Clarinet charms

Abstract

Philipp Jakob Riotte (1776–1856) is little known today, but in his lifetime enjoyed success in every musical form then in favour. After early tuition in Frankfurt and Offenbach, he held positions in Gotha, Danzig and Magdeburg, before moving to Vienna in 1808, where he worked at the court opera and then as music director at the Theater an der Wien (1818–21 and 1824–6). Riotte’s obituary in the Neue Wiener Musik-Zeitung noted that his compositions ‘were distinguished by much melody and pleasing harmonious flow, though calculated for entertainment and for the moment, without depth and significant substance’. Riotte’s association with the clarinet and clarinettists began early in his career. His first clarinet concerto in By major was played by Johann Georg Gottfried Hoffmann in Frankfurt around 1804–6 and was published in 1809 by Simrock as op.26 and by Breitkopf & Härtel as op.24. To add to the confusion, when Dieter Klöcker recorded the work in 2003 it was labelled op.28. Although the performing material for this first concerto is freely accessible, the Clarinet Concerto in C minor, op.36 has not previously been available. As editor Martin Harlow observes, this later work is of special historical significance, having been given its 1809 premiere by Iwan Müller on his new clarinet, designed in collaboration with the maker Johann Baptist Merklein. This 13-keyed By clarinet was famously claimed by Müller to be omnitonic, making redundant clarinets in C and A. The Paris Conservatoire initially rejected Müller’s invention on the grounds that the loss of the different tone qualities of the various pitches of clarinet would be unacceptable. But there are technical issues as well; one wonders whether, for example, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto k622 could ever be fluently performed in A on any design of By clarinet.