A 65-centimetre reed instrument that tunes the whole orchestra
The oboe is a double-reed woodwind, usually wooden though plastics appear too. The common soprano in C runs about 65 centimetres with metal keys, a conical bore and a flared bell, and its bright, penetrating voice is why orchestras take their tuning A from it.
That cutting sound comes from the cone-shaped bore, unlike the mostly cylindrical tubes of flutes and clarinets, and it lets the oboe carry over a large ensemble. Its written music sits at concert pitch, with a range usually running from B-flat below middle C up to G6. Orchestras tune to an A from the first oboist because, according to the League of American Orchestras, its pitch is steady and easy to hear. Descriptions vary: Henry Playford's 1695 tutor The Sprightly Companion found it majestic and nearly the equal of a trumpet, while a line in Angels in America compares it to a duck that happens to be a songbird.
The reed is the heart of the instrument and its biggest headache. Serious players shape their own from Arundo donax cane, using gougers, shapers, guillotines and knives to tune colour, response and intonation to their own mouths. Beginners usually buy medium-soft reeds from shops, and plastic ones, made by firms such as Legere, are rare. Because the cane, its age, the scrape, and even temperature, humidity and altitude all shift the pitch, oboists keep several reeds ready, soak them in water before playing and adjust their lip pressure constantly. German and French reed styles also produce audibly different sounds.
The lineage is ancient. Reed instruments existed in Egypt and Mesopotamia, alongside the Greek aulos and Roman tibia. Europe met the Turko-Arabic zurna during the Crusades, and the family re-emerged in the thirteenth century before becoming the French hautbois, meaning high or loud wood, in the mid-1600s. It differed from its shawm ancestor by being built in three joints and dropping the pirouette, a ledge where players rested their lips. Its inventors are uncertain, though evidence points to the Hotteterre and Philidor families.
English speakers called it hautboy or hoboy until around 1770, when the Italian spelling oboè gave us the modern word. It led early military bands until the clarinet replaced it. Today it serves in orchestras, concert bands and chamber groups, in film scores and some folk music, and occasionally in jazz and pop.
Source: Oboe
