Soothing Saturday: Clarinets, Repairs, and Other Trials of Country Life

Most people probably think I spend all my time with the dead.

And to be fair, there is some truth in that. Genealogy does tend to keep one in close company with departed farmers, missing great-grandfathers, parish clerks with dreadful handwriting, and the occasional ancestor who seems determined to leave as little trace as possible. That is a large part of my world.

But not all of it.

I am also an amateur musician and play in the local community band, which means my life is divided between old records and old reeds, family history and fingering charts, probate files and polishing cloths. It is, in its own way, a balanced existence.

Living out here, on what sometimes feels like the respectable outskirts of civilization, getting a clarinet repaired professionally is not a simple matter. It is an expedition. It involves distance, time, cost, and the sort of logistical planning once reserved for polar exploration. By the time one has packed the instrument, posted it off, paid for the repair, and waited for its triumphant return, one begins to wonder whether it might have been cheaper to buy the repairman a guest room and keep him on permanent standby.

So, like many country people before me, I have developed a practical spirit.

If something can be patched, adjusted, coaxed, tightened, re-corked, persuaded, or otherwise brought back from the brink with modest tools and unreasonable optimism, I have probably tried it. Over the years, I have done a fair bit of clarinet tinkering myself. Pads, screws, corks, mysterious leaks, bits that wobble, bits that should move that stick, parts that should not move that do, and bits that appear to have broken off completely, simply out of spite. There is a certain satisfaction in making an old instrument playable again.

But there is also a limit. There are only so many evenings a man can spend muttering over a misbehaving instrument before he starts dreaming of something radical.

Something dependable.

Something that works.

So I finally did what perhaps should have been done some time ago: I bought a new clarinet. Not the most expensive one, but not among the cheap student models.

And I must say, it is a joy.

It has a full, velvet-like sound that makes even simple notes feel richer somehow. There is a depth to it that I have been missing while wrestling with older instruments in various states of decline. Instead of sounding like a negotiation between man and machinery, it sounds like music. Which, when you think about it, is really the whole point.

I have often wondered why clarinets do not attract more ladies.

It seems most mediocre guitarists need only lean against a wall and strum three vague chords before women start appearing from all directions as if summoned. Meanwhile, the clarinetist sits there with a proper instrument, good posture, years of patient practice, and tone of genuine beauty, and nobody loses their head over it.

Life is unfair in these small but measurable ways.

That said, I should be careful what I claim, because I did in fact meet my wife through band. She is a cornetist, firmly of the brass band persuasion, and never cared much for woodwinds. So it certainly was not the clarinet that drew her in. If anything, the clarinet may have been something she had to overlook.

Which is humbling.

It turns out that even in band life, character may count for more than instrument choice. A disappointing discovery for those of us who had hoped a fine legato line might do more of the work. Well, Inger Lise and I have stayed together for nearly 40 years. Band has been a big part of our life. All our kids played in band and son Hans Inge and daughter Karoline still play with their old parents in Hjelset Kleive Musikkorps.

Still, I am very pleased with this new clarinet, even if it has done nothing to rewrite the romantic history of woodwind players. At the moment, it is still in the careful playing-in stage, since a wooden clarinet must be treated with some respect at first. So I am playing it a little every day, letting it settle gradually, getting to know it properly, and trying not to overdo it.

That is my plan for this Saturday.

No major repairs. No old clarinets spread across the table like patients in a field hospital. No trying to decide whether a strange noise is caused by a pad leak, a tired reed, or my own failing dignity. Just a little quiet practice, a little careful playing-in, and the pleasure of hearing that lovely warm sound begin to open up.

Genealogy will still be there tomorrow. The ancestors are not going anywhere. The records will wait. But today is for the clarinet.

And perhaps that is soothing enough: to set aside both dead relatives and dying instruments for a while, and simply play something beautiful out here on the far edge of convenience.