No no no-- the saroussophone is a double-reed brass instrument. I'm not sure they ever even made a contrabass saroussophone.
The contrabass clarinets, in E-flat and B-flat, are probably second only to to the grand piano in terms of difficulty-- you're looking at up to six feet of rosewood or blackwood, in two sections as thick as your arm, with a bell and a curvy neck and cork joints and Boehm nickel or silver fittings all the way up the body, four to five feet of them, comprising screws, rods, flat and coiled springs, and keys backed in cork, felt, and leather. And attached to that massive piece of wood, they have to be *perfectly* fitted and tuned for anything to work.
I played a rosewood E-flat contra in college-- it was a ten thousand dollar horn then, and would go for very nearly that much on the secondhand market today. It was brand new my first semester, and so touchy that the difference in temperature and humidity between my locker and the practice room would make springs and pins come loose and go flying; it took a semester's worth of almost weekly trips to the shop to fine-tune it so it would all hang together. And that was a top-of-the-line horn.
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Date: 2007-06-24 08:58 pm (UTC)The contrabass clarinets, in E-flat and B-flat, are probably second only to to the grand piano in terms of difficulty-- you're looking at up to six feet of rosewood or blackwood, in two sections as thick as your arm, with a bell and a curvy neck and cork joints and Boehm nickel or silver fittings all the way up the body, four to five feet of them, comprising screws, rods, flat and coiled springs, and keys backed in cork, felt, and leather. And attached to that massive piece of wood, they have to be *perfectly* fitted and tuned for anything to work.
I played a rosewood E-flat contra in college-- it was a ten thousand dollar horn then, and would go for very nearly that much on the secondhand market today. It was brand new my first semester, and so touchy that the difference in temperature and humidity between my locker and the practice room would make springs and pins come loose and go flying; it took a semester's worth of almost weekly trips to the shop to fine-tune it so it would all hang together. And that was a top-of-the-line horn.