The company Herbert Wurlitzer Manufaktur für Holzblasinstrumente GmbH is a German

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

manufacturer based in Neustadt an der Aisch,

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

with a second production site in

Markneukirchen Markneukirchen () is a town in the Vogtlandkreis district, in Saxony, Germany, close to the Czech border. It lies in between the Erzgebirge and the Fichtelgebirge in the Elstergebirge, southeast of Plauen, and northeast of Aš (Czech Republic ...

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

. It was founded in 1959 by Herbert Wurlitzer. His father Fritz Wurlitzer operated since the 1930s in Erlbach, now a district of Markneukirchen, a manufactory for the production of clarinets. The company W. Wurlitzer makes clarinets with German System ( Oehler fingering system) and with the "

Reform Boehm system The Reform Boehm system is a fingering system for the clarinet based on the Boehm system. It was developed to produce clarinets with the Boehm keywork but with a sound similar to a German clarinet. Development The Reform Boehm system was i ...

", developed by Fritz Wurlitzer in the late 1940s, an instrument with Boehm fingering system and the sound of an Oehler Clarinet.Eric Hoeprich, The Clarinet, Yale University Press, 2008, p. 211, 271, 367

Biography

Herbert Wurlitzer escaped from East Germany in 1959 with his family into the Federal Republic of Germany. Here he built a manufactory for the production of clarinets, as he had learned from his father in Erlbach,

Vogtland Vogtland (; cz, Fojtsko) is a region spanning the German states of Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia and north-western Bohemia in the Czech Republic. It overlaps with and is largely contained within Euregio Egrensis. The name alludes to the former ...

.Mayor of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch: Herbert Wurlitzer Clarinets – From Neustadt an der Aisch into the concert halls of the world
/ref>Jane Ellsworth, A Dictionary for the Modern Clarinetist, 2014, p. 120 He managed the company until his death in 1989 together with his wife Ruth Wurlitzer. Ruth Wurlitzer continued the business together with Bernd Wurlitzer, her son-in-law as commercial director and her son Frank-Ulrich as artistic director. Since the death of Ruth in September 2014 the company is run only by Frank-Ulrich and Bernd Wurlitzer.

The enterprise

The extensive family Wurlitzer (there is also an American branch) has been manufacturing musical instruments since 1659. The company Herbert Wurlitzer was initially located in Bubenreuth / Bavaria and moved its headquarters in 1964 to Neustadt an der Aisch. In 1992, the company built another production site in Markneukirchen, where numerous musical instrument makers are based. In this context, it also took over the former workshop of Fritz Wurlitzer, which was integrated into the new production after some time. The company produces almost all clarinets of the clarinet family (with the exception of the very rare double bass clarinet and the contralto clarinet). All instruments are made only of wood, mainly grenadilla wood, but also cocobolo and boxwood are available. They are made exclusively to order individually. Herbert Wurlitzer acquired with his company a significant position nationally and internationally.The main exporting countries are the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Japan. There was and still is a low distribution in the USA. Wurlitzer clarinets are represented in Germany and some other countries in numerous cultural orchestras.

References

External links

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Presentation of a Wurlitzer Reform Boehm Clarinet
Clarinet systems Clarinet makers Companies based in Bavaria Companies of Germany {{Commonscat