himself. Its part is written a fifth higher than the actual sounds. Gevaert says its tone is one of “unctuous sweetness”; and those adjectives certainly describe its rich voice very accurately. The basset-horn was new in Mozart’s time and he liked it very much, so much indeed that he gave it an _obbligato_ to the aria _Non più di fiori_ in his opera of _Clemenza di Tito_. In his _Requiem_ he calls for two basset-horns. BASS-CLARINET This instrument is made like the ordinary clarinet only the bell points upward and outward something after the fashion of a big dipper. It is a slow-speaking and hollow-toned instrument. Wagner uses it a great deal. Liszt has a good part for it in his _Mazeppa_; and it is conspicuous in the _Danse de la Fée Dragée_ in Tschaikowsky’s _Nut-cracker Suite_ and also in the _Don Quixote Variations_ by Strauss. The bass-clarinet is doubled by the contrabass clarinet. The contrabass clarinet is an octave below the bass-clarinet. The tube is partly conical and partly cylindrical. It is over ten feet long, and ends in a big metal bell turned upward like that of the bass-clarinet. It has thirteen keys and rings. It stands in the key of B-flat. The instrument is also called pedal clarinet. Its middle and upper registers are reedy, something like the ordinary clarinet tones, and the lower registers are deep rumbles. It might be described as a rival to the double-bassoon. [Illustration: DOUBLE-BASS CLARINET, SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK _Richard Kohl_] CHAPTER VI THE BRASSWIND FAMILY _The horn; the trumpet; the trombone; the bass tuba._ THE HORN Look at the golden horn with its open bell gleaming like a big yellow flower! First notice the large bell that spreads out to a diameter of about twelve inches. Then notice that there is a tube that holds the funnel-shaped mouthpiece. If this long brass tube were straightened out it would be over seven feet long!