Woodwind Instruments

Woodwind Instruments, name given to the orchestral family of musical instruments whose sound, like that of brass instruments, is produced through the vibration of a column of air, and which are or were originally made of wood. Their mouthpieces and bore (their internal shape) determine their timbre: oboes and bassoons have double reeds, clarinets and saxophones single reeds, and the flutes a mouth-hole across which the player blows. The modern orchestra comprises the flute family (including the piccolo, and occasionally the alto flute and bass flute), the oboe family (including the cor anglais, and occasionally the heckelphone and bass oboe), the clarinet family (including the high E-flat clarinet, the bass clarinet, and occasionally the contrabass clarinet and the tenor-range basset horn) and the bassoon family (including the contrabassoon).

During the Renaissance, double-reeded shawms were the most common woodwind instruments, made in a number of sizes. Their sound was harsh and loud, so that they were generally regarded as outdoor instruments only (Lully banned all except the recorder from his performances when he was appointed to the court of Louis XIV). A family of narrower-bore double-reed instruments was thus developed which could be used indoors. The oboe first appeared in France in about 1660, and was even then much like the present-day instruments. It was developed from the treble shawm, and was immediately hailed for its tonal variety and expressive quality, though musicologists generally agree that the early oboe was strident in tone and went out of tune easily. Other oboes were the oboe d'amore (pitched a minor third lower than the standard oboe) and the oboe da caccia (pitched a fifth lower, the same range as the cor anglais); while the oboe d'amore no longer belongs to the orchestra, it is still used to play solos written for its distinctive sweet tone, such as those in Bach's cantatas. The oboe da caccia was largely replaced in the orchestra by the cor anglais in the 19th century. The purity of tone of the modern oboe has meant that its pitch is usually taken as the standard to which the rest of the orchestra tunes, but the difficulty of forcing air through a double-reed mouthpiece makes the oboe and bassoon families hard to play quietly in their lower registers.

The bassoon was also developed in the mid-17th century, from its “outdoor” equivalent the curtal, and rapidly became popular as an orchestral instrument during the Baroque era. It was mainly used to support the bass-line of the lower strings, but its unusually wide range meant that it was also given solo lines (particularly in its tenor register). The bassoon's sound blends particularly well with horns, and in Classical and early Romantic music a pair of bassoons is often used together with a pair of horns to produce a well-blended four-part texture (as, for instance, in the Nocturne of Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1842). The contrabassoon was added towards the end of the 18th century to give extra power to orchestral bass-lines, and was often used similarly to blend with trombones (as, for instance, in Brahms's Symphony no.1, 1876). It is the lowest-pitched instrument in the entire orchestra.

The transverse flute arrived in Europe in the 12th century, when it was used mostly for military music. By the mid-17th century it had become an important member of the Baroque orchestra, largely replacing the recorder. In the 19th century it underwent substantial modification, with the addition of several extra keys and the replacing of the traditional dark wooden body with a silver-plated metal one. It is sometimes joined by the small flute known as the piccolo (Italian for “small”, and pitched an octave higher than the standard flute), and less often by alto or bass versions (pitched a fourth and an octave lower respectively). The recorder enjoyed a revival in the 20th century, starting with the Dolmetsch family, who re-introduced it in the performance of early music, and also through being used as a teaching instrument in schools. In orchestral music flutes are commonly given solos (for instance, the opening of Debussy's Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un Faune, 1894), but their bottom octave is easily drowned out in louder passages.

The clarinet was developed in the mid-18th century from the earlier chalumeau, and was established in the orchestra by Mozart's use of a pair in his later symphonies, concertos, and operas. It widened the chalumeau's bell and extended its upper range substantially. The standard clarinet is pitched in B flat (the clarinet in A used by Mozart having become less common by the 20th century), while the high E-flat clarinet is pitched a fourth higher (military bands have also occasionally used clarinets in C and D). The basset horn and bass clarinet are pitched a fourth and an octave lower respectively than the standard clarinet, while the rare contrabass clarinet is pitched two octaves lower. Like oboes, clarinets are still made from dark hardwoods (ebony in the clarinet's case), although bass and contrabass clarinets also have substantial amounts of metal tubing and metal bells. Having a mellow tone, clarinets are unusual among woodwind instruments in being able to produce an equally powerful sound in every part of their exceptionally wide range of more than 3 y octaves, as well as an extremely quiet one in the lower part of the range.

Occasionally, modern orchestras include saxophones, now usually made of metal, but classed as woodwind instruments because, like the clarinet, they use a single-reed mouthpiece. Invented in 1840 by Adolphe Sax for use in bands, they are the youngest members of the woodwind family. They are made in seven sizes: the sopranino in E flat, soprano in B flat (similar in range to the B-flat clarinet), alto in E flat, tenor in B flat (the most commonly used by jazz musicians), baritone in E flat, bass in B flat, and contrabass in E flat. Of these, only the alto and tenor instruments are regularly used in the orchestra, in which they were introduced by Berlioz soon after their invention.

From the late 18th century, most composers wrote for orchestras with double wind (two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons), occasionally adding third players for piccolo, cor anglais, etc. During the later 19th century, triple wind became standard, with the third player alternating between the additional instrument and the regular one (a practice known as “doubling”). In the large late-Romantic orchestra of Mahler, Strauss, and others in the early 20th century, quadruple wind became the norm, often with all four players doubling various additional instruments.