Woodwind Instruments

A symphony orchestra at full strength comprises around one hundred and five players, playing eighteen to twenty-five instruments. Of these, about sixteen play woodwind instruments. Within the woodwind section, there may be four flutes, four oboes, four bassoons, and four clarinets. Each of these instruments is the head of a family of related instruments.

Flute

The modern orchestral flute is “transverse”—that is to say, it is held sideways to the face, and the player blows across a hole at the side, near the end. Transverse flutes existed in medieval times, but most medieval and early Renaissance composers preferred the recorder, which had a reliable pitch and consistently sweet sound that blended well with strings and voices. During the Baroque Period (approximately 1600–1750), as musical ensembles developed into orchestras, the transverse flute’s deeper penetration and greater tonal variety began to be explored. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) and George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) wrote for both recorder (flauto) and flute (flauto traverso).

Until the 1830s, the flute was basically a tube with holes. Playing sharps and flats involved tricky arrangements of the fingers, thus making playing at a quick tempo difficult. In the 1830s, a German flute player and instrument builder named Theobald Boehm (1794–1881) revolutionized the flute by respacing the holes and developing a system of key mechanisms which made it much easier to play quick and complex music, and stabilized the instrument’s pitch.

The flute’s volume, tone color, and tone quality may be adjusted by blowing harder or more softly, and by changing the shape of the lips to adjust the flow, pressure, and angle of the breath. It is capable of a wide variety of sounds and colors, can be played in many styles, and has an enormous repertoire. Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) and Handel wrote concertos for flute and string orchestra. J.S. Bach wrote sonatas for flute, both accompanied and unaccompanied, and his Suite in B minor for flute, strings, and basso continuo is one of the major pieces of the flute repertoire. Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) wrote sonatas for flute and piano, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) composed four quartets for flute and strings, and the Serenade for flute, violin, and viola by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) pointed ahead to the “Romantic” future. Among more recent composers, Claude Debussy (1862–1918), Serge Prokofiev (1891–1953), and Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) also wrote for the flute. Virtuosos include James Galway (b. 1939), William Bennett (b. 1936) and Susan Hoeppner (b. 1963).

Piccolo

The piccolo is half the length of the regular flute and sounds an octave higher. It has a shrill, piercing tone that makes it ideal as a military instrument. Beethoven was the first composer to feature it in the orchestra; there are piccolo parts in his Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Symphonies. The alto flute and bass flute complete the family. These are both larger and therefore deeper than the regular flute, and both are used infrequently. The alto has a characteristically mysterious and somewhat muted tone, while the bass flute is so long that it has to be bent into a U-shape.

Oboe

The oboe’s name derives from the French haut bois, meaning “high wood.” Jean Hotteterre and Michel Danican Philidor, two French musicians at the court of Louis XIV, invented the oboe in the seventeenth century. They created it by modifying the older, louder shawm for indoor use. Both the shawm and the oboe have double reeds. The shawm’s double reed vibrates within the body of the instrument itself while the player blows into a mouthpiece, but the oboe’s double reed vibrates between the player’s lips giving the player greater control of tone and volume. By 1700 most orchestras contained oboes. Boehm tried to apply his flute system to the oboe, but it was never adopted. Instead, the oboe underwent a slower evolution, adapting to the increasingly chromatic music of the late eighteenth century and beyond.

The oboe has a plaintive, tentative quality that is perfectly suited to Baroque chamber works. The seventeenth and eighteenth century repertory of sonatas, concertos, and small group works for the oboe is enormous with Bach’s Double Concerto for oboe and violin perhaps being the most exceptional work of the period. Prokofiev’s Quintet for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and bass in G minor and the Six Metamorphoses for unaccompanied oboe by Benjamin Britten (1913–76) are among the finest pieces in the modern oboe repertory. The Oboe Concerto by Richard Strauss (1864–1949) is possibly the greatest and most challenging of all works for the instrument. Modern virtuosos include Leon Goossens (1897–1988), Heinz Holliger (b. 1939), and Alex Klein (b. 1958).

English horn

The English horn (or cor anglais) is an alto oboe. The oboe is the soprano of the family, and the English horn is a fifth lower in pitch with a characteristically mellow, somewhat mournful tone. It is longer than the oboe and is easily identified by its bulb-shaped bell. The English horn has been in existence since the late seventeenth century, but only entered the standard orchestra in the 1830s. There is little solo music for the English horn, but it is memorably featured in the New World Symphony by Antonín Dvorák (1841–1904) and The Swan of Tuonela by Jean Sibelius (1865–1957).

Bassoon

The bassoon is the bass of the double reeds. It is about eight and a half feet long but doubles back on itself so that it is manageable. Like the oboe, the bassoon originated in the court of Louis XIV. Louis’s court composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687), often put it with two oboes for the trio sections of his minuets. The bassoon was a favorite instrument of Baroque composers: Vivaldi wrote thirty-eight bassoon concertos and Bach wrote many sonatas for bassoon as well as the great Bassoon Concerto in F. The finest of all bassoon works is Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto in B-flat. The modern bassoon repertory is thinner, but the charming, meandering Romance for Bassoon and Orchestra by Elgar (1857–1934) stands out. The contrabassoon is twice the length of the bassoon and doubles back on itself to form four parallel tubes. It is the basso profundo of the double reeds and is featured to great effect in the Mother Goose Suite by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937).

Clarinet

The clarinet uses a single reed, which sits against the player’s lower lip and vibrates against the flattened lower part of the mouthpiece. It evolved during the early eighteenth century, but it wasn’t until Mozart wrote his great Clarinet Concerto in 1791 that the potential of the instrument became apparent. Beethoven included clarinets in all his symphonies, and the clarinet remains a vital part of the symphony orchestra. Like the flute, the keying of the clarinet was revolutionized by Boehm in the mid-nineteenth century, and the modern instrument is capable of great precision at any speed. The clarinet has the widest tonal range of the woodwinds. It can “sing” melodiously in any register, and it can shriek, honk, whisper, and enchant depending on how the player breathes and adjusts the position of the lips (known as embouchure). Its repertory is vast. Beethoven’s Trio for clarinet, viola and piano; Fairy Tales for clarinet and piano by Schumann (1810–56); four works by Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)—the Trio for clarinet, cello, and piano; the Quintet for clarinet and strings; and Sonatas 1 and 2 for clarinet and piano—are among the greatest in the Classical and Romantic traditions. Contrasts for clarinet, violin, and piano by Béla Bartók (1881–1945) and Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) demonstrate the central position of the clarinet in the modern repertory. The clarinet is used extensively in jazz, Klezmer, and many other forms, and virtuosos include Reginald Kell (1906–81), Richard Stoltzman (b. 1942), and the jazz musician Sidney Bechet (1897–1959).

Two other members of the clarinet family, the E-flat clarinet and the bass clarinet, are used fairly often in symphony orchestras. The E-flat instrument is shorter and higher-pitched than the regular B-flat clarinet and was first used orchestrally by Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) in his Symphonie Fantastique. The bass clarinet, invented in the eighteenth century, has an upward-curving metal bell, like a saxophone. Its tone is both deep and cutting, and it has been used to great effect by modern composers—particularly Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and Stravinsky (1882–1971). One of the most important bass clarinetist was the jazz musician Eric Dolphy (1928–1964).

Saxophone

The saxophone was invented around 1840 by the Belgian Adolphe Sax (1814–1894). It is a single reed instrument with a mouthpiece like the clarinet—which makes it a woodwind, although it is made of brass. The saxophone comes in a variety of sizes and pitches, the most common being the straight soprano, the alto, the tenor, and the baritone. It is used only occasionally in the orchestra, most notably in Richard Strauss’s Symphonia Domestica and in Bolero by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Because of its power, speed, and range of tonal effects, the saxophone dominates jazz and plays a central role in most forms of popular music. The greatest virtuosos are all jazz musicians: Sidney Bechet (who played soprano saxophone as well as clarinet), Charlie “Bird” Parker (1920–1955), and John Coltrane (1926–1967).