is it some kind of horn shaped like a dog?

a basset horn is essentially a larger version of the standard B flat Clarinet but goes down to the C below middle C and is pitched in F (or is it A?) anyway it was the instrument Mozart wrote his Clarinet Concerto for, he also wrote a few other works calling for this clarinet

with droopy ears

(or is that a different type of dog?!)

yeah I think that's the one!

yeah i love basset hounds - but i keep getting them mixed up with beagles too - either way i like both coz they are so droopy and look cute! Thanks for the basset-horniness - I was just listening to Mozart Requiem and it made me think of it! Dont even know if they are in it mind!

F is right

They're funny looking things!

Mozart wrote several works including basset horns, notably the Requiem, the Masonic Funeral Music and the Gran Partita in Bb for 13 instruments; also some trios with one BH and two clarinets and some gorgeous part songs with three singers accompanied by three clarinets of various sizes. However, the instrument for which the Clarinet Concerto was thought to be written is known as the basset clarinet. It is built in A but has some extra keys to give more notes below the usual register of the clarinet, rather like basset horns and orchestral bass clarinets have. I believe Alan Hacker was the first modern player to get a basset clarinet designed and built so as to play a reconstruction of the clarinet concerto as he thought it would have been in the original.

No, more like a liquorice allsort. SO many people have eaten the mouthpieces and that's how the clarinet happened. Someone ate half the top joint forgetting they had a concert that night......
So Mozart said I know it's clarryin-it a bit far but just stick a new mouthpiece in what's left.....

The word clarryin-et stuck as clarinet.

True....

I have a recent recording by a woman... whose name I have utterly forgotten (on a CD with Pahud playing Mozart flute concertos)... and I believe she is playing a basset clarinet (not horn)...

I have a CD of the Mozart on a Basset horn, by Sabine Meyer. It' great.

That's the one! Thank you! Basset horn or clarinet? Oh I forget. One or the other!

But while basset horns and basset clarinets are very different, they are both members of the clarinet family, aren't they?

As far as I know...

Yes they are.

GpneChopinBachSoon had it spot on, a basset clarinet is an ordinary clarinet (usually in A, for playing the Mozart concerto and quintet) with a few extra keys to reach down an extra third.

A basset horn is pitched in F, so sounds a bit lower than the standard clarinet; the ones I've seen have been angled.