BATYPHONE (Ger. and Fr. Batyphon)  , a contrabass clarinet which was the outcome of F . W . Wieprecht's endeavour to obtain a contrabass for the reed instruments . The batyphone was made to a scale twice the size of the clarinet in C, the divisions of the chromatic scale being arranged according to acoustic principles . For convenience in stopping holes too far apart to be covered by the fingers, crank or swivel keys were used . The instrument was constructed of maple-wood, had a clarinet mouthpiece of suitable size connected by means of a cylindrical brass crook with the upper part of the tube, and a brass bell . The pitch was two octaves below the clarinet in C, the compass being the same, and thus corresponding to the modern bass tuba . The tone was pleasant and full, but not powerful enough for the contrabass register in a military band . The batyphone had besides one serious disadvantage: it could be played with facility only in its nearly related keys, G and F major . The batyphone was invented and patented in 1839 by F . W . Wieprecht, director general of all the Prussian military bands, and E .

Skorra, the

court instrument manufacturer of Berlin . In practice the instrument was found to be of little use, and was superseded by the bass tuba . A similar attempt was made in 1843 by Adolphe Sax, and met with a similar fate . A batyphone bearing the name of its inventors formed part of the Snoeck collection which was acquired for Berlin's collection of ancient musical instruments at the Technische Hochschule fur Musik . The 'description of the batyphone given above is mainly derived from a MS. treatise on instrumentation by Wieprecht, in 1909 in the possession of Herr Otto Lessmann (Berlin), and reproduced by Capt . C . R . Day, in Descriptive Catalogue of the Musical Instruments of the Royal Military Exhibition, London, z890 (London, 1891), p . 124 . (K .