Instrument
Oboe
A double-reed woodwind with a penetrating, nasal tone - and the orchestra's tuning note.
The oboe produces sound through a double reed - two thin strips of cane bound together, vibrating against each other when the player blows between them - giving it a penetrating, slightly nasal tone that cuts through the rest of the woodwind family even at moderate volume.
The reed
That reed is also notoriously difficult to make and adjust well, and many professional oboists make their own reeds by hand rather than relying on manufactured ones - shaping, scraping, and testing cane for hours. A reed's exact dimensions change the sound, so oboists guard their best ones carefully. Playing the oboe also takes unusual breath control: the reed's tiny opening lets out very little air, so players often need to exhale stale air as well as inhale during long phrases.
The tuning note
The oboe holds one specific ceremonial role in nearly every orchestra: it plays the tuning note (usually an A) that the rest of the orchestra tunes to before a performance begins, a tradition that persists partly because the oboe's steady, clearly-defined pitch is easy for every other instrument to match against.
How it's built
Unlike the clarinet's cylindrical bore, the oboe's tube is conical - narrow at the reed end and gradually widening toward the bell - which is a major reason the two instruments, despite looking similar at a glance, produce such different tone colors. Its family includes the lower, mellower English horn (cor anglais), with a bulb-shaped bell, and the rarer oboe d'amore, a favorite of Bach.
A short history
The oboe descends from the shawm, a loud, piercing outdoor double-reed instrument common in medieval and Renaissance Europe, refined into a quieter, more flexible indoor concert instrument in 17th-century France. It quickly became one of the Baroque orchestra's core instruments: Bach gave it some of his most beautiful obbligato solos in his cantatas and Passions, and Handel and Vivaldi wrote oboe concertos.
Its combination of tuning duties and a strong solo voice has also made it a favorite concerto subject, with Mozart's Oboe Concerto in C major among the most performed works in the instrument's repertoire - Mozart later reworked it into his Flute Concerto No. 2. In 1945, Richard Strauss wrote a late Oboe Concerto after an American soldier and oboist, John de Lancie, visited him and suggested the idea.
Essential oboe music
- Alessandro Marcello - Oboe Concerto in D minor, with its famous slow movement.
- Mozart - Oboe Concerto in C major (1777).
- Strauss - Oboe Concerto (1945).
- Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake, whose main theme belongs to the oboe.
- Ennio Morricone - "Gabriel's Oboe," from the film The Mission (1986).
- Prokofiev - Peter and the Wolf, where the oboe plays the duck.
Where to start listening: the oboe's opening solo in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake theme is one of its most recognizable orchestral moments. The extended oboe solo opening the slow movement of Brahms's Violin Concerto is another well-known showcase, so prominent that the violinist Pablo de Sarasate reportedly balked at playing the piece, saying he had no interest in standing on stage while the oboe got the only real melody.