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Part 1: Input by Professionals Part 2: Survey of Current Chedeville-like Mouthpieces
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| 1. The old Chedeville pieces are long out of manufacture. There were three Chedeville makers, Charles, Lalandais, and Henri. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2. David Dow, Principal Clarinet with Symphony New Brunswick. Canada Chedeville mouthpiece and the design. The Chedeville facing reacts to air pressure quite different from the standard Kaspar facings in the scoop of the baffle projects the air at the bore radically different from any other design. This scoop in the baffle is what exerts a great influence on the sound and its tonal characteristics. Many players feel the Lelandis to be the superior of the three subsets known as Chedeville mouthpieces. Sadly, few makers reproduce this design. However, I have had great success with David Hite's D facing clarinet mouthpiece. This I feel replicates the character of the Lelandais design to a nicety.
The Kaspar bore pieces are slightly more open at the exit to the barrel. (As for measurements others have written extensively.) I generally
feel the Chedeville smaller exit bore gave me the flexibility and openness
to the sound that I rather like..... Having
studied extensively with Harold Wright he had refacing done only a few times. The sound he made on his Lelandais will live long in my memory. It was very warm and quite round. When he allowed me to play on his Lelandais I was impressed by the ease and fullness of sound without having to work so hard!!! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3. from "A History and Analysis of the Philadelphia School of Clarinet Playing", Dissertation by Shannon Lannigan Thompson, University of Texas at Austin, May 1998. thompson@wcu.edu more info at: http://wcuvax1.wcu.edu/~thompson/trabs.html There were two Chedevilles known to produce mouthpieces for sale in the United States. The first was Charles Chedeville, based in France and producer of a great number of mouthpieces, third in production to Vandoren and Selmer. The Chedeville company was taken over by Lalandais in1949, another French maker of mouthpieces which are similar in design to the the Chedevilles and also highly esteemed by American clarinetists. Another French company, Glotin, presently markets a mouthpiece with the Charles Chedeville name, but this mouthpiece does not have the same reputation as earlier Chedevilles. The original Chedeville company supplied blanks (unfinished mouthpieces) to several mouthpiece makers including Frank and Frank L. Kaspar of Chicago and Ann Arbor (until 1970). At different times, clarinet manufacturers such as Buffet and Bundy supplied Chedeville-made mouthpieces with their clarinets. The other Chedeville was Charles' cousin Henri, a woodwind repairman in Philadelphia. Henri Chedeville sold mouthpieces, the blanks of which were supplied by his Chedeville cousin in France, which he worked on and stamped with his own name... Brad Behm, who has worked on many old Chedeville mouthpieces, believes that the secret to the best Chedevilles is probably a combination of the design and the material. He notes that these mouthpieces have a very narrow throat (where the windway joins the bore) with either slight slanted (small a-frame) or narrow parallel side walls. The Chedeville's narrow side walls intensify its sound giving it more direction and core. This feature is combined with a concave baffle, which helps to balance this intensity by darkening the sound. Chedevilles also tend to have generally close and imbalanced facings. The quality, design, and material of these mouthpieces are very inconsistent, so there are many Chedeville mouthpieces out there which are inferior mouthpieces.... (The old Chedeville mouthpiece was made) from hard rubber rod stock in (a) drilling process... Rod stock is difficult to obtain now, so that the great majority of mouthpieces made today are molded. The earlier process was considered superior because rod rubber is harder and less likely to warp than molded rubber... Bonade recommended mouthpieces made from rod rubber stock which he said produced the best quality of sound. Many clarinetists of today subscribe to this same belief, and chose to play older "vintage" mouthpieces for this reason. Stanley Drucker considers the real value of his 1939 Lelandais mouthpiece to come from the composition of the high quality hard rubber which he believes affects the tone in a way analogous to a Stradivarius for a violinist. <return to Top> | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Part 2: No endorsement stated or implied, but remember I am the happy owner of the Chadash-Hill Mouthpiece
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