In last summer's I.D.R.S. Journal (Number 8, 1980, pp. 23-27) I included a translation of Karl Almenräder's fine article "On the Making of Bassoon Reeds" from Die Kunst des Fagottblasens (Schott, c. 1842). On page 25 appears a copy of the actual size drawings of the reed in several stages of construction.
During a visit in August to the home of William Waterhouse in London, Bill showed me two documents from his unique collection of bassoon material which shed important new detail and light on Almenräder's own reed dimensions and on his actual performing ability. The first is a different drawing from the one printed in Journal 8 (I.D.R.S.): it is printed below.
![[Drawing of Almenräder reeds]](p07.jpg)
These drawings are much neater than the others, and they appear more realistically like the pieces of cane we know: Fig. 1 has a better inward curve to the sides of the shape near the wire 1 point; Fig. 4 really looks like the finished tip of a (wide) modern bassoon reed (in the other drawing, this representation is still too thick for easy response); Figs. 5, 6, 7 all have a more three-dimensional appearance; Fig. 8 shows a horizontal line for the point "p", an important detail to help anyone reproducing this reed model in the measurement of cane thickness between these two points on the reed ("o" and "p"); and Fig. 9 now looks very much like some reeds made for the modern French bassoon I have seen (the other drawing is much more crude and doesn't look like a true bassoon reed shape at all).
The second Almenräder item is most interesting as well. It is a review by Gottfried Weber in the April, 1826 edition of the music journal Caecelia. The reviewer mentions that many bassoonists of the day refused to believe that Almenräder could play the extreme high notes which were included in his fingering chart and in his scale exercises (these scales still appear in the complete Method of Julius Weissenborn. If memory serves me right, they reach a'' - flat above high c''. Ed.) The reviewer noted that he had heard Almenräder play these very high notes in solo performance and that the tone was clear and steady, not thin and unsteady as had been suggested. The reviewer includes an actual-size drawing of Almenräder's reed and describes it as follows:
"It is, as can be seen, wider than the Berlin and Saxon reeds are, and more or less like the London and Paris models; only that the former (Berlin/Saxon) are usually too narrow in the area of the ring, while the latter (London/ Paris), like most German ones are too thin in thickness. The Almenräder reed is from "A to b" thicker in wood than most other reeds by a good 2 "linien". But from there onwards they become thinner towards the tip gradually down to the thickness of ordinary writing paper. Only in the center (middle) from "c to d" it remains somewhat thicker. Its special characteristic is primarily that from "a to b" the wood is thick enough to permit the reed to be very thin up at the tip without producing thereby a rattling tone."