Taragota Instrument

[Sir Spyder]

I am a young musician who plays the alto saxophone and tenor saxophone. My father recently pulled out a Taragota instrument and I've been playing around with it for a while. I figured out it was a B flat instrument and figured out a few notes but I was wondering if anyone could help me with the rest of the notes and fingerings for the notes. If you could e-mail me with an answer if you have any help or leave a reply in the topic I would be gratefully apreciative. Thanks for any help you can give.

[Tharruff]

Sir Spyder,

I have a Taragato also and have seen a couple of others over the years. They are not very common if you didn't know that. Mine is pitched in 'C' and I am pretty sure that the others I have seen are in the key of 'C' also.

Mine is not in playable condition but just looking at the keys, I think that it would be fingered similarly to an Albert system clarinet. The keywork is similar.

There is another guy who posts here regularly but whose name unfortunately escapes me at the moment who also has one and may be able to give you better information about fingerings. Hopefully he will see this thread and post on it.

Good luck.

[Andrew]

Please excuse my ignorance, but what exactly is a Taragota?

[Tharruff]

Andrew,

It is a Hungarian woodwind instrument that resembles a Soprano Sax in construction but it is made of wood. The bore is tapered like a sax, not conical like a clarinet. Mine comes apart into 4 pieces like a clarinet but has no tuning barrel. As I said above, mine is pitched in the key of 'C' though Sir Spyder says that his is in Bb. They may have been made in different keys but the ones I have seen or read about were all in 'C'. It has a simple kind of key system like an Albert system clarinet, not like a Boehm system clarinet which is they key system that most modern clarinets use.

I had a printout from the old forum which as I recall listed a website for the 'Hungarian Tarogato Society' but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

Use a search engine and type in 'Tarogato' and you may be able to dig up a photo of one. I noticed that both Spyder and myself misspelled the word 'Tarogato' in our earlier posts.

[cd sax]

try this link http://www.art-of-pan.de/taragot.html