The timbre of the oboe can be identified more easily and quickly than that of any other instrument of the orchestra because during tuning up it can be heard sounding long, steady As to which the whole orchestra, in what seems like a total chaos of sound, tune their strings, pipes and percussion.

Made of grenadilla, rose or’ cocus wood, the oboe has a narrow conical bore terminating in a slight flare or bell. It is held vertically and the double reed, which is mounted in the top, is held in the ‘player’s mouth,. When blown the lips of the double reed start beating; this drives beaten air into the pipe which then becomes alive with sound. The quality of sound or timbre depends to a major degree on the dimensions of the reed, the grain and its density.

Like the flute, the oboe can be dismantled into three sections and carried discreetly in a small case along with what looks like a small flue brush, used to dry out condensation in the bore at the end of a performance. The precious reeds will very likely be nursed in a small box which allows them adequate ventilation when they are not in use.

The oboe has an elaborate system of keys but, unlike the flute, there is more than one system. The choice of system, as of reed, is a personal matter which is often determined by the nationality of the player or of his teacher.

Technique

The oboist will often be seen sucking at the reed as though it were a lollipop; this is to moisten it, retaining its flexibility. This habit might have provided the origin of the expression ‘to wet one’s whistle’; if the reed were too dry or too sodden, squawks and squeaks would reward the player.

As oboists use hard or soft reeds according to their preference as well as the nature of the music, and different makes of instruments have different bores and fingering, the basic playing techniques also vary. So does the timbre and the degree of vibrato exercised. The question of how much, if any, vibrato should be used in playing the oboe has been hotly debated but, like all musical matters where a question of taste is involved, no firm conclusion can be reached. No amount of evidence in its favour on historical grounds, or that it can give greater projection to the sound, can convince some people that it is not inelegant or, in the case of late 18th and early 19th century music, unauthentic; while others find an unwavering sound boring.

In spite of having the reed in the mouth, the oboist can pronounce spirited strings of double and triple tonguing, as well as flutter tonguing. A combination of dexterous finger work and embouchure control can produce glissandi. A muted sound can be produced by stuffing a handkerchief up the bell. Curiously enough the dynamic range of the oboe creates a problem because the bore is narrow, and to be effective it has to be finely controlled. Little lung power is needed to play it and fortissimo is not produced by simply blasting additional hot air into the reed. Piano to forte is produced by maintaining steady breath control, increasing air pressure and adjusting the reed in the mouth in a manner that allows it to vibrate freely without going out of tune. Many oboists lovingly make their own reeds — a process involving a number of sharpcutting tools and gouges — and will discuss the ’scrape’ with anyone interested enough to listen to a description of this critical art.

A good reed and a good embouchure are complementary and produce good tone. But such are the vagaries of fashion or of habit that whatever the tone or timbre produced by the oboist in an exposed solo passage, there is sure to be someone in the audience who has heard something different and preferable.

Repertoire

Some say that Lully first scored for the oboe in his Ballet de l’ Amour Malade in 1657, some say it was Cambert in his opera Pomone in 1671. Whatever the truth, it was not until the 18th century that the oboe achieved any importance in orchestral music. But there is something rather curious and touching about at least a part of its repertoire for, once this wild instrument of the open air had been tamed and domesticated, a large number of composers, from Handel in Messiah and Bach in his Christmas Oratorio onwards, used it to invoke precisely that freedom from which it had been rescued. Beethoven wrote a long rustic tune for it in the third movement of his `Pastoral’ Symphony, Berlioz in a pastoral scene in his Symphonic fantastique, and the ‘Morning’ melody from Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite is unmistakably intended to invoke a calm rural morning. Farmyard animals have also been imitated by the oboe — a crowing cock in Haydn’s The Seasons and a duck in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf There is a lovely oboe solo at the beginning of the second movement of Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major symphony.

The oboe d’amore is intermediate in pitch and size between the cor anglais and the oboe proper. At a distance it is difficult to distinguish from the former as it also has the reed mounted on a metal tube and a pear-shaped end. It is a transposing instrument, and is written a minor third higher than it sounds. It is so little used that many works of reference or about orchestration do not mention it at all. It belongs to a small class of obsolete instruments with small, sweet voices all named d’amore; these include the flute, viola and guitar. Although it is used in Richard Strauss’s Sinfonia Domestica, Ravel’s Bolero and Debussy’s Gigues, its unassertive voice, which is due to the narrow bore, can be hard to distinguish.

Cor anglais (English horn)

With its greater length, curved tube carrying the reed and pear shaped bell, the cor anglais is easily distinguishable from the oboe. Its range is a fifth below that of the oboe, but it is written a fifth higher than it sounds. Thus it is a transposing instrument.

It is hard to believe, from what Rimsky-Korsakov called the `indolent and dreamy’ timbre of this instrument, that it might have originated from an English hunting signal horn — but that is one suggestion about its derivation. Another, disputed and dismissed by most writers, is that the pipe was once angled and should really be called cor angle. A third suggestion is that the name is a mistranslation of cor angelique to Englische horn.

Fingering and technique are the same as for the oboe and, as with the oboe, the reed is the ’soul’ of the instrument.

The cor anglais was never a regular member of the classical orchestra, particularly the small orchestra. Gluck scored for it occasionally, Beethoven and Weber never. ln one symphony only, his 22nd Symphony, ‘The Philosopher’ (1764), Haydn used two cor anglais instead of oboes. He also used the instrument in chamber and vocal music, however. Incidentally, Haydn authority H.C. Robbins Landon believes that for Haydn it was indeed cor angle — ‘bent horn‘.

By the end of the nineteenth century its distinctive timbre was heard in the works of Cesar Franck (1822-1890) and Dvorak (1841-1904); indeed, one of the most famous cor anglais melodies is the tune in the slow movement of Dvorak’s ‘New World’ symphony, which is based on an American spiritual. Berlioz was very pleased with his use of it to express ’sorrowful loneliness’ in his Symphonic famastique. The best known passage of all is not in a symphonic work but in the opening of the third act of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, where it performs the role of a lamenting shepherd’s pipe.

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dodoGuitar, Piano31 Aug, 2008