II
Wind-Instruments of Wood
THE FLUTE
Next in importance to the strings is the wood-wind, which is divided into three families—flutes, oboes, and clarinets. To the first family belong the piccolo and the flute; to the second the oboe, English horn, and bassoon, and to the third the clarinet and bass clarinet. In the modern orchestra, flutes, clarinets, oboes, and bassoons are usually employed in pairs, while there is, if needed, one piccolo, one English horn, and one bass clarinet. The flute is the most agile of the wind-instruments, and is employed very freely in the orchestra. Its compass is three octaves upward from the C below the treble clef, but the two uppermost notes are seldom used. The tone is soft and sweet in the medium register, clear and penetrating in the upper, and singularly characteristic in the lower. Rapid passages are readily executed on the flute, but the instrument’s powers of expression are limited, owing partly to its tone-quality and partly to the impossibility of giving a wide crescendo or diminuendo to any passage played upon it.
Nevertheless, it can be employed expressively when used with judgment. Berlioz calls attention to Gluck’s use of it in his “Orfeo” in the scene in the Elysian fields, where it voices the humility and resignation of the bereaved husband. In the upper register rapid sequences for the flute have an air of gayety. Well-known passages which illustrate this are that near the close of the “Leonora” overture No. 3, and that near the close of the finale of the “Eroica” symphony. The piccolo, or octave-flute, is simply a small, shrill-voiced flute, sounding an octave higher than the ordinary instrument. The sounds in its second octave are well adapted to pieces of a joyous character, while its upper register is useful for violent effects, such as a storm or a scene in the infernal regions. In grotesque and supernatural scenes it is also often employed with good results.
THE OBOE
The oboe is a reed instrument with a peculiar pastoral tone, which, when once recognized, can never again be mistaken for that of another instrument. It is not possible to describe this tone, beyond saying that the average hearer thinks of it as the tone of a shepherd’s pipe. The instrument is so well suited to pastoral music that the principal melody is almost always given to it in passages having such a character. Rapid passages, except in rare instances, are not suited to the utterance of the oboe, though when it joins with the whole mass of instruments in a tutti, anything that is not impossible may be written for it. But it is essentially a lyric instrument of tender expression, and it is seldom called upon for either gayety or tragedy. Berlioz says: “Candor, artless grace, soft joy, or the grief of a fragile being, suits the oboe’s accents. It expresses them admirably in its cantabile.” An excellent example of the oboe’s quality as a tender lyric singer is the opening of the slow movement of Schubert’s symphony in C:
Its pastoral character is illustrated by hundreds of familiar passages. Perhaps none is more familiar than this from the first scene of Gounod’s “Faust.”