The notes are produced by holes, some open, others closed by keys raised by means of levers. The oboe, like the flute, is an octave instrument, that is to say it “over-blows” the octave. The oboe possesses notes sufficient for an octave, or more, with chromatic intervals. The next octaves are obtained by means of cross-fingering and from the octave keys which do not give out an independent note of their own but determine a node in the column of air and so raise the pitch of any other note an octave. The oboe is a “non-transposing instrument” and sounds the note written.
“It is possible to play on this instrument chromatic scales and arpeggio passages; legato and staccato; leaps; cantabile passages; sustained notes; diminuendo and crescendo; grace notes and shakes.”
“The oboe,” writes Berlioz, “is especially a melodic instrument. It has a pastoral character full of tenderness,—indeed I might say timidity. Candor, artless grace, soft joy, or the grief of a fragile being suits the oboe’s accents: it expresses them admirably in its cantabile.
“A certain degree of agitation is also within its powers of expression; but care should be taken not to urge it into utterance of passion—a rash outburst of anger, threat, or even heroism; for then its small acid-sweet voice becomes uneffectual and absolutely grotesque.
“Gluck and Beethoven understood marvellously well the use of this valuable instrument. To it they owe the profound emotions excited by several of their finest pages. I have only to quote from Gluck’s Agmemnon’s air in Iphigénie en Aulide ‘Can the harsh Fates?’ These complaints of an innocent voice, these continued supplications, ever more and more appealing, what instrument could they suit so well as an oboe? And the celebrated burden of the air of Iphigénie en Tauride, ‘O Unhappy Iphigénie!’
“Beethoven has demanded more from the joyous accent of the oboe. Witness the solo of the Scherzo of the Pastoral Symphony and also that of the Scherzo of the Ninth Symphony, also that in the first movement of the Symphony in B-flat. But he has no less felicitously succeeded in assigning them sad, or forlorn, passages. These may be seen in the minor solo of the second return of the first movement of the Symphony in A-major in the episodical Andante of the finale to the Eroica Symphony; and above all, in the air of Fidelio, where Florestan, starving to death, believes himself, in his delirious agony, surrounded by his weeping family and mingles his tears of anguish with the broken sobs of the oboe.”
In Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony the oboe impersonates the quail and in Haydn’s Seasons it imitates the crowing of a cock in a long and difficult passage. Perhaps the most beautiful use of the oboe in all music is in Gluck’s opera of Orfeo, in which it plays an exquisite minuet with the flute and a beautiful ballet with the violin. Schubert uses it charmingly in the second movement of his Symphony in C-major.
COR ANGLAIS
The cor anglais, or English horn, differs slightly in appearance from the oboe; but these differences help us to identify it. In the first place, it ends in a kind of ball; and in the second place, there is a bent crook at the other end that holds the mouthpiece containing the double reed. It is supposed that the word Anglais is a corruption of the word anglé, meaning bent; for in olden times this instrument was bent at an obtuse angle in the middle of the tube. It is, therefore, more correct to call it cor anglais than English horn. The English have had nothing whatever to do with the development of the instrument.
The cor anglais is nothing more or less than the alto, or tenor, oboe. It has the same scale and compass as the oboe; but it stands in the key of F, a fifth below that of the oboe. It is, however, unlike the oboe, a “transposing instrument,” that is to say, the music does not represent the real sounds. In the case of the cor anglais the music is written in a key a fifth above the real sounds. Any good oboe player can play the cor anglais, because the technique and fingering are practically the same.