Handel used an instrument that corresponded in his day to the piccolo in his wonderful accompaniment to the bass song, “O ruddier than the Cherry,” in Acis and Galatea, where he gives it a pastoral character. He also makes it play an obbligato in the aria, “Hush ye Pretty Warbling Choir,” in the same cantata. He does the same thing again in the aria, Auguelletti che cantate, in Rinaldo. Meyerbeer gives it much to do in his infernal waltz in Robert le Diable; and in Marcel’s song “Piff Paff” in Les Huguenots it adds brilliancy to the martial effect. Beethoven has a striking place for the piccolo in the finale of his Egmont Overture; Verdi makes it heard in Iago’s drinking-song in Otello; it is conspicuous in the grotesque dances of the dolls in the ballet of Coppelia by Delibes; Wagner uses it in his storms, in the Ride of the Walküre, and in all his fire-music in the Nibelungen Ring; Strauss gives a peculiar trill for it in Till Eulenspiegel; and Berlioz gives it full play in his Carnaval Romain, op. 9; and in the Minuet of the “Will o’ the Whisps” of his Damnation of Faust he calls for three piccolos.
Therefore, we might characterize the piccolo as the imp, or demon, of the Orchestra, or the flash of lightning, or the darting flame, or the whistling wind.
THE OBOE
The Oboe, like the violin, comes from a family of long ancestry. It goes back to ancient Egypt, Assyria and Greece. In the Middle Ages this family was known as the Bombardo, Bombardino, Bombardi, or Chalumeau. The Germans called this family Pommers, which seems to be a corruption of Bombardi.
“The Bombardo,” writes Carl Engel, “was made of various sizes and with a greater or smaller number of finger-holes and keys. That which produced the bass tones was sometimes of enormous length and was blown through a bent tube like the bassoon, the invention of which it suggested. The smallest instrument, called chalumeau (from calamus, a reed) is still occasionally to be found among the peasantry in the Tyrol and some other parts of the Continent. The Germans call it Schalmei and the Italians piffero pastorale. In England it was formerly called shawm, or shalm.”
The type of these instruments was a conical tube of wood with a bell at one end and a bent metal tube at the other containing a double reed mouthpiece. There was a quartet of them; and the oboe, or hautbois (high-wood) was the treble. There was also an oboe d’amore[20] and an oboe di caccia, hunting oboe (from which the cor anglais is supposed to have been derived), and there were many others. Old writers refer to them as chalumeau and schalmey and shawm; and in such a general and confused way that it is hard to know just which special instrument they are talking about. These old oboes are called for in Bach’s scores; but they began to drop out of use in his time. We know, however, that chalumeau was the instrument of the old reed band that always played the melody and that from it sprang the oboe of to-day. The instrument went through many changes before it reached its present condition; but none of these affected the family voice—the penetrating, roughish twang. The Bombardino-Schalmey voice still persists: it is like some other famous family traits—the Bourbon nose and the Hapsburg lip for instance—it is hard to suppress. However, it is this peculiar voice that makes the oboe such a desirable member of the orchestra.
“The timbre is thin and nasal, very piercing in its forte passages, of exquisite refinement in its piano passages; harsh and of bad quality in its very high and very low notes. The oboe is artless and rustic in its expression; it is pastoral and melancholy; if it is gay, its gayety is frank and almost excessive and exaggerated; but its natural tone is of a gentle sadness and a resigned endurance. It is unrivalled in depicting simple, rural sentiments of any kind, and on occasion can even become pathetic.”[21]
FIRST OBOE, SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
Henri De Busscher