Not long after Shakespeare's time, orchestral music for the theatre consisted of stringed instruments only (i.e., the violin family, violins, violas, violoncellos, and the sole surviving 'viol,' the double-bass) with harpsichord, for general use; while in the more important pieces, hautboys, and sometimes flutes as well, were added, playing, as a rule, with the 1st and 2nd violin parts. This, at any rate, is the case in Purcell's operas. (Purcell died 1695). Thus the word Hautboys represented very nearly the climax of power to 17th century ears. Anything beyond this was supplied by the addition of trumpets, though this was rare; while Drums were very occasionally used.
The stage direction in Shakespeare may be taken to mean—'Let the hautboys be added to the usual band of strings.' In the last of the above examples, Coriol. V, iv, 50, we have the extreme limit of power of this time provided for—viz., trumpets and hautboys and drums, all together. It is interesting to notice the wording of Menenius's description of this stage music. 'The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes, Tabors and cymbals.' The 'sackbut' was merely our modern slide trombone, while the rest of these instruments were in common use in the 16th century, except the Psaltery, which Kircher (b. 1601) says is the same as the Nebel of the Bible. The picture he gives is remarkably like the dulcimers which may be seen and heard outside public-houses to this very day, i.e., a small hollow chest, with the strings stretched across it. An instrument of this kind could be played with the fingers, like a harp, or with a plectrum, like a zither, or with two little knob-sticks, like the dulcimer. Mersennus (b. 1588) also identifies the Psaltery with the Dulcimer.
In the text, the Hautboy is only named once, in H. 4. B III, ii, 332, near the end of Falstaff's soliloquy, on old men and lying, where he says that Shallow was such a withered little wretch that the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court.
The 'treble' hautboy corresponds with our modern instrument, and was the smallest in size of the hautboy tribe, of which only two now survive—viz., the Oboe proper, and its cousin, which is a fifth lower in pitch, and correspondingly larger, and which has curiously picked up the name of Corno Inglese, Cor Anglais, or English Horn. None the less it is the Alto Hautboy. The tenor and bass of the family have not survived. Hautboys in four parts were the backbone of the French regimental bands in Lully's time—i.e., about 1670. [[Appendix].]
The spelling of the word in the old editions of Shakespeare is 'hoeboy,' which is very like the modern German Hoboe.
Sennet. This is a rare direction, and is found only nine times in eight plays, as against sixty-eight 'Flourishes' and fifty-one 'Trumpets.' The notes of a sennet are unknown. Three times it marks the entrance or exit of a Parliament, three times is used in a Royal or quasi-royal procession, and the remaining cases are royal, or near it.
In the 1st Folio of Hen. V., the word is spelt senet, but in later ones, Sonet, as if the former were a misprint. In Marlowe's Faustus (published 1604), Act iii. sc. i., we find 'sound a sonnet' [enter Pope, Cardinal, etc.]. Also the French Cavalry of 1636 used trumpet calls named Sonneries. These seem to point to a derivation of the word from sonare, and thus the spelling ought to be sonnet, not sennet.
But other forms are found—Synnet, Signet, Signate, which may be proper derivatives of signum, and thus make this trumpet call 'a signal,' instead of 'a sounding'; or (which is as likely) may be corruptions, perhaps of the somewhat featureless form 'Synnet,' caused by a misunderstanding of the original misspelling 'senet.'
In the text of Shakespeare the word does not occur.
Cornets, or Flourish Cornets (only twice).