Template:Short description Template:More citations needed Template:Infobox Instrument
A soprano clarinet is a clarinet that is higher in register than the basset horn or alto clarinet. The unmodified word clarinet usually refers to the BTemplate:Music clarinet, which is by far the most common type. The term soprano also applies to the clarinets in A and C, and even the low G clarinet—rare in Western music but popular in the folk music of Turkey—which sounds a whole tone lower than the A. Some writers reserve a separate category of sopranino clarinets for the [[e-flat clarinet|ETemplate:Music]] and D clarinets,<ref>Nicholas Shackleton. "Clarinet", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 21 February 2006), grovemusic.com Template:Webarchive (subscription access).</ref> while some regarded them as soprano clarinets. All have a written range from the E below middle C to about the C three octaves above middle C, with the sounding pitches determined by the particular instrument's transposition.
Orchestral composers largely write for soprano clarinets in BTemplate:Music and A. Clarinets in C were used likewise from the Classical era until about 1910. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also called for clarinets in BTemplate:Music when writing in keys with many sharps (e.g. the E major arias in Idomeneo and Così fan tutte), but this became obsolete far sooner. There have also been soprano clarinets in C, A, and BTemplate:Music with curved barrels and bells marketed under the names Saxonette, Claribel, and Clariphon.
Shackleton lists also obsolete "sopranino" clarinets in (high) G, F, and E, and soprano clarinets in BTemplate:Music and ATemplate:Music.
Contemporary works for clarinet in CEdit
- Richard Barrett: knospend-gespaltener for solo clarinet in C
- James Erber: Strange Moments of Intimacy for solo clarinet in C