How I agree, Richard. The opera recordings in Naïve’s Vivaldi Edition are brimming with life....Tito Manlio's very good, but the highlight so far has been their recording of Orlando furioso.

Tommo, I have a feeling there may be some on the way...

Damn tricky question, autoharp. I don't think there's a simple answer. I do have a few musings on the subject though, which Aaron and Richard will probably want to ignore...

I think the attraction of the instrument to composers like Telemann, Fasch and Graupner [yes, I know that's not a terribly auspicious beginning but please bear with me] is the fragility and the other-worldliness of the sound. The instrument which they most often used on its own had F above middle C as its lowest note (at least it seems to have had - there are some organologists in Germany who think otherwise but I don't know exactly why). Since it's built like a clarinet (acoustically speaking a stopped-pipe cylindrical bore) that's an incredibly short tube. The lowest note of the instrument is the open note of the Bb clarinet - so imagine all my fingers being higher up than any of them are while playing the 'normal' clarinet.

It's a very fluid sound which can be chirpy but also extremely vocal and expressive. The instrument can do hardly anything - the normal range is a twelfth and it was hardly ever used outside its basic scale. Much less so than was the recorder, for example - cross-fingerings on the chalumeau aren't particularly effective and certainly don't speak as freely as on the recorder. (Three flats on a treble recorder is tricky to finger but sounds pretty good - think the Vivaldi C minor concerto.)

So what the main composers for the instrument tended to do was (oversimplifying horribly) to have it either float long melodies or run around chasing its tail.

Anyway. You need to know what Telemann, Fasch and Graupner wrote for it...

The name does indeed seem to be related to shawm/Schalmei - that's quite a different concept, being a relatively boisterous double-reed thing, although they're quite probably related in some way. Chalumeau is also the French term for a bagpipe chanter although again they're both boisterous and have a double reed. (And indeed a conical bore, which means that the note produced is roughly equivalent to that of a chalumeau half the length.)

The odd thing is that the French don't seem to have made any significant use of it. It does seem to have been domesticated by one or other of the Denners (instrument makers in Nuremberg who also developed the Baroque clarinet) although it doesn't seem possible to find out which. Most of the important solo and ensemble music is German/Austrian.

The clarino/clarinetto relationship is certainly real but mainly has to do with the similarity in sound between the Baroque trumpet and the Baroque clarinet. The clarinet was originally only used in the overblown register and stuck mainly to its home key - much like the trumpet in other words. The sounds are also strikingly similar, as you can hear in Veilhan's Molter recordings or on Christian Leitherer's CD (I posted links on this thread a while back). The English called the chalumeau 'mock trumpet' as well.

Although it's easy to see the clarinet as the chalumeau's successor it doesn't seem to have been the case. The instruments did appear on the scene more or less simultaneously and appear together in treatises - in Majer's Museum Musicum he puts the chalumeau with the flutes and the clarinet with the trumpets!

The booklet in Leitherer's CD is full of useful facts and conveniently the CD is full of lovely music...

Pretty much, I think. But it does depend. The instrument I have has double holes for 3, 4, 6 and 7 which allow for reasonably stable chromatic notes. But they don't allow for playing scales with too many accidentals in them quickly. (I was having a bash through a Telemann F minor recorder sonata this evening - even I could get through most of the runs and I'm really a very clueless recorder player. Cross-fingers are simply easier to navigate and they sound amazingly good - Baines remarks in Woodwind Instruments and their History, which is probably the best general book on woodwinds that there is ever likely to be, that they "provide some of the best notes on the instrument and the best intonation".)

The slow movement of the Telemann double concerto has some quite extraordinary slow chromaticism though and thanks to the double holes it's quite stable. He knew what he was doing. He did play the thing after all.

I'll get me anorak... 

You can play it. What else matters?

Some baroque composer surely wrote for it. If there is an instrument then they write for it. Some times a piece can be played on several different instruments (in case one is not available). I think it is unique instrument and not many people can play on it. Someone is looking for a player somewhere.

It's difficult to think of a better home for it. If I were a Great Bass Chalumeau sitting in a pet shop window hoping for somewhere to live and Mr Oliver Sudden happened to walked into the shop.....  It's not so much a matter of justifying it: I think on humanitarian grounds alone you owe it to the Great Bass Chalumeau to give it an interesting and productive life