Corps-de-rechange

With a single clarinet in B-flat there is a great deal of wonderful music available to the historical clarinetist, but to build the collection necessary to play all the solo, chamber and orchestral repertoire from the baroque to the romantic era is a major undertaking. It is possible to lessen the difficulty through clever use of corps-de-rechange. Until the mid nineteenth century important makers offered corps-de-rechange, or extra middle joints to make both A and B-flat clarinets as efficiently as possible.With modern replicas of historical clarinets it is also possible to use corp-du-rechange to more efficiently build a collection covering a wide variety of time periods by having one set of joints with more keys than the other.