Oboe

“ COR ANGLAIS, or English Horn (Ger. englisches Horn or alt Hoboe; Ital. corno inglese) , a wood-wind double-reed instrument of the oboe family, of which it is the tenor. It is not a horn, but bears the same relation to the oboe as the basset horn does to the clarinet. ”

“ They breathe an inspiration into the mind; they nerve the arm, make firm the tread, and give an animated existence to slumbering ambition, or wavering courage. The soft toned flute, the plaintive oboe, the mellow clarionette, with the other various harmonious instruments, under the influence of the creative mind, affect to smiles or tears, discourse of love, or breathe of hate, according to the shades of feeling pourtrayed by the composition. ”

“ Each of the orchestral instruments has its own individual association—the oboe reminds you of a shepherd’s pipe, the flute of a bird’s song, the French horn of hunting, and so forth; but each one of the instruments in the orchestra as you listen to it is forming lines, and adding colors, as it were, in a great design. And this design, always complete at any one point, goes on unceasingly forming itself ever and ever anew. It is always complete and always incomplete, always moving onward, always delicately poised for inevitable flight. As you listen you have lived a thousand lives ”

“ I seem to hear
Oboe and cymbal in a rhythmic beat
⁠With bass-drum and bassoon; their drear
⁠And droll crescendo louder growing,
⁠Then falling back, like waters ebbing, flowing,—
Back to the silence sweet! ”

“ The oboe is especially valuable in the orchestra as a solo instrument, and its thin, nasal tones are suggestive of rustic, pastoral simplicity, both oboe and English horn being often used by orchestral composers in passages intended to express the idea of rural out-of-door life. ”

“ In these, as in music, there are no figures, no expression of feeling; they are purely artistic, and yet no one looks at them with indifference. Has not the oboe the peculiar tone that we associate with the open country, in common with most wind instruments? The brass suggests martial ideas, and rouses us to vehement or even somewhat furious feelings. The strings, for which the material is derived from the organic world, seem to appeal to the subtlest fibres of our nature; they go to the very depths of the heart. ”

“ The characteristic tonal quality of the oboe is reedy and somewhat nasal. Its lowest tones are loud and strident, and must be used with the utmost discretion. The highest tones are difficult of production and are of doubtful utility, the flute taking these pitches more effectively. It is in the medium register, comprising about an octave and a half, that the oboe excels in charm and flexibility. ”

“ The flute, oboe and bassoon converse sportively over the second subject. A strange sequential passage in unison upon the strings in three-bar phrases following a happy little canon on the wood-wind instruments and some powerful syncopations lead in to the development. An atmosphere of humour and good feeling permeates the movement.
The lovely melody which forms the chief theme of the Adagio is given to the violins. It is accompanied by a strong persistent rhythmic figure, which is transferred later on to the drums with great effect. The wood-wind work and the horn passages are exquisite. ”

“ The above scale, from its close similarity to those of the flute and bassoon, may be looked upon as traditional and fundamental. But hardly any wind-instrument, except the flute, has been so altered and modified of late years in its mechanism as the oboe. ”

“ The cor anglais is nothing more or less than the alto, or tenor, oboe. It has the same scale and compass as the oboe; but it stands in the key of F, a fifth below that of the oboe. It is, however, unlike the oboe, a “transposing instrument,” that is to say, the music does not represent the real sounds. In the case of the cor anglais the music is written in a key a fifth above the real sounds. Any good oboe player can play the cor anglais, because the technique and fingering are practically the same. ”

“ It floats sportively away, in the violins, against a skyey background of oboe and horn tones, charming the soul away with it in pleased forgetfulness, when with a sudden revulsion of consciousness we are in the minor chord of D (like a great sob, escaping involuntarily) , leading with solemn, stately measure and a sound of warning into the Adagio in A, 2-4, a most lovely, deep and tender movement, in which the orchestra seems to sing a Psalm of Life.... ”

“ The oboe, for example, is so constructed that only the high overtones are present, and hence the sound gives a "pungent" effect; the clarinet is so constructed that the even-numbered overtones are killed, and the presence of only odd-numbered overtones gives individuality to the instrument. In these two instruments we have vibrating air columns instead of vibrating strings, but the laws which govern vibrating strings are applicable to vibrating columns of air, as we shall see later. ”

“ Beyond that note, increased pressure, or overblowing, assisted by a harmonic "speaker" key, produces the first harmonic, that of the octave, and so on. The lowest notes are rough and the highest shrill; from A to D above the treble clef, the tone quality of the oboe is of a tender charm in melody. Although not loud, its tone is penetrating and prominent. Its staccato has an agreeable effect. The place of the oboe in the wood wind band between the flute and the clarinet, with the bassoon for a bass, is beyond the possibility of improvement by any change. ”

“ The abounding beauty with all its allurement lacks the solace that the masters have led us to seek in the heart of a symphony. The clarinet presently twines a phrase about the tune until a new answer sounds in the oboe, that now sings in answering and chasing duet with the horn. The phrase of oboe proves to be the main song, in full extended periods, reaching a climax with all the voices.
Well defined is the middle episode in minor reared on a new theme of the clarinet with an almost fugal polyphony that departs from the main lyric mood. ”

“ The reed of serious musical instruments is made of two pieces of cane which are flat at the free or upper end and terminate below in a tube which fits on to the instrument. This is an ancient type of instrument, for the Roman tibia is believed to have been played with the “double reed,” i.e. of oboe-type. I may here be allowed to quote from my Rustic Sounds, p. 5: “The most truly rustic instrument (and here I mean an instrument of polite life—an orchestral instrument) is undoubtedly the oboe. The bassoon runs it hard, but has a touch of comedy and a strong flavour of necromancy, p. ”

“ Oboe, ō′bō-e, n. a treble reed musical instrument, usually with fifteen keys, with a rich tone, giving the pitch to the violin in the orchestra: a treble stop on the organ, its bass being the bassoon—also Hautboy.—n. O′bōist, a player on the oboe.—Oboe d'Amore, an obsolete alto oboe; Oboe di Caccia, an obsolete tenor oboe, or rather tenor bassoon. [Fr. hautbois.]
Obol, ob′ol, n. in ancient Greece, a small coin, worth rather more than three-halfpence: also a weight, the sixth part of a drachma—also Ob′olus:—pl. Ob′oli (ī) .—adj. Ob′olary, consisting of obols: extremely poor. ”

“ It is obvious that to have a perfect chromatic scale a separate string or pipe is required for each note in such instruments as the organ and pianoforte, while it is obtained in those of the flute and oboe class by making additional 371holes in the tube at the correct intervals and covering them with close-fitting pads with levers (keys) within convenient reach of the fingers. (Having mentioned the oboe, it may be remarked in passing that its tone has been called “bagpipe music sublimated.”) ”

“ The English horn, or alto oboe (oboe in F) is similar in tone to the ordinary oboe, the listless, dreamy quality of its timbre being sweet in the extreme. In the low register it is fairly penetrating. The bass clarinet, though strongly resembling the ordinary clarinet, is of darker colour in the low register and lacks the silvery quality in the upper notes; it is incapable of joyful expression. The bass flute is an instrument seldom used even today; it possesses the same features as the flute, but it is colder in-21- colour, and crystalline in the middle and high regions. ”

“ BROD, Henri, a very famous oboe player, born at Paris June 13, 1799. He was taught the oboe at the Conservatoire by Vogt and became very distinguished: 'His tone,' says Fétis, 'was weaker than that of his master, but it was softer and sweeter; his phrasing was graceful and elegant, and his execution clear and brilliant.' He shared the desk of first oboe with Vogt both at the opera and the concerts of the Conservatoire, and was extremely successful both in Paris and the provinces. ”

“ Sometimes, too, he brought music of his own, and awakened every fairy echo with the tender accents of his oboe; ”

“ In instrumental music, timbre is also a highly potent influence in arousing emotional states, and we are all familiar with the fact that an oboe passage is often associated with the simplicity of outdoor rural life ”

“ There was a quartet of them; and the oboe, or hautbois (high-wood) was the treble. There was also [84] an oboe d’amore [20] and an oboe di caccia, hunting oboe (from which the cor anglais is supposed to have been derived) , and there were many others. Old writers refer to them as chalumeau and schalmey and shawm; and in such a general and confused way that it is hard to know just which special instrument they are talking about. These old oboes are called for in Bach’s scores ”

“ In all these old finger hole instruments the scale begins with the first hole, a note in the bagpipe with which the drones agree, and not the entire tube. From the bass and double quint pommers came ultimately the bassoon and contra-bassoon, and from the alto pommer, an obsolete instrument for which Bach wrote, called the oboe di caccia, or hunting oboe, an appellation unexplained, unless it had originally a horn-like tone, and was, as it has been suggested to me by Mr. Blaikley, used by those who could not make a real hunting horn sound. It was bent to a knee shape to facilitate performance. ”

“ The oboe is made in three pieces,—the head-piece, bottom and bell-joints. The player first screws the joints of his instrument together so that the finger-holes are in a straight line, and then he puts the reed in the head-piece. The first, second and third fingers of each hand are used to cover the holes. The whole instrument rests on the thumb of the right hand. The little fingers and the thumb of the left hand are used for the keys. The fingers are always placed over the finger-holes ready to close them when necessary. ”

“ A strap round the neck supports the bulk of the weight. The little finger of the right hand touches two keys which produce A♭ and F
. With this latter note the real fundamental scale ends, exactly as it does in the oboe; all the mechanism of the long joint and bell only strengthening the tone and producing the seven lowest semitones upwards from B♭. In comparing the bassoon with its kindred treble instrument, the oboe, it must be remembered that it has this supplementary prolongation of its compass downwards, which the other lacks. ”

“ Never before has an orchestra of sixty-two strings, two harps, a piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, an oboe d'amore, a cor anglais, five clarinets, five bassoons, four saxophones, eight horns, four trumpets, three trombones, a bass tuba, four kettledrums, a triangle, a tambourine, a glockenspiel, cymbals, and a big drum, been required to describe a day in the life of a baby; never before have the energies of over a hundred able-bodied men been bent to such a task. He tunes his strings below the normal limit just as he likes ”

“ The swell organ stops are very like the great organ in miniature, except that the reed-stops predominate more in tone, and are more often used either alone or with diapasons only, the stronger and more pronounced tone of the reeds being requisite to bring out the full effect of the crescendo on opening the swell box. The oboe alone, in passages of slow harmony, has a beautiful effect, rich yet distant. ”

“ The latest development of flute and reed pipes is to be found in the flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon of the modern orchestra. Plates XXXVIII. and XXXIX. represent instruments that have been the immediate precursors of or are identical with the instruments named. One, the Dolciano or Tenoroon with a clarinet reed, is of unusual importance as possibly anticipating the invention of the Saxophone. ”

“ I had placed an additional oboe with every three violins and an additional bassoon for every three violoncellos, with a few contrabassoons and contrabass clarinets to strengthen the double-basses and to take the part of the serpent—an instrument which has become obsolete. The doubling up of trumpets and kettledrums in the climaxes did not make them sound louder, but more full. For the first time in my experience the sound of the orchestra was not completely buried in the avalanche of tone from a large chorus of three hundred and fifty voices. ”

“ The first oboe of the same orchestra has a peculiar tone, which robs his instrument of its individuality and makes it resemble a clarinet. A well-known solo horn player produces from his instrument a tone which sounds more like that of a valve trombone or a euphonium than that of a French horn. Such individual faults injure the general effect of an orchestra’s playing, though they are not strictly to be classed under the head of qualities of orchestral performance. ”

“ It is only exceptional that the oboe plays a solo part; more often it has to satisfy itself by reinforcing the violins.
⁠To this volume we must add a number of other concertos, which appeared at different times, and are brought together in Volume XXI of the Complete Works; especially the celebrated Concerto of Alexander's Feast, written in January, 1736, of which the style has the same massive breadth as the oratorio itself. ”