Contrabass clarinet

The contrabass clarinet (also pedal clarinet, after the pedals of pipe organs) and contra-alto clarinet are the two largest members of the clarinet family that are in common usage. Modern contrabass clarinets are transposing instruments pitched in B♭, sounding two octaves lower than the common B♭ soprano clarinet and one octave below the bass clarinet. Some contrabass clarinet models have extra keys to extend the range down to low written E♭3, D3 or C3. This gives a tessitura written range, notated in treble clef, of C3 – F6, which sounds B♭0 – E♭4. Some early instruments were pitched in C; Arnold Schoenberg's Fünf Orchesterstücke specifies a contrabass clarinet in A, but there is no evidence such an instrument has ever existed. The smaller E♭ contra-alto clarinet is sometimes referred to as the "E♭ contrabass clarinet" and is pitched one octave lower than the E♭ alto clarinet. Two models of subcontrabass clarinet (the octocontralto and octocontrabass), lower in pitch than the B♭ contrabass, were built as prototypes by Leblanc in the 1930s and survive only as museum items.