From a large family

The clarinet family is said to be the largest woodwind instrument family. That’s putting it mildly. I made a list and came up with around 50 types of clarinets, about half of which are currently being made.

It depends how you count, of course. For instance, I didn’t consider bass clarinets to low E and E♭ as different, but I did list them separately from bass clarinets to low C. Some historical basset horns varied in their lowest notes, and Fox’s alto clarinet goes to low D rather than either E♭ or C, but I only counted one for each key. I didn’t count instruments with different key systems (Boehm, Oehler, Albert, simple…) separately.

Some of the historical ones have been mentioned but no examples are known to exist, and some are or might have been made only as prototypes.

The family’s gotten larger lately. Jared De Leon has designed a bass clarinet in G and two prototypes of an E♭ octocontra alto to E in recent years, both 3D printed (and you can buy the print files for the bass). Martin Foag is now selling an octocontrabass, which previously existed only as a 1940s prototype. While making up this list, I discovered Foag and Otmar Hammerschmidt both appear to have alto clarinets to low C, which could also be considered E♭ basset horns.

In the following list, the lowest note might vary from one example to another. The categories are rather arbitrary and different authors use different categories. The lines between basset clarinets, basset horns, and extended range alto clarinets are particularly gooey.