Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots
1836

The Act V bass clarinet solo from Les Huguenots is important in the bass clarinet repertoire for many reasons: the work is performed fairly regularly, and the excerpt often appears on bass clarinet auditions, but most importantly of all, it is the first major bass clarinet solo in the orchestral repertoire. This scene in the opera finds Raoul and Valentine, the romantic leading characters, taking refuge from the Catholics in a church with the Huguenots. Raoul is one of them, but Valentine is Catholic. She tries to convince him to don the costume of the Catholics and flee with her, but he refuses. On the spot, Valentine decides to convert to Protestantism and die at the hands of the Catholics so that she can stay with Raoul and perish by his side. Marcel, Raoul’s servant, blesses Valentine and declares her and Raoul married in the eyes of God. The bass clarinet serves as the fourth voice singing with their trio as the tragic wedding ceremony occurs.

Click on this video to watch a production of the opera, starting on the scene with the bass clarinet solo (2:39:00)

Translated Libretto

MARCEL 
Do you know that by joining your hands in this darkness
I consecrate and bless
The time for farewells and funeral weddings? 

RAOUL AND VALENTINE
We know that in heaven alone we will be united.

MARCEL
Have you cast off all deadly chains,
Any hope here below?
And does faith only in your hearts survive?

RAOUL AND VALENTINE
Yes, faith in our hearts finally reigns without a fight.

MARCEL
Will you see the iron without trembling, the flame shining
And this faith of one day,
Will you not renounce her in the face of martyrdom?

RAOUL AND VALENTINE
God gave us strength by giving us love.

Historical Background

Franco Dacosta (1778–1866), arguably the first bass clarinet virtuoso and principal clarinet with the Paris Opera, played this solo during the initial run of Les Huguenots in Paris, and his performance was so convincing that it catapulted the instrument to prominence and further inclusion in both the symphony orchestra and the opera orchestra. Interestingly, it seems that Dacosta did not actually play the solo on bass clarinet at the premiere and opted to perform it on soprano clarinet, according to Albert Rice and Meyerbeer’s own diaries. Relatively soon, though, he switched to the bass clarinet for the solo, as the composer intended.

Three years before the premiere, Dacosta had collaborated with Louis Auguste Buffet (1789–1864) to produce a straight-bore bass clarinet, which he played during Les Huguenots. The written low E within this solo would have been the lowest possible note on this instrument. Later, Carl Baermann (1810–1885) performed the work at the Munich Court Opera after having only two weeks to learn the part. He used a thirteen-keyed, straight-bore bass clarinet, also produced by Louis Auguste Buffet.

This piece illustrates the bass clarinet’s position as an oddity of orchestration during its infancy, similar to how the saxophone is still treated by many orchestral composers today. It might be used as a solo instrument in a few choice moments of a piece, but it is rarely included in tutti moments and is not part of the orchestral chorus outside of its solos. In Les Huguenots, Meyerbeer only includes the bass clarinet during the solo in question. There are no other bass clarinet parts in the entire opera. In the score, the player for the bass clarinet part is not specified, so it could be played by either the first or second clarinet, or a separate player altogether. This explains why Dacosta, a principal player, was performing this bass clarinet solo– there was not yet precedent for a separate bass clarinetist or third-and-bass clarinetist in the orchestra, so the part would be given to whoever could best execute it. 

In terms of topoi, this solo is filled with romance, great sacrifice, fate, and foreboding. Perhaps Marcel sums it up best by describing it as a funeral-wedding. However, there is nothing particularly uncanny or exotic about the moment, other than the powerful affection between Raoul and Valentine, which is hardly out of place in an opera. So why did Meyerbeer choose a relatively unknown instrument to serve as the fourth voice in this number? We will likely never know for sure, but the question is interesting to ponder. Was it just that he wanted to feature the interesting sounds of the bass clarinet? When played well, the bass clarinet has a certain vocal quality and a wide range that encompasses most of the singing range across all voice types. Perhaps the arpeggiated centerpiece of this solo represents the unification of two people separated by a great divide by combining their musical realms into one line. 

The bass clarinet solo in Les Huguenots was a turning point for the bass clarinet musically and in terms of the instrument’s mechanical development. Adolphe Sax (1814–1894) traveled to Paris specifically to show his new bass clarinet to Dacosta. The instrument, which he began work on in 1835, featured about twenty keys (including plateau keys), a curved neck, and a downward-facing bell that was later swapped for a front-facing bell similar to those on today’s bass clarinets. Sax played the Les Huguenots solo for Dacosta, whose wife is said to have exclaimed, “My friend, I am sorry to have to say but that when Sax plays [his instrument], your instrument sounds to me like a kazoo!”

The composer was aware of these changes to the instrument and was subsequently spurred to include even more extensive bass clarinet parts in later operas. In a letter to Sax from 1849, Meyerbeer says, “As for your bass clarinet, the role which I have given it to play through the score [of Le Prophète] tells you well enough how I have used it and the value which I attach to it.”

Les Huguenots is hardly the only Meyerbeer work with an important bass clarinet part; he uses the instrument in Le Prophète (1843), La Pardon de Ploërmel (1859), and L’Africaine (1862), as well as other pieces. Importantly, Meyerbeer’s operas had a not-insignificant effect on the works of Richard Wagner (1813–1883). Wagner is quoted in The Cambridge Companion to Wagner as saying the following:

“I cannot [help] sensing in Meyerbeer my total antithesis, a contrast I am driven loudly to proclaim by the genuine despair that I feel whenever I encounter, even among many of my friends, the mistaken view that I have something in common with Meyerbeer.” 

In this case, it seems that the composer doth protest too much. He wrote about Meyerbeer often, and it is not difficult to see a connection between the spectacle-driven, large-scale grand operas of Meyerbeer and Wagner’s enormous music dramas. These connections include the expansion of the clarinet family in the opera orchestra, as Wagner’s regular inclusion and featuring of the bass clarinet solidified the instrument’s position in the genre. Not only that, but Wagner must have found Les Huguenots at least tolerable, since he later conducted the work in performance. However, it is important to note Wagner’s deep-seated, rabid anti-Semitism, since Meyerbeer was a Jewish composer– a composer whose works were preferred over Wagner’s by the Paris Opéra for quite some time.

Works Cited

Thomas S. Grey, The Cambridge Companion to Wagner, p. 206.

Eric Hoeprich, The Clarinet, p. 189.

Albert R. Rice, From the Clarinet d'Amour to the Contra Bass, p. 287-352.

Practice and Performance Tips

Click here for an annotated practice part

In this solo, the bass clarinet serves as an operatic voice, not a traditional instrumental soloist. The performer should consider the way an opera singer might shape the phrases and use more rubato than many instrumentalists would. Of particular note are the sixteenth-note pickups, which should not be too short, and should always sound like true pickups that lead into the next note. As for the altissimo notes, the written E above the staff should be played with the overblown throat A fingering, and the altissimo G works best with an overblown long fingering. Even performers who are only preparing for auditions and not a performance of the entire work would do well to practice the solo off of the score to see how the bass clarinet interacts with the singers much like another vocalist.