The term ‘woodwind’ refers collectively to the orchestral instruments whose sound is generated by reeds or by passing air across (as opposed to directly into) a mouthpiece: this covers the flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon. All woodwind instruments sound different pitches in the same way as brass instruments – using enclosed columns of air, based on the principles of fundamentals and overtones. The woodwind section now includes a regular visitor that ...
The bagpipe principle is simple: instead of the player blowing directly on a reed pipe, the air is supplied from a reservoir, usually made of animal skin, which is inflated either by mouth or by bellows. The result is the ability to produce a continuous tone, and the possibility of adding extra reed-pipes to enable a single player to make homophonic music. History The early history of bagpipes is unclear. Because they ...
As ensemble music became more popular during the sixteenth century there was increased demand for wind instruments that could elegantly negotiate the lower ranges. Large versions of wind instruments intended for the higher registers lacked volume and agility and were often difficult 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 ...
The history of musical instruments has always been very closely linked to the history of music itself. New musical styles often come about because new instruments become available, or improvements to existing ones are made. Improvements to the design of the piano in the 1770s, for instance, led to its adoption by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91), who quickly developed a new, individual style of keyboard writing. On the ...
Unusually among musical instruments, a specific date has been posited for the invention of the clarinet. Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg has been claimed as the man who, in 1700, devised and built the first of these instruments. Like all the best stories, however, the history of the clarinet is shrouded in mystery. The instrument attributed to Denner, which now resides in the National Museum in Bayern, Germany, is in fact ...
The crumhorn is a double-reed wind-cap instrument. This means that the two reeds are enclosed in a rigid cap. The player blows through a hole in one end of the cap, which makes the reed vibrate unimpeded, since there is no direct contact with the lips. The crumhorn is a cylindrically bored instrument, normally made of maple with a curved lower section. Pitch and Compass Since the crumhorn uses a wind-cap, ...
At its simplest, to make a double reed the end of a piece of reed or similar plant tube is flattened so its sides nearly touch. Putting this flattened end into the mouth and blowing causes the two sides to briefly close against each other then spring back, hundreds of times a second. This causes a regular stream of air puffs – a squeak. When this squeaking reed is inserted in ...
Cut a clean end to a length of bamboo, reed or other tube, place it near the mouth and direct a narrow stream of breath at its edge, and with a little practice, a pitched note can be produced. Blow a little harder and that note will jump to a series of ascending harmonics. It is not even necessary to mouth-blow – the corrugated plastic whirly-tubes sold as toys are whirled ...
The flute most familiar to us from its use in orchestral and solo music is more properly known as a ‘transverse’ or ‘side-blown’ flute. The flute family is distinct from the other woodwind instruments in that it does not use a reed to generate sound. Instead, a stream of air striking the edge of an opening in the side of a tube agitates the enclosed air column. The pitch of the ...
The birthplace of free reeds seems to have been eastern Asia. There, it is typical to place a small free reed, made of metal or bamboo, into a bamboo tube cut to the appropriate length so that its air column resonates at the reed’s frequency, increasing the volume and allowing the player to allow it to sound, or to stop it, by opening or closing the airway. What is a Free-Reed ...
The pocket-sized instruments known in English as jew’s harps (or in some periods of history trumps, and in French guimbardes), have no connection with Judaism – nor are they harps. A strip of bamboo or metal, in a frame of the same material, is twanged, and the oral cavity acts as an amplifying soundbox whose capacity can be changed, selecting particular harmonics to emphasize. Thus, individual pitches from the harmonic series ...
In East Asia and South America, some end-blown flutes have a feature that requires a different embouchure from neys and kavals. A ‘U’-shaped notch is cut in the rim on the opposite side to the player. It is bevelled on the inside or the outside of the tube to make a thin edge at which the breath is directed. The rest of the tube’s diameter is sealed by the outside of ...
Of the woodwind instruments, the oboe has experienced perhaps the most organic development. There is no single, revolutionary moment at which the oboe became a modern instrument, and it retains strong links with the past both in sound and design. Shawm The modern oboe is a direct descendant of the shawm and the hautboy. The shawm was a conically bored, straight wooden instrument with a flared bell, popular throughout Europe from as ...
The first known examples of the recorder date from the Middle Ages. It became hugely popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods and then, surpassed by the concert flute, it largely fell out of use in the professional arena. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, it was redesigned by Arnold Dolmetsch and subsequently enjoyed a remarkable revival, which continues today. Playing and Pitch All recorders are end-blown duct flutes. The main ...
The saxophone occupies an unusual position in that it is a bespoke instrument that has barely changed since its creation. Although it does not occupy the position in the orchestra its creator had envisaged, Adolphe Sax’s invention has played a central part in music ever since it burst on to the scene in the 1840s. Sax’s father, Charles, was a successful instrument maker and Adolphe himself had been involved in ...
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