AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Instruments
• Classical
• Renaissance

not left above right as in almost all other wind instruments. Some rackets were made of hard wood, others of ivory. Further double-reed instruments from the Renaissance include the dulcian and the curtal. An early version of the bassoon, the dulcian was made in one piece rather than in the separable three of the later bassoon. ‘Curtal’ was the ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Late Romantic

in B flat like the standard orchestral clarinet, but sounding an octave below it, the bass clarinet began life as an eighteenth-century instrument that looked faintly like a dulcian, though with an upward-pointing bell. Adolphe Sax (1814–94) and L. A. Buffet (fl. 1839–43) both worked on the instrument in the nineteenth century. Sax developed one with two speaker ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Early Baroque

imitation of the flute and oboe. Built with three keys by the Denners of Nuremberg, the new instrument allowed greater virtuosity in the player than the one-piece curtal and dulcian, which began to decline in favour of the bassoon at the end of the seventeenth century. The playing position of the hands settled as left up, right down. ...

• Instruments
• Woodwind

to play. Various elements of existing instruments – the bass recorder’s crook and the shawm’s double reed, for instance – were combined to create the bassoon’s predecessor: the dulcian. Dulcian Meaning ‘sweet’ (presumably in comparison with the raucous shawm), the dulcian, standing at nearly 1 m (3 ft) high, was constructed from a single piece of wood, ...

• Instruments
• Brass
• Electric & Electronic
• Keyboards
• Percussion
• Stringed
• Woodwind

church ensembles. It was also used as a soloist in orchestras. Similarly, the bassoon, which been around in guises such as the curtal, the bombard and the dulcian, became a regular member of the orchestra, doubling the bass line in the continuo group. In church music, the organ was approaching its most influential period, ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Renaissance

Renaissance periods, the shawm was particularly popular in outdoor dance bands and was also used for military purposes. Styles & Forms | Renaissance | Classical Instruments | Racket, Dulcian, Curtal | Renaissance | Classical ...

• Instruments
• Woodwind

reconstruction of the shawm, a strident-sounding instrument often played in outdoor ceremonies during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Similarities in design and use also suggest the curtal or dulcian was the true forerunner of the bassoon. It was used in Henry Purcell’s 1691 score The History of Dioclesian and the English musicologist James Talbot identified ‘a bassoon in four ...