Woodwinds: The Evolutionary Path Since 1700

Author(s): Arthur H. Benade

Source: The Galpin Society Journal , Mar., 1994, Vol. 47 (Mar., 1994), pp. 63-110
Published by: Galpin Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/842663

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Galpin Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Galpin Society Journal

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ARTHUR H. BENADE

Woodwinds: The Evolutiona

Path Since 1700*
THE acoustical design of European woodwind instruments underwent
an abrupt and revolutionary change over the span of only a few years
centred about 1700. As a result, these instruments were brought into a
condition of fundamental musical excellence that has proved to be
remarkably stable over the past three-hundred years. The acoustical nature
of these instruments also guided the evolution of all woodwind instruments
that were invented later.
To examine this evolutionary process we will need an outline of the
physical bases for the criteria of musical excellence. Next we will look at
woodwind instruments to see how they work and how they can be studied
so that we can better understand their musical and technological
development.
The historical part of this article (its major portion), begins with a
description of the social and musical conditions in Paris around 1700 that set
the scene for the first revolution in design. This is followed by a look at
what happened to the woodwinds during this period of rapid change. After
a period of refinement and stabilization, a certain amount of mechanical
elaboration took place in the thirty-year span straddling 1800, but this did
not radically change the basic nature of the instruments.
However, in the mid-nineteenth century a second and very significant
revolution led to an extensive 'rationalization' of the air columns of all the
woodwinds along with a considerable revision of the key mechanisms used
to control an increased number of tone holes. The original inventors of
these new designs offered the players certain great advantages while
introducing relatively few serious problems, and they accomplished this
with little or no cost in responsiveness and musical flexibility.
All of our present woodwind instruments are the direct descendants of
those developed by these mid-nineteenth-century revolutionaries, but
many of them have, regrettably, suffered from a certain amount of
'negative evolution' as the result of well-intentioned but not well-
informed modifications. As a result, many passages that performers find
taxing on today's instruments were considered perfectly straightforward or

* The original manuscript for this article was written in 1985. It has been revised
by Virginia Benade (A. H. Benade's widow) and Douglas H. Keefe, a former
student of Benade's who is a member of the faculty of the School of Music,
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.

63

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 even pleasurable by the players for whom the music was originally
composed. It is only very recently that some composers have come to feel
that they need not concern themselves with the problems a musician meets
when actually performing their works. In an earlier era, it was brutally
necessary to the composer's livelihood for musicians to be able to perform
his pieces dependably and with a certain amount of elegance!
Today, following half a century of near-stagnation in instrument
development, insights at the forefront of recent acoustical research have
begun to elucidate the nature of the original revolution and of the later
evolutionary processes. In more recent years a growing collaboration
between scientists, musicians, and instrument makers has begun to guide
them to find practical ways in which more of the virtues can be brought
together in a single instrument than heretofore had been considered
possible.

WHAT MAKES AN INSTRUMENT EXCELLENT?

Essential to our discussion is a working list of the set of virtues requ

any instrument that lays claim to being excellent. To be sure, many
are traditionally considered to be matters of the musician's personal
suggesting possible wide variation in these virtues. However, in ever
in every country, and for every instrument there have been ex
craftsmen-artists whose instruments were universally admired. I wo
to emphasize that these skilful people could never have gained their f
it were not for the fact that they were consistently able to build instrum
universally recognized high quality. The following list is a distilla
those features of musical quality that essentially every musician now
the past would desire in his instruments. Since the player is responsi
making musical sounds, he must bear the ultimate responsibilit
selecting the virtues of his instrument. According to the musici
excellent instrument:
must 'sing' with a full, centred tone that carries well in an ensembl
yet blends with other instruments;
must permit a variety of clean and easily controlled articulations fo
start-up and ending of its notes;
must possess a readily controllable range of dynamics;
must have a playing pitch that remains reasonably stable over a wide
of dynamic levels and during player-controlled variations in
colour;
needs to have a well-defined pattern of intonation and yet permit
flexibility of pitch so that the player can adjust his notes to agree with the
ever-changing chordal requirements of the music;
should respond with good 'resistance', which means that large muscular
efforts will be needed to achieve small musical effects, in order to give the
player easy control of nuances and to protect him from small accidents

64

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 caused by maladjustments in his embouchure when he is playing under
stress;

ought to have a suitable tone colour to match the stylistic intentions of the
composer and the music.
Notice two things about this list. In the first place the items are listed in
order of decreasing importance. It starts out with things that the musician
must have, and it ends with an item which he ought to have. Secondly, these
virtues are all of a sort that directly serve the player's musical purposes.
They permit him to concentrate on the music itself, liberating him from the
task of fighting with an untrustworthy or recalcitrant instrument. It is clear
that a fine player can give a beautiful performance on a poor instrument.
The fact that he is nevertheless willing to pay a very high price for a truly
fine instrument reminds us that, even for him, music is an exacting task. The
additional burden imposed by a poor instrument must inevitably take a toll
from the elegances and perfections that would otherwise be heard.

WHAT IS A WIND INSTRUMENT?

The essential features of a musical wind instrument, as seen by a phys

are shown in Fig.1. The player is responsible for providing a suppl
compressed air to the instrument's reed system, which funct
dynamically as a flow controller. On the downstream side of this cont
we find an adjustable air column that is normally terminated by some sor
bell.

SUPPLY
OF AIR

CONTROLLER ADJUSTABLE BELL

OF FLOW AIR COLUMN

FIG. 1. Schematic of a 'generic' woodwind, showing m

The two major families of Western wind instrumen

and the brasses - can be distinguished from each oth
acoustical features:

A woodwind is recognized by the fact that the length

adjusted by means of a sequence of tone holes that are
various combinations to determine the desired notes.
saxophone, bassoon, flute, and Baroque cornett are som
of this family.

65

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 A brass instrument is distinguished by the fact that its air column continues
uninterrupted from mouthpiece to bell, any necessary length adjustments
being provided either via segments of tubing inserted into the bore by
means of valves (as in the trumpet or horn) or by means of a sliding
extension of the sort found on the trombone.

Reed or controller

The sound production process in all wind instruments is a cooperative

phenomenon in which the air flow controller works under the influence of
a set of acoustical disturbances that take place within the air column. Three
types of flow controllers are found on these instruments:
A cane reed serves as the flow controller for the clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and
saxophone. We do not need (for present purposes) to distinguish between
the double and single types of reeds; both types share the dynamical
property that the valve tends to close when the pressure is increased in the
player's mouth or is decreased within the reed cavity or mouthpiece.
The lip reed is the flow controller normally used on brass instruments and
on certain hybrids such as the cornett, serpent, and ophicleide. The valve
tends to open under the influence of a pressure increment in the player's
mouth or a decrement in the mouthpiece.
Flutes, recorders, and most organ pipes are kept in oscillation through the
action of a third type of controller, which may aptly be described as an air
reed. It works via an airjet whose path is deflected in and out of an aperture
at one end of the air column through the action of the velocity of the air that
is oscillating up and down within the length of the governing air
column.

Note that the nature of the flow controller itself (while very important)
does not usefully distinguish the instrumental families. Thus, the Baroque
cornett (excited by a lip reed) was traditionally the property of a player of
the oboe (cane reed) or recorder (air reed). Another example of the pitfalls
to defining simply by reed type is that sounding a clarinet by buzzing one's
lips at the upper end of the barrel joint gives rise to perfectly recognizable
clarinet-like sounds despite the absence of its cane reed.

Air columnti or oscillator

It is a little difficult to visualize the oscillations of air within the air column
of a wind instrument, but the strictly analogous motion of water in an
elongated channel can give us considerable insight into what is going on.
Fig. 2 shows three modes of 'sloshing' that are possible for the water in a
uniform channel closed at both ends. The first diagram illustrates the
simplest of these motions: a periodic alternation of water height at the two
ends of the channel. The second diagram shows the next more complicated
mode of motion, in which the water alternately piles itself up in the centre
and then at the ends of the duct. This oscillation repeats itself at a more
rapid rate than does the first one, but we must not assume it will necessarily
66

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 oscillate at precisely twice the rate of the first mode; this will only be true
for a particular variation in the depth of the channel. The third diagram
shows a yet more elaborate (and still higher frequency) mode of oscillatory
motion. We may deduce from these diagrams that the water height at the
ends of the channel rises and falls in synchronism with the vertical motion
of the water at certain other positions along the channel. Furthermore, a
large oscillatory horizontal flow of water back and forth must exist in
regions of small vertical motion. This horizontal motion is what alternately
fills and empties the water from the regions on either side of it, producing
the observed changes in the water depth.

MODE .7 ..-. SEA If LEVEL

MODE
2

1=;~~~~~~ ~ ~ ~~ ~~ '.":. . ,.:' .7::::.:. . ? :-....... : ..-.:...:.:..': ;-t

MODE
3 1-" ". , ... . - " . . . . .o..
,.,- . . .. .. . . . . " .............. , -. -_.. -_..,- .,. :.- ..t _
FIG. 2. Possible modes of back-and-forth sloshing of water in a uniform channel.

A connection can now be made between these water oscillations and the
corresponding motions of air within an air column. Clearly the increase and
decrease in the water depth at any point is correlated with an increase and
decrease in the amount of water that is present at that point. In an exactly
similar way the rise and fall of air pressure at some point in a musical air
column is associated with the inflow and outflow of air to and from this
region in relation to the neighbouring parts of the air column. As in the case
of the water channel, an air column possesses a large number of modes of
oscillation, each having its own complexity of motion and its own
characteristic natural frequency.
Fig. 3 presents what might be called a 'water trumpet', in which a channel
of varying trumpet-like depth is supplied with a float that operates a flow-
control valve. This valve permits a flow of water into the channel end
whenever the water level there is high and shuts it off when the level is low.
Such a mechanism is able to maintain the oscillation of any one of the
vibratory modes of the water. There is, however, a complication, one that

67

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
is crucial to the successful operation of real wind instruments as well as to
their hydraulic counterparts: each smooth rise and fall of the float gives rise
to an abrupt pulse of injected flow. This impulsive excitation of the water
column acts to start all of the oscillatory modes going at the same time, in
exactly the same way that striking a bell with an impulsive force excites all
of its modes into oscillation. We come now to the essential feature of our
dynamical system: if the various modes of the water (or air) column have
irregularly related characteristic modal frequencies, the succeeding swings of
each mode will then 'request' a different pulse rate from the flow control
valve, resulting in chaos! The flow controller might well say, 'I can do
nothing until all of you modes agree amongst yourselves about the actions
you are asking me to carry out'.

FLOAT OPENS A POSSIBLE SMALL WAVE OUTSIDE

VALVE WHEN SLOSHING WAVE IS LEAKAGE FROM
VALVE WATER IS HIGH IN THE CHANNEL INSIDE THE CHANNEL

* -SEA LEVEL _
WATER

SUPPLY CHANNEL OF VARYING DEPTH

CLOSED AT SHALLOW END

FIG. 3. A 'water trumpet', showing how the water level (or air pressure)
can control a flow control valve to maintain oscillation.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the air column shape is cleverly chosen
so all of its characteristic modal frequencies will be in exactly (or very
nearly) whole-number relation to each other. For example, modes 2, 3, and
4 might like to oscillate at frequencies that are almost precisely double,
triple, and quadruple the frequency preferred by mode 1. Under these
conditions the action is quite straightforward. Mode 1 will call for the valve
to open once during the cycle of its oscillation, mode 2 will call for two such
openings in the same period of time, while modes 3 and 4 will make
requests for three and four such openings. All this will provide the valve
with one strong request for a flow pulse (produced by the synchronous
arrival of requests from all the modes) plus a sequence of rhythmically
consistent lesser requests from the higher-numbered modes. The essential
secret of a successful musical oscillator has just been illustrated: the flow
controller must be operated cooperatively by a set of essentially synchronous
characteristic air column modes.
Further exploration of the wind instruments requires a way of
characterizing the nature of their air columns in a compact and easy-to-read
form. Consider how someone in the laboratory might go about measuring
the pressure response of an air column to a carefully controlled externally
68

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
applied flow whose repetition frequency is varied smoothly over a suitable
range. Fig. 4 shows an easily visualized and perhaps familiar variation of the
previous basic experiment. A loudspeaker is placed somewhere in a room
and is driven by a variable-frequency oscillator. This combination is simply
a means for stimulating the room by means of an oscillatory flow signal. At
some other point in the room we place a microphone, which is actually a
rapid-acting pressure-measuring device that turns the sound vibrations back
into electrical signals. The electrical signal from the microphone is
recorded on a moving strip of chart paper to show the strength of the
pressure disturbances at the microphone position that result from the flow
stimulus applied to the room air at the position of the loudspeaker.

SOURCE

OSCILLATOR
RD)OM
ROOM

STIMULUS MICROPHONE

t CHARACTERIZED BY
RESPONSE POINT-TO-POINT
RESPONSE IN
ROOM

o' STIMULUS FBEQUENCY.

FIG. 4. Prototype experimental set-up to illustrate the response curve in a room
as the frequency of the stimulus (source) is varied.

In an exactly similar set-up shown in Fig. 5, the box-like volume of a

room is replaced by the elongated volume of an instrument's air column. As
before, we have an oscillator-driven excitatory flow source, this time
located at the mouthpiece end where the reed normally supplies the
excitation. We have also a supervisory microphone, now located inside the
mouthpiece, where it measures the pressure disturbance that in a wind
instrument has the job of instructing the reed. The resulting response curve
shows peaks located at the characteristic ('natural') frequencies of the air
column modes, with the tallness of the peaks giving a quantitative measure
of the responsiveness of these modes to a flow excitation applied in the
mouthpiece. Response curves of this sort can be readily obtained in the
laboratory for the air columns used to play each separate note of an
instrument's scale, and these may be read like a book to learn the oscillatory
virtues and faults of the notes.
Fig. 6 shows schematically some of the features typical of all woodwind
air columns and indicates some of the information we can gain from them.

69

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 MIKE AIR COLUM
O SCILLATOR CHARACTERIZED
BY
MOUTHPIECE
RESPONSE RESPONSE OF
AIR COLUMN

0 STIMULUS FREQUENCY --'-*

FIG. 5. Apparatus analogous to the set-up in Fig. 4, this time mea

pressure response of a wind instrument driven at the 'blowing end' by a s
a known variable frequency. The resultant response curve tells a great
playing behaviour of the instrument.

z , v-I
200
a. 1 I
w 595

SI I --- REAKEVEN
I I

I I I f I
0 200 400 600 800 1000
EXCITATION FREQU

FIG. 6. Diagram of a response curve f

(peaks) at certain frequencies than
'negotiate' with the reed to determine
whole-number relationship to one an
or softer playing. It may also start po
pitch.

The diagram shows a response curve having three response peaks, which
means that the system possesses three modes of oscillation whose
characteristic frequencies are determined by the basic shape of the air
column. (Woodwind air columns normally show four such peaks when
70

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
essentially the entire length of the air column is in use, and two of them
when most of the tone holes are opened.) As is normal, the first (i.e.,
lowest-frequency) peak is the tallest, with the other two being
progressively less tall; at high frequencies the response curve is somewhat
squiggly but quite low and lacking in significant peaks. Notice a sloping
dashed line drawn across the entire diagram. The position of this line
indicates the ability of the reed to maintain oscillation at some frequency
determined by the position of an air column peak. Oscillatory energy can
be generated jointly by the reed and a response peak if the tallness of this
peak puts it above what is aptly called the break-even line. We can exploit the
descriptive power of the diagram: inspection shows that all three air column
response peaks would separately be able to keep themselves in oscillation
by instructing the flow control valve (the reed), and so they can all
participate actively in a cooperative venture in oscillatory energy production.
How will these modes set about cooperating, and what will they settle on
for the frequency of their joint operations? Physics and experiment agree
that in such a situation, if the player blows very gently, the oscillation will
take place at the frequency of the tallest response peak, which in our
example is at 200 Hz (about the pitch of the G string on a violin). The
resulting tone will be a very soft and breathy humming sound. If the player
blows with increasing air pressure, the second peak will join the
proceedings by oscillating at double the tempo of the main vibration, and
the tone will begin to 'fill out' and acquire some semblance of musical
character. Note that, in our example, the frequency of peak 2 is given as 410
Hz, slightly more than double that of the first peak. Here is where our
diagram can help us once more; when both peaks are working together,
peak 1 has a strong vote for sound production at 200 Hz, while peak 2
indicates a preference for something close to 410/2 = 205 Hz. It turns out
that the two peaks and the reed will 'negotiate' under these conditions and
settle for something a little above 200 Hz, but not all the way to 205 Hz.
After all, the dominant peak tends to get its way! In other words, the softly
played 200-Hz oscillation rises a little in frequency when it is played more
loudly. As the player blows more strongly yet, peak 3 enters the discussion.
In our example, it votes for a frequency of 595/3 = 198.3 Hz. The playing
pitch will therefore fall a little, but the note will become a little unclear and
a little unsteady. The reed is trying to function with some mildly
inconsistent instructions.

This imagined experiment leads us to an understanding of the following

statements, statements that are connected directly with the musical
behaviour of woodwinds:

Pianissimo playing normally gives a smooth, colourless, cooing sound. The

relative placement of the remaining response peaks has no influence.
The tone fills out as the player blows harder, but, if the upper peaks are not
precisely aligned in a whole-number relationship, the playing pitch will

71

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 try to drift sharper or flatter during a crescendo as these upper peaks gain
influence.

Not only does an instrument with response peaks that are not accurately
aligned try to drift in pitch during a crescendo, it also proves (through the
workings of some very complicated physics) to be slow and somewhat
hesitant in the way it starts notes played at a mezzoforte level.
When blown vigorously, a poorly aligned instrument is prone to choking-
up of the reed, coughing, or 'flying off' to some new and peculiar
screech.

A misaligned instrument also tends to be hard-blowing, wobbly, and

unwilling to submit to any of the small adjustments needed by the player
for his finer efforts.

Musical implications of how woodwinds work

We now have an explanation for such troublesome phenomena as the way
low-register clarinet tones drift sharp during a diminuendo (a pitfall that has
been warned against in every orchestration book since Berlioz!). We can
also understand all sorts of analogous pitch vagaries that may afflict the
individual instruments in the wind departments of an orchestra. We can see
why an instrument may be a balky starter, likely to choke off during a
diminuendo, unresponsive, and taxing to play, and why an instrument may be
unreliable when the player tries to raise or lower the playing pitch by means
of adjustments of the reed or when he tries to increase and decrease the
dynamic level by altering the blowing pressure. In short, once the physicist
(with some help from his musician and craftsman friends) has taken hold
scientifically of the vibration physics of what he calls a 'nonlinear, self-
sustained oscillator having several degrees of freedom', he is able to
diagnose almost the entire sad litany of faults that a woodwind instrument
is subject to and at the same time he can provide many essential clues for
their remedy. This understanding also provides a set of strong hints about
how to interpret some of the developments of history as a possible guide for
the improvement of the instruments of today.
Some extremely strong claims have been made in the foregoing
paragraph; these would not be justified if it were not possible to provide
tangible support for them in the domains of the musician and instrument
maker as well as that of the scientist. The role of the player himself is of
course crucial to the successful production of musical sounds. Even though
a fine player cant generally produce fine tones from a bad instrument, he
usually chooses not to use it, but a bad player will generally make bad
sounds, even on an excellent instrument. These two facts force us to
recognize that at least some players are somehow able to alter the physics of
the sound-production process itself in a manner that can at least ameliorate
the shortcomings of an instrument.
In a paper devoted mainly to a study of the development of instruments
themselves we can do little more than touch upon the resources that a
72

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
player has at his disposal. However, in the fairly recent past it has become
possible to demonstrate scientifically the existence and general nature of
two major influences available to the player for exploitation:
The player is himself possessed of an air column, extending from his lungs
into his mouth, whose shape is susceptible to extensive modification at its
upper end via motions of the mouth, tongue, and throat muscles. This air
column can 'talk' to the reed on its upstream side of the reed in exactly the
ways that a clarinet (or other woodwind) may 'talk' to the reed on its
downstream side. A skilful player can arrange to put his own response
peaks in positions that best collaborate with whatever is provided by his
instrument.

The player can also modify not only the reed's shape and volume (wh
function as a part of the basic air column), but he can also shift its o
characteristic frequency of best response to align it usefully with so
multiple of the playing frequency, so that it can participate stably in t
cooperative generation of sound.
These things have long been known to the best players, although it h
tended to be very difficult for them to teach about them for lack
tangible way of describing what needs to be done. This difficulty
verbally describing playing techniques proves to have greatly influen
the development of the instruments themselves. (In our cultu
indescribables, especially scientific indescribables, have always been
given an absurdly second-class status, despite the fact that it is from s
roots that geniuses have grown nearly all of our scientific insights.) In rec
years manufacturers have made great efforts - not always beneficial
remove the influence of such difficult-to-describe techniques on t
instruments we use.

THE FIRST REVOLUTION: 1680-1700

Prior to about 1680, European woodwinds as a group tended to be ra

soft-spoken and fundamentally rather unstable. The flutes and recorder
the day had a rather charming dove-like sound, with somewhat lim
resources in dynamic level, tone colour, and range of playing pitc
skilful player could play wonderfully well on them, but most of the va
of sound that one might wish for in a musical performance was provide
employing several different instruments in succession; the limited pla
range of the instruments (often little more than an octave and a half)
also compensated for by switching instruments, in this case using mem
of a consort or set of similar instruments built in different sizes to provid
overlapping sequence of playing ranges in steps beginning about a h
octave apart. Tonally, the instruments lacked what musicians call carry
power. That is (quite aside from questions of loudness), one could
readily follow the voices of individual instruments in an ensemble.
instruments would blend wonderfully well, but intertwined melody

73

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 were practical only via some each-take-a-turn type of orchestration. Our
discussion of the basic sound-production processes of wind instruments will
help us to develop a strong and perfectly correct suspicion about the roots
of the limited capabilities of these late-Renaissance instruments: their air
column response peaks were not very well aligned.
One of the many remarkable features of the court of Louis XIV (1638-
1715) was the presence, alongside composers such as Couperin, of skilled
groups of performing artists who were given not only the time to practice
and rehearse but also to think deeply about their instruments and even to
make them. Many members of the group built instruments and supplied
them to their colleagues. A few instruments also were sold to musicians
outside the privileged ranks of the court. These outsiders were of course
interested in obtaining the finest instruments available; no doubt they also
wanted to be fashionable, to be able to say that they played on instruments
'just like those of the royal establishment'. But there was another very
compelling reason for the eagerness of outsiders to acquire instruments
from this source.
Among the remarkable musicians attached to the Sun King's court was a
most remarkable family, the Hotteterres. It fell mainly (but not exclusively)
to members of this family to discover empirically the advantages conferred
on the performer when he could use instruments having well-aligned
response peaks, and thence to evolve the familiar instruments of the
Renaissance into the sturdy, vigorous, full-toned, and flexible instruments
of the Baroque era. They also wrote books on how to play them effectively,
describing technical details of efficient blowing and subtleties of style and
phrasing as practiced at the court.
The new designs for the flute, recorder, oboe, and bassoon simply took
over the European musical world, with the focus of improvement of the
new designs moving very quickly to Germany. The Grensers of Dresden
were prominent in these refinements, and the process went so far and so fast
that even Jacques Hotteterre joined the rest of Europe in referring to one
new instrument as the German flute! This era marks the first time major
composers were able to demand as much musically from their wind players
as they were accustomed to getting from singers and from performers on
string and keyboard instruments. No doubt some players enjoyed, and
some resented, the added musical responsibilities laid on them.
The actual modifications to the members of the oboe and bassoon
families made during this revolution and subsequent flowering would be
too complex to describe here, but it is easy to outline the major change
made to the recorder and the flute. Up through the Renaissance, both made
use of a cylindrical air column, excited at one end by a flow controller of the
air-reed type. Laboratory measurement and straightforward calculation
show that when such air columns are provided with tone holes their
response peaks are misaligned, having a two- to three-percent error relative
to the whole-number relationship needed for perfect cooperation. The
74

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
situation was in fact much worse, because a curious influence of the air jet
itself spoils the cooperative relationship even more as the vigour of blowing
increases. For the Renaissance flute and recorder, then, the possibility of
cooperation disappeared in direct proportion to the potential benefits to be
gained from its presence! Only over the past decade and a half have today's
acoustical studies led to an understanding of both these effects.
Some shrewd and as yet untraced experiment suggested to a genius
among the Hotteterres a solution to the problems stemming from what we
now know were misaligned peaks: he discovered that changing to an air
column that starts as a nearly straight cylinder at the blowing end but then
changes to a cone of progressively decreasing diameter would provide a
good basis for a strong-voiced, responsive instrument. Once this insight was
obtained, it was then a matter of hard, systematic work to refine the air
column proportions and their relations to the tone-hole positions, sizes, and
chimney heights (i.e., the thicknesses of the wood through which they are
drilled). By 1730, patience, skill, and intelligence had carried out such
refinements at many places in Europe. The international nature of the work
can be indicated by mentioning the instruments built by the Stanesbys in
London and the Grensers of Dresden.
The top part of Fig. 7 shows schematically the shape of the air column of
a Baroque flute and the general positions of its seven tone holes (see also
P1. VIII (a)). The bottom hole is controlled by a key operated by the right
little finger. Opening the finger holes one by one gives the D-major scale.
All other notes used in the familiar key-signatures of the day (i.e., mostly
with up to three sharps, up to two flats, and rarely one additional sharp or
flat) can be played by using various combinations of open and closed holes.
On a mature Baroque flute, almost all the notes of the chromatic scale can
be played one by one, in tune, and with a full and steady tone, at least in
music of moderate tempo. Many alternate fingerings are available, each
with its own pitch of best and clearest tone, so that a skilled player can
govern his choices by the exigencies of true tuning within the chords of the
musical ensemble.
The lower part of Fig. 7 shows some of the alternative fingerings available
for producing the notes Bb, B, and C above the treble staff. Because a very
large number of the fingerings belonging to this flute have their close
analogues on the recorder, oboe, and bassoon, it is worthwhile to take a
moment to see how the player might use these fingerings. Notice that
almost all of these are what are sometimes called lotigfitgFeri.tgs; that is, a lot
of the air column is brought into play in order to assure a certain
strongmindedness and steadiness of purpose on the part of the air column in
its negotiations with the flow-controlling reed.
Players tend to consider the relative pitches during transitions between
notes as being nearly as important as the absolute pitches of one or the other
member of the pair. For example, in some places the music might call for a
wide half step between B and C, leading the player to use the third of the

75

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ill o oo oo a)~

I I I I I I I I
SA "_'% , 3 ..

C - -0- --- . ..

I I II II I I

II I II I I I

B--O-
B-- - -

FIG. 7. Top: General

still common at the
of the nineteenth ce
in the middle and a
conical shape of the
possible fingerings
octave of this flute
flautists' technique t
indicate closed t

B choices played n
both notes are pr
other hand, in a l
played using the f
said here about th
there are numero
and self-respecting
music does not go t
is to be played.
theory (and info
acceptable result, s
passage in accurat

76

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
ones plausible. Most listeners will find this quite acceptable and often will
be unaware of the artifice.
When modern instrumentalists play on Baroque instruments, many
problems are likely to arise, some of which come simply from inadequate
knowledge of performance practices and instrumental properties. Intensive
scholarship over the past three or four decades has begun to remedy a
considerable part of this lack. Another problem has been lack of
appreciation of the fact that it has always taken ten to thirty years for
anyone to acquire true mastery of any instrument, and it is a rare player who
can find the time to attain equal skills on both an old- and a new-style
instrument. The problem is aggravated by many people's tendency to think
of the early instruments as being crude and imperfect, instead of realizing
that they long ago proved themselves worthy of the serious attentions of
some of the world's greatest composers.
Older pieces of music played on the bowed strings and the keyboard
instruments have always had at least passable performance because these
instruments' basic natures have not been violently changed. Their players
had to adapt, rather than to completely relearn. It is significant that in our
century the recorder was the first of the Baroque instruments to be
honoured by having a group of adequately prepared performers. Probably
because. it had no distracting modern counterpart, people simply had to
learn it on its own terms. Nevertheless, it has only been thirty years since a
certain British music critic opened his favourable review of a recorder
concert with the following words: 'Unlike the usual whiffling aviary of a
concert by ... ', and he named a prominent group of recorder enthusiasts!
Today one simply expects to hear the recorder as a sturdy, active member of
the musical world. The Baroque flute has been much less fortunate. For
many years Leopold Stastny of the Vienna Concentus Musicus was almost
alone; today we have a number of excellent players, including Barthold
Kuijken and David Hart, with a significant number of others now on the
way.
Listeners may recognize a good example of a well-played, mature
Baroque flute by the following chief features:
All of the notes (even the lowest) start very quickly and cleanly, whether
tongued or slurred. This is true also for the recorder. The measured start-
up times tend to be about half those of the modern Boehm flute.
The tone of essentially all notes (except the very highest ones) is full and
round, and the notes are well heard in the ensemble. The modern listener
is struck by the fact that the lowest notes lose only a little strength relative
to the mid-range notes.
Tuning can be very excellent, but only if the player is skilful and if the
tempo is moderate. Faster tempos and chromatic passages can be
extremely hazardous, even when all artifices are employed.
Large and small skips in pitch are not only easy, but effective. The down-
ward drop of an octave and a half to low D is safe, being found even in

77

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 music for amateurs. (Someone who plays only modern instruments was
heard to assert, out of ignorance and on the basis of such skips, that a
certain composer 'did not understand the flute'.)

The playing range extends from the D below the treble staff up to - with
good comfort - the D two octaves above. Up to G is possible, and Bach
(only once!) demands a most risky high A.

The Baroque oboist found his life very much more secure than did the
flautist. While the mechanical resources of the oboe were little different
from those of the flute, the player was blessed by the fact that the
cooperative stabilizing effects of the double reed are enormously strong
compared with those of the flute's air reed. Also, the adjustability of the
player's personal windway and the double reed's very flexible structure
gave him many more ways in which to exploit the virtues of his instrument
and overcome its weaknesses. His playing technique and his problems were
very similar to, but less difficult than, those of his flute-playing colleague
(hence the predominance of the oboe over the flute in the musical literature
of the early Baroque). The Baroque oboe is distinguished by the following
characteristics (this description fits the Baroque bassoon as well):
The tone is smooth and full, with flexible dynamics for all notes from the
bottom C below the staff up to at least the D above the staff.

Articulated and slurred notes are quick and clean, as is true of the modern
oboe as well. The Baroque oboe has the advantage, however, at lower
dynamic levels for the low notes.

Enormous skips of pitch both up and down are as easy and safe on the oboe
as on the flute.

Today we are blessed with a number of superb performers on the old

oboe and bassoon. First among the fine modern performers on the Baroque
oboe in both time and musical polish was Jurg Schaeftlein and the
colleagues he trained in the Vienna Concentus. (There is good reason for
Vienna to have bred the first of the fine Baroque oboists, since the type of
oboe still being used in Vienna has preserved elements of the older
instrument - see later remarks in this article). Another fine early player of
the revived Baroque oboe is the Swiss musician Michel Piguet, whose tone
differs far more from the Viennese on records than it does in live
performance. As to the bassoon, we must turn again to the Vienna
Concentus to hear Milan Turkevitch as the epitome of elegant, precise and
fluent performance.

EVOLUTION INTO THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

During the latter half of the eighteenth century, the woodwinds not only
matured in the perfection of their acoustical balance and the sophisticatio
of their players, they also acquired a handful of additional keys. We must
78

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
today understand that the player did not relinquish the use of the best of the
older long fingerings as keys were added; the keys are there to help him
escape from the genuine difficulties of the tone and tuning of certain notes.
For a long time players tended to use the keys mainly as escape hatches for
emergency use in fast passages, partly because the mechanisms were not
always totally dependable and partly because force of habit prevented a
shift to the significant number of notes that the new key machinery
genuinely improved in terms of convenience, stability, and adjustability.
Although flutes with four to six keys were common by the end of the
eighteenth century (Pl. VIII (b) ), essentially all of Mozart's writing for the
flute could be (and frequently was) played on a one-keyed instrument
whose tone holes had shrunk a trifle from Baroque days as part of an
acoustical reproportioning that greatly improved the ease of playing high
notes while not harming the low notes.
Mozart's oboe writing, in contrast to his writing for the flute, reflected
the state of an instrument that was superficially little different from the
Baroque one but which in fact had undergone several changes. The
proportions of the bore and tone holes had changed and one or two
additional keys had put in their appearance. This early Classical oboe
managed to enhance the virtues of the previous version while greatly
ameliorating its weaknesses. Note how prominent the oboe is in the
symphonies of Mozart and how obviously fluent and dependable is his
concerto and quartet writing for this fine instrument.
Mozart's justified trust in the abilities of the Classical bassoon is well
demonstrated by the tumbling rush of notes in the opening of his overture
to The Marriage of Figaro. I had the never-to-be-forgotten experience of
hearing William Waterhouse (one of Britain's leading bassoonists) casually
dash off this passage, unrehearsed, on an old instrument in my own living
room, and then he cheerfully illustrated via a few stumbles on his beautiful
modern Heckel instrument why today's player does not perform this in
public without careful preparation. Mozart's bassoonist, unlike a modern
player, could consider the composer's writing of this bit as a friendly act!
While Mozart was very conservative in his attitude toward the flute,
Haydn wrote for the flute in a manner that called for resources that were
out of reach of the player unless his instrument was provided with at least
four keys (at a time when six was becoming the norm). For Haydn, the flute
had reached a state of 'ask no quarter, give no quarter' that has persisted
essentially to this day. However, he and his contemporaries could count on
a measure of low-register steadiness that has been somewhat reduced in the
later evolution of the instrument. Haydn treated the oboe and bassoon with
a confidence in their capabilities equal to that of Mozart.
The developmental processes of the flute and the double-reed
instruments during this musically important time-span offer an interesting
contrast. Because the oboe and the bassoon were susceptible to the
blandishments of the player's windway and his management of a very

79

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 flexible reed structure, there was no dominant driving force to spur the
modification of this pair of well-proven instruments. The flute, on the
other hand, was very nearly at the end of its Baroque-era evolutionary rope
because of the limited control available to its player, so the mechanical
ingenuity of the makers focused more energy on it. Another force of
growing importance was the immense popularity of the flute as an
amateur's instrument. It had long been more popular than the oboe or
bassoon because it made fewer demands on a casual player's abilities. As the
music changed, however, the home musician found the one-keyed
instrument ever more difficult to play acceptably.
The mechanical development that was taking place in all the instruments
was often hampered by the problem of rebalancing the acoustical
proportions of air columns to suit the requirements of newer tone-hole
layouts. Every change tended to destroy some aspect of the collaborative
mechanisms of tone production and to upset some of the highly developed
techniques of the players. The much-complained-about conservatism of
players is an inescapable result of the rigours of making a living in a very
difficult profession. No musician can afford the risk of a public disaster
arising from his lack of experience on a changed instrument, much less a
disaster caused by an as-yet-unperfected 'improvement'. When examined
from this view, the differential rates of mechanization of the various
instruments at any particular time serve to indicate the relative success with
which developing designs met the musical needs of the day.
Let us look at the general nature of the multi-keyed woodwinds that
were gaining favour around the end of the eighteenth century. As already
explained, the flute added extra keys much earlier than did the oboe and
bassoon, but for the sake of variety we will now focus our attention on the
oboe. More specifically, the oboe to be discussed is really the one that took
shape toward the end of Beethoven's life. Beethoven wrote for a flute
having anything from four to six keys, while his double-reed writing (for
most of his life) tended to be suited to an instrument that was only slightly
simpler than the ten-key oboe we will examine.
Fig. 8 shows the nature and usage of the new keys as they appeared on the
oboe of the Classical era. The Do and C keys for the right little finger at the
bottom end of the instrument were carried over from the Baroque
instrument. The CO key was very shortly added to this collection, along
with a key for low B for the left little finger. Following this, several keys
were added simultaneously, since they serve complementary roles in the
life of the complete instrument. The F cross-key for RH-3 in part adds
another way to play F in both lower octaves; more importantly, it adds
many resources for stabilizing, tuning, or filling-out numerous notes in the
gamut and added yet another useful way to play the important C above
the staff.

A key running alongside the upper joint took over the job of routine
playing of the B b in the staff (which had been a real troublemaker on the

80

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Baroque oboe and flute). It also was used
occasionally for trills in the second octave. The
familiar long-fingered Bb referred to in Fig. 7
kept its pride of place because it is a magnificently REGISTER
clear, strong, and steady note, a fit companion for KEY

one of the high C's, as explained earlier. Many

oboes picked up a 'C trill key' next to the B6 key,
but it was never used much because the overly
short air column produced by this fingering lacked
tonal fullness and steadiness.
Two more keys are worth mentioning. The first
TRILL
of these seems rather mysterious to the modern LOW 8

player: it is a cross-key for RH-2 that was used

mainly to bring the normally flat Fo 's up to pitch
without effort (often it is called the FO sharpener rF ----
CORRECTOR
key). Simply enlarging the hole for RH-2 for this
purpose would destroy one of the important F F *
fingerings; more importantly, it would ruin the
tuning and steadiness of a great many notes
throughout the scale and would deprive the player C ---
of yet another resource for coaxing the best music
out of his instrument. (As in the case of the
Baroque instruments, there is a close parallelism
between the fingerings and the playing habits of
the Classical oboist, bassoonist, and flautist.)
A 'register' or 'octave' key for the left thumb
was also added. This facilitates the shift from the
low to the second playing register, and it proved
worth having, especially when the newer, keyed,
short fingerings were used. Most of the older FIG. 8.

fingerings neither needed nor tolerated the Diagram of the fully

register key but, again, the addition of a resource developed Classical
proved useful to those who could exploit it. oboe. The Baroque oboe
Classical clarinet had only the Do and C
keys at the lower end,
Because we have been following an evolutionary and many oboists of
path that originates with the Baroque instruments, Beethoven's era were
there has been no mention so far of one of the
able to play without the
major instruments of the woodwind family - the G o and C trill keys.
clarinet. At the time when Mozart first became
seriously interested in the clarinet it was coming into wide use in bands,
where it served (as it does today) as the analogue of the orchestral violin
section. There were some fine players, including a few successful virtuosos,
but there was very little in the way of serious music for a slightly primitive
instrument. By the time the young Mozart heard it about 1763, the

81

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Mannheim orchestra had several clarinetists available and a few composers
who understood the instrument. The clarinet was in a state similar to that of
the flute around 1730: good music and also showy music could be properly
played on it; but, unlike the flute earlier, it had not yet found truly great
composers to exploit it and to challenge its makers and players.
Mozart made himself the first among the clarinetist's patron saints,
considerably encouraged by the presence in Vienna of his dear friend the
player Anton Stadler (1753-1812). Mozart at one stroke sized up the
exquisite flexibility of the five-keyed instrument and learned how to write
for it music of all moods and degrees of solemnity, without betraying its
very significant limitations. His compositions were worlds away from the
attractive but musically limited works of Stamitz or Danzi, or of Franz
Tausch in Mannheim (see Ex. 1).

. . . . . , , ,, ,. . . . - j

h't

I Idc chrm ically

clc chom lialy 1o __ l _L a I l ,

EX. 1. From Franz Tausch, Clarine

This extract of showy music for th
fluency when the composer took c

A complication inherent in the

other woodwinds is that the low
an octave and a half before the
approximate repetition of the
register key and making small
parallel situation, flute, oboe,
one-octave range.) This fifty-
needed for a basic scale requires
same less-than-a-dozen finger
notes of the other woodwinds
requires eleven holes rather th
minimum of five keys rather
A resourceful player could play
an exceedingly clear and steady
of workable fingerings, espec
82

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
number of notes in the low register were distinctly more troublesome than
any to be found on the earlier flute and oboe. As everywhere else in music,
however, a certain ingenuity and thoughtfulness on the part of a composer
could allow the player to offer a polished rendering of an adagio or andante
passage. However - to an extent much greater than in the Baroque
instruments - certain combinations of notes requiring complicated
fingerings were simply out of the question at quicker tempos.
In the hands of someone who troubles to learn how to do it, articulation
of notes on the Mozart-era clarinet is extremely quick and clean; large skips
of pitch both up and down are trustworthy and musically effective to a
degree only matched by the bassoon; and a wide range of dynamics is avail-
able - wider than on any other instrument of the wind family. Ex. 1 is a good
example of how the Mannheim virtuoso Franz Tausch demonstrated his
skills on the new instrument. (Tausch was known for his tone, smoothness,
and beautiful phrasing, so that this example of showy writing from him
indicates that the Mannheimers did not consider the clarinet to be a cripple.)
Why did the clarinet, which was clearly already able, under suitably
chosen conditions, to put on a spectacular display of fireworks, take so long
to make its debut in serious music? The prime reason is that its long low-
register combined with a much reduced (but by no means negligible)
responsiveness to the player's embouchure tension and windway profile
had made the instrument difficult for the craftsman to perfect. Initially, his
problems were perhaps compounded by the fact that few competent
advisers were available among the musicians. Players, in turn, no doubt
found it difficult to learn the clarinet, accustomed as they were to the
willing cooperativeness of the familiar and highly developed double-reed
instruments of the day.
Curiously, Haydn, who was a leader in exploiting the rapidly evolving
flute and was a superb composer for the oboe and bassoon, made only a
very limited use of the clarinet in his writings. Apparently no adequate
player was available to him among the Esterhazy court musicians, and
perhaps he was not fully convinced that the instrument was destined for a
lasting position in the orchestra. Beethoven used the clarinet with a skill
equal to that of Mozart and contributed with equal significance to the
clarinet's choice but limited chamber music repertory (see Ex. 2).
Beginning around 1800 he consulted closely with Joseph Friedlowsky on
the finer details of clarinet tone and technique. The enormous popular
success of Beethoven's Septet (Opus 20, written in 1800), among many
other works, provided a strong stimulus to his contemporaries Reicha and
Hummel, to say nothing of the immortal contributions of Franz Schubert.
All of these composers wrote almost exclusively for the five-keyed
instrument that was similar to Mozart's and only a little improved in its
acoustical alignments (Pl. IX (a)).
The mechanization of woodwinds began with the early flute and was
slightly later extended to the oboe. For reasons that we have already

83

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 p dolce cresc.

-- -- -- --- ----

EX. 2. From Beethoven

This lyric passage was
German instruments.
passage is hard to

considered, the clarin

its technical resourc
technological advanc
flutes, oboes, bassoon
keys that controlled
were resisted by eve
more problems than
mechanically. It is re
that succeeded and t
their positions and th
capricious about the
The clarinet was s
intentioned experim
Muiller (1786-1854) t
structure of a very l
1810 Mdller's desig
following it, and in
(1784-1847), using suc
friendship of Carl M
production of a group
the fundamental Cla
this day and that set a
alike. Equally inspir
wrote four musically
four large chamber w
for clarinet, piano, a
Mendelssohn, and a h
makes good use of th
indispensable part of
The Miiller clarine
predecessor. The p
84

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
fingerings became available and troublesome old
ones disappeared, and all of this was accomplished
without loss of the best features of tone and response
possessed by its predecessor! As sometimes happens,
this truly successful innovation displayed a breath-
taking economy of means: all these wonders were
accomplished with an instrument needing only ten to
thirteen keys, preserving the original and well-
proved five in their accustomed places. This meant,
among other things, that a player could transfer his
allegiance to the new instrument quite safely, with
only a short time required to become fluent with the
new resources and with essentially no loss of his hard- -i
won original expertise. The wonders of this design
have long been underestimated because its innova- ,
tions seem so obvious.
The basic layout of the Muiller design (Fig. 9;
Pl. IX (b)) shares many features and usages with the
3--
Classical oboe illustrated in Fig. 8. The five keys of
the earlier design are indicated on Fig. 9 by arrows.
However, unlike the oboe, the clarinet used the old
long fingerings in the second register to only a
limited extent.

Classical-era woodwinds

Up until the 1820s the oboe was not in general

considered to need the complete collection of keys
shown in Fig. 8. It is fairly safe to conjecture that the
important benefits of the new clarinet keys acted as a FIG. 9.
stimulus for oboe and bassoon makers to add
The Miiller clarinet
analogous mechanisms. In any event, by 1830 the design, which
oboe was beginning to stabilize in its thirteen- or liberated this
fourteen-keyed form, as was the bassoon. Mean- instrument in the
while, the six-keyed flute was in an equally excellent years following
condition of health, but no one knew that it was 1810. The
preparing to roar off in an entirely new direction in numbered keys are
only a few years! those that were

carried over from the

THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY earlier version. The

REVOLUTION keywork on this

instrument was
Theobald Boehm's pioneering work
functional, whereas
Theobald Boehm (1794-1881) grew up in Munich,
that on the oboe in
where he served his apprenticeship as a goldsmith in merely
Fig. 8 was
his father's business. At an early age he became
useful.

85

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 enamoured of the flute and soon began to make his own quite respectable
instruments. He played incessantly, gaining mixed reviews from the
neighbours in the large building where family and business were located.
One of the neighbours was Johann Nepomuk Kapeller, a fine professional
flautist. Kapeller, perhaps in self-defence, offered to teach the boy. Within
two years Boehm's musical talents were publicly displayed with such
success that he was made principal flautist at the newly opened Isartor
Theater, being all of eighteen.
In this romantic fashion begins the story of a man who led the world of
woodwind making into new territories. Very quickly Boehm became one of
a crowd of virtuoso wind-players who travelled the length and breadth of
Europe, and he also became a recognized maker of flutes. His always
beautiful and often florid early compositions were written for a player
confident of his powers who was able to make himself heard effectively
even in the setting of heavy orchestral or piano arrangements. In short,
Boehm's music proves that he did not consider the six-key flute of the day
to be the feeble creature that his latter-day admirers are wont to
assume.

Though the flutes made by Boehm were gems of el

and precise tuning, they were a little unresponsive
comparison with their best contemporaries. The young
worker and player, but he was not yet expert at the sub
now know is the proper alignment of the air column's
task that was beginning to be carried out with reasonab
his competitors.
In 1831 during a concert tour to London, Boehm
reigning British flautist Charles Nicholson (1795-18
astounded and impressed. Boehm was able to ex
Nicholson's specially made flute. It was an ugly ins
slightly modified embouchure hole and, more particu
irregular tone holes whose relative sizes and locations w
from those on the usual flutes of the day. Boehm rec
this instrument was one that only a very skilful and a
subjugate for musical service. It could, however, be
especially in the hands of its flamboyant owner. The N
by the expert maker of conventional flutes Thoma
produced by the firm of Rudall and Rose) had special pr
attributed to the largeness of its holes, and he recognize
the instrument was not fit to be used by a normal p
Today's study of Nicholson's flutes shows that th
instability is due chiefly to the somewhat casual ali
resonances. We now also know that the major contribut
the fact that the corners' of the tone holes are very
(contributing greatly to their messy appearance). T
acoustical advantage of such rounding will be presen
86

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 On Nicholson's flutes it was carried out to an extreme degree by skilful
makers whose other instruments were quite conventional in the sharpness
of their tone-hole corners. We may thus be sure that Nicholson's
modification was deliberate, a modification that persisted on the
instruments during the limited number of years when hopeful amateurs
would buy flutes carrying the magic label Nicholson Model. No European
musician would touch the Nicholson instrument, and in England no major
player took it up and stayed with it for any significant part of his career. Its
only lasting effect was the stimulation that it gave to Boehm.
Urged by this stimulus and over the brief span of the next few months,
Boehm set himself three tasks, quite consciously and deliberately, and
succeeded in all of them:

He set out to find the best reproportioning of the familiar cylindro-conical

bore to suit a revised set of tone holes laid out in a uniform sequence.

He sought an orderly way of calculating the correct positions of his

postulated set of tone holes. The design was to require full venting; that is,
there would be no closed holes below an open one for any note in the
lower two octaves of the playing range.

In the service of his goal of rationalizing the acoustical nature of the flute,
Boehm also took on the task of devising mechanisms for conveniently
controlling a set of at least thirteen holes with only nine available fingers
(an immobile right thumb being required to assure firm support for the
instrument).

Boehm's decision in favour of all this orderliness had two roots. One of
these was his faith in the orderly wonders of science, a faith that led him to
brand as irrational the traditional air column provided with open and closed
standing keys scattered about amongst a set of six bare finger holes. The
other root was his empirical awareness as a player and instrument maker
that the traditional multifingered notes on his own not-quite-superb
conventional flutes were unsatisfactory, sharing certain distressing
properties with a significant fraction of instruments made by his
competitors. These long-fingered notes tended to be weak, unclear, and
unsteady. This sort of weakness would have been fatal to the acceptance of
the original Baroque- and Classical-era woodwinds, which suggests that
something untoward was going on in the workshops of the 1820s. In any
event, the two influences on Boehm are curiously different: one was very
rational in a pragmatic way, while the other may best be characterized as a
form of intellectual romanticism.
In the course of achieving his first goal, it was necessary for Boehm to
learn not only how to recognize excellence in the proportioning of an air
column but also how to accomplish the much more difficult task of
deducing a sequence of modifications leading to the improvement of an
unsatisfactory one. In other words, he had to progress from an incomplete
knowledge of the traditional methods of contemporary instrument making

87

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 to a depth of understanding able to carry him into new and uncharted
territory. That Boehm was able to do this at all, and in fact do it extremely
quickly, was the first evidence that he was a genius.
Carl von Schafhautl, Professor of Physics at the University
of Munich, was a lifelong friend of Boehm. He was of
significant help to Boehm in devising the tone-hole layout
procedure required in step two ofBoehm's threefold task. The
two men worked out a geometrical construction based by
analogy on certain properties of vibrating strings that, since the
time of Vincenzo Galilei, have formed the basis for how guitar
makers lay out their frets. Boehm's rationalization of this
layout procedure was decorated with acoustical 'theory', but it
was in fact a compact expression of Boehm's magnificently
carried out empirical observations. The formal contributions
of the physics professor, though well intentioned, were
disfigured by errors that should have embarrassed a serious
scientist at any time after the 1760s. On the other hand, he was
dealing with a very difficult set of problems that only became
possible to analyze in mathematical detail by methods
developed in the decades between 1930 and 1960, with
progress still being made in our understanding. It is another
sign of Boehm's high intelligence that he did not allow the
romantic side of his intellectual tidiness to betray him into
useless numerology.
Because Boehm had been thinking very hard and effectively
before he met the stimulus of the Nicholson flute, it required
only one year for him to work out his new design and perfect it
(see Pl. VIII (e)). Successful public concerts upon it were given,
beginning in 1832! Fig. 10 shows the neat and elegant nature of
the new flute in the form upon which it settled almost
immediately. This instrument is commonly designated
Boehm's 1832 model, or the conical Boehm.
It turned out that Boehm needed to compromise his desire
for full venting only to the extent of a single closed standing
key. It was quickly apparent that the new system of keywork
not only does its acoustical job very well but is also an
arrangement whereby the neurophysiological resources of the
player's fingers are harnessed to the service of music in a
spectacularly successful and regularly progressing way. The

FIG. 10. The 1832 Model cylindro-conical flute of Theobald Boehm, in

the form it took within a decade of its introduction. Notice the five
'ring keys' used to extend the control of the player's fingers to more
holes than they could directly cover. The neuro-muscular advantages
of Boehm's new system offingering have never been surpassed.

88

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ...........

It

"41

4AW,*,

em

..... . .. . ...

. .........

41i

OF

PLATE VIII

(a) One-keyed Baroque flute, Benade, Cleveland, 1979;

(b) Five-keyed Classical flute, Clementi, London, c. 1810;
(c) Thirteen-keyed late-19th-century flute, anonymous, 18
(d) German Reform Model flute, Kohlert, Graslitz, pre-191
(e) Boehm's 1832 Model flute, Claire Godfroy l'afne, Paris,
(f) Boehm's 1847 Model flute, Emil Rittershausen, Berlin, c
(g) Carte's 1867 Patent System flute, Rudall Carte, London
(For fuller details see Appendix.)

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 me

Z.W,

0OX

24MU ON
wo, gvg
............. .....

0.1

.. . .. . ... ....

Irel

lie
VI

'- wf.

mo?

Ogg- . .....

IR

mm?

Ram."'.

dn'

ME

13/11 W/Mm"g WE
IN

.......... . .. ...... ..... ......

00, x.

Ol

....................

PLATE IX

(a) Classical five-keyed clarinet, Gerock, London, c.1835;

(b) Miller design, thirteen-key clarinet, Bilton, London, 1840
(c) Late nineteenth-century German clarinet, anon., c. 1890-
(d) Oehler System clarinet, Hammerschmidt, Wattens, 1964;
(e) Boehm (Klose-Buffet) System clarinet, Boosey and Hawkes
(For fuller details see Appendix.)

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ::. .........

. .. ...... . ....

.......

......

....
(c) (ON

. . . ... .

..... .. ...

PLATE X

(a) Heckel (German) System bassoon,

maker's prototype, Germany, 1981;
(b) Jancourt (French) System bassoon
(to low A), Buffet, Paris, c. 1910;
(c) Benade NX System clarinet, 1981
(designed and built by the author);
(d) Benade BCB flute, 1984 (designe
and constructed by the author).

(For fuller details see Appendix.)

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 tall

.... . . . .. .......
.......... .... .

4F

me

MIX
mZ-o m I V. 01:
... .. . ........

... ..... ......

. ..... . ..

.. ........ .

';X... V, -M z
.... ..... ..

If, mr?. 1:.

x kq

NMI.,

Fm:

... .........

. . . . . . . . . . ...

-It

?::Amm
e?mm

k" .. ........
ow ... ..... . . .
.... ............

..........

.. . .. .. ...... ... gM m'/

5 WE
.... ...... ..
ow,
. ...........
..........
em?x?

MIX
. ....... ....
..... . .........

MM

.?i:mmm
.. ...... .

W5, 4m:
. .........

... . . .. ....

.. ..... ...

PLATE XI

(a) Triebert-Boehm System oboe of 1844, Triebert, Paris, c. 1860;

(b) Trijbert oboe, systame 3 oboe, Kohlert, Graslitz, c. 1890;
(c) Triebert oboe, systhme 6, Martin Thibouville l'aIfn, Paris, pr
(d) Trijbert oboe, systeme 6-A, Alan Fox, South Whitley, India
(e) Nineteenth-century German oboe, H. F. Meyer, Hannover,
(f) Vienna oboe, Hermann Zuleger, Vienna, 1958;
(g) Ubel 1963 System oboe, G. Rudolph Obel, Vogtland, 1965.
(For fuller details see Appendix.)

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
fingering convenience of Boehm's new flute was recognized almost
immediately, and the possibilities opened up by its mere existence were to
play a very large role in the deliberations of creative instrument designers
from that time on. Boehm's recognition of, and successful attack upon, the
very subtle problem of muscular control had historical consequences that
make it Boehm's greatest contribution to the evolution of the woodwinds.
Musically, this epoch-making new flute was superbly well-tuned, with a
built-in flexibility that permitted subtle modifications of pitch to be made
via the player's embouchure control. Every note was played by the simplest
sort of fingering, and the orderly musical pattern of successive chromatic
notes was mirrored by an almost equally regular pattern of finger motions.
Crucially important to its musical success was the additional fact that traps
and finger-twisting combinations of notes had almost ceased to exist!
Tonally, every note was as good as its neighbour, and all of these notes were
as good as the best of the notes of the best of the conventional instruments
of the day. The dynamics ofBoehm's 1832 flute were easily controlled, the
pitch was stable, and the speed and clarity of articulation were equal to the
best of the older instruments. All in all, we may say that Boehm's 1832-
model flute was magnificent. It did everything as well or better than its
predecessors, yet simplified the player's task by relieving him of the need to
learn dozens of ways to deal with the numerous subtleties of note-by-note
musicianship. The 1832 model by Boehm represents the highest evolution
of the cylindro-conical flute whose basic structure was settled upon at the
court of Louis XIV.
Boehm's flute of 1832 was instantly given a welcome in Britain, where
the making and playing of flutes was well understood and where people
were ready to give a hard try at anything that showed promise. A significant
contributor to this success was the partnership of George Rudall and John
Rose (joined later by Richard Carte). For many years this firm made the
finest of instruments, reproducing many of Boehm's designs, all of which
benefited by the friendship and mutual respect between the company and
Boehm. The firm, in which a tradition of flawless workmanship was
coupled to a solid grasp of all aspects of flute making, made instruments of
world-class quality up into the 1950s (one interesting example is shown in
Pl. VIII (g)). One should remember that in Britain, flutes of the older style
were made and widely played at all levels of professionalism well into the
1930s, and they are still made there in limited quantities for retail sale.
The story was somewhat different in France. Boehm almost at once
formed an admiring friendship with the distinguished Parisian instrument
makers Louis-August Buffet and Claire Godfroy 'aine, both of whom
contributed mechanical refinements to the new flute and made beautiful
examples of it for general sale. Boehm's acceptance in the circle of
performing musicians was curiously mixed, but after some rather
questionable manoeuvring (both pro and con), the Paris Conservatoire
settled on the new flute as its official instrument. The centralized nature of

89

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 the French cultural establishment meant that this stamp of approval assured
that fewer and fewer French players continued to use the older flute, and
essentially no more of them were manufactured in France except for export
to the heathen in Britain and America.
The German-speaking world of the nineteenth century was musically
diverse, but standards tended to be very high (Pl. VIII (c), (d)). There was no
central bureau of approvals, and a musician was free to play anything he
chose as long as the job got done properly. The same remark applies to
Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and partially to Belgium (where both sets of
cultural influences were strong). Some players took up the Boehm, some
stayed with the older instrument, and even in major orchestras the two
instruments sat side by side. The many players who could play everything
tended to stay with their trusty friends, while a few marginal
instrumentalists salvaged their careers by making a somewhat scary switch
to the easier one. Other than in France, on the Continent even more than in
Britain the older, six-key flute persisted (and even continued to evolve),
being extensively used up into the 1930s. Germany, even more than France,
was an active exporter of flutes of both descriptions over this entire
period.
All in all, we have seen that there was no general consensus during the
years around 1840. Neither flute had the decisive advantage. This was
particularly true among amateurs, where the superior ease of learning the
Boehm was largely offset by its great expense and by the difficulty of
finding someone competent to maintain it.

Further developments by others

The ring keys settled upon by Boehm were quickly seized by makers of the
clarinet, oboe, and bassoon as a means for solving many little problems
faced by the players of these instruments. The Miller-descended clarinet
was the first to benefit, beginning with Adolphe Sax's successful application
of rings to control the 'FT sharpener key' (a key used on some of the
Classical-era clarinets and oboes). The power of a really good idea is
demonstrated by the promptness with which this device appeared on the
oboe as well. The hazards of attempted innovation by somewhat lesser
intelligences is also shown: on the oboe this arrangement has its claimed
benefit, but the stability of the note G is significantly spoiled and the clarity
of several others adversely affected. Several other keys migrated (more
successfully) from the distinctly improved Mtiller-descended clarinet to
the oboe and influenced the bassoon as well in the years following 1832.
The impact of the new flute in France was understandably strong, partly
because it is a fine instrument, partly because of its privileged position, and
perhaps partly because of the strong aura of rationalism surrounding its
design (certainly a lot of nonsense has been written to this effect). The most
visible result of the Boehm influence in France was that it led Hyacinthe
Elanore Klos', a distinguished musician, to think seriously about applying
90

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Boehm's principles to the clarinet, and he had the good sense to enlist the
aid of August Buffet in the task of redesign. Over the period 1839-1840
they worked out an instrument that plays extremely well.
The direct influence of Boehm on Klos6 and Buffet is
visible in a number of features of his fingering system that
they transplanted from the flute (with about a dozen holes) to-
the clarinet (having over a dozen and a half). The effective
use of ring keys and of Buffet's own mechanical refinements
is also visible (see Fig. 11). Acoustically speaking, the two
innovators were able to resist Boehm's siren songs of large
holes and full-venting after only a few early experiments. To
Buffet belongs the credit for a neat and workman-like
realization of an excellent fingering system. He also should
be honoured for his ability to break with the traditions of
proportioning the air column, so that he could work out new
forms of variation in the bore diameter that would give
proper alignments for the response peaks when used with the
new sizes and positions of tone holes.
The instrument they developed, which since 1860 has
ironically enough come to be called the Boehm-system
clarinet (P1. IX (e)), was immediately adopted by the
Conservatoire and therefore moved into dominance
throughout France. It was received with serious interest in
Britain, but did not predominate there for many years. As was
the case for the flute, there were always thoughtful and
ingenious makers and players in London who devised
instruments of their own that could hold the professional
adherence of some leading players. The continually evolving
Miller instrument, however, remained the main challenger
to the Boehm (Klos6-Buffet) clarinet throughout the world
of British influence, keeping its importance well into the
1930s.

Once again, Germany and its cultural cousins were slow to

adopt the new clarinet, despite the fact that its intellectual
origins and its customary name were German. To be sure,
occasionally there were good players who used the so-called
Boehm sitting next to colleagues who stayed with the tried

FIG. 11. The Buffet-Kloset (so-called Boehm) clarinet. This design is

based on Boehm's 1832 flute fingering layout, skilfully adapted to
the very different acoustical requirements of the clarinet. Such
instruments are dominant throughout the world. Their chief
advantage is a slight simplification of the fingering.
It is possible to build such clarinets to match any
other type for tone and response.

91

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 and true, but again there was no true advantage of the one over the other at
the ultimate limits of music making by expert players.
There is another, more important reason why the German-related world
was slow to consider the Boehm clarinet: unlike the 1832 flute, the tone of
the new clarinet was distinctly different from that of its traditional
competitor. Conductors joined .with players in criticizing the inhomo-
geneities brought into an ensemble by the foreign visitor, and to this day the
Boehm clarinet is virtually non-existent in German-speaking classical music
ensembles.
Despite the resistance of the orchestra to the Boehm-influenced clarinet,
the intellectual influence of Boehm was very strong, and the possibilities
opened up by the ring key and associated mechanisms were instantly
exploited. It was in fact the intelligent exploitation of these on the German
clarinet (as well as the oboe and bassoon) that helped to keep the slightly
easier-to-finger Parisian invention from threatening the established
instruments.

The bassoon

The technological revolution in woodwinds was progressing along several

fronts at about the time the new clarinet appeared. The next part or our
story takes us to Mainz, in Germany. Here Carl Almenraeder (1786-1843)
was playing bassoon in the orchestra when, in 1817, he met the physicist
Gottfried Weber (1779-1839). Weber-had recently published some shrewd
and thoughtful papers on the action of reeds and air columns (it was Weber
who introduced some of the fundamental ideas outlined in the early part of
this article). Almenraeder approached Weber hoping to get help toward his
goal of improving the Beethoven-era bassoon. Weber successfully steered
this expert player and competent craftsman into a worthwhile pathway. In
1822 Almenraeder wrote a treatise describing some major improvements,
and he continued his labours until the time of his death. By the end he had
fully assimilated the implications of Boehm's mechanical innovations and
had combined his acoustical observations with the ideas of Weber to guide
his construction of a truly fine and responsive bassoon. Almenraeder's
bassoon retained much of the best tradition of the Baroque and Classical
design, requiring the ministrations of a player with nimble fingers, great
resourcefulness, and a good understanding of the music to be played, but it
was also very close in spirit to the quickly evolved Miller clarinet that was
its contemporary, except that the long fingerings were still an essential part
of its technique.
In 1831 Almenraeder founded his own factory across the river in
Biebrich to make bassoons in collaboration with Johan Adam Heckel
(1812-1877). After Almenraeder's death in 1843, Heckel and his
descendants continued to manufacture and refine an instrument that has
since come to be known as the Heckel (or German) bassoon (Pl. X (a)). This
design, which was gradually taken over by other makers worldwide,
92

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
moved steadily into a position of dominance throughout the non-French-
speaking world. As always, the British went their sturdy and independent
way, committing themselves firmly to the Heckel only in the early
1930s.
The bassoon in France took a somewhat similar evolutionary path.
Eugene Jancourt (1815-1901), professor of bassoon at the Paris Conserva-
toire, was the guiding light of this development. Details are little known,
but by 1845 he enlisted the aid of the firm of Buffet-Crampon (only
tenuously related to the Buffet of clarinet fame) in carrying out his latest
design, although he credits a number of other well-known French makers
for their earlier collaboration on his experiments. (Most prominent among
these was Frederic Tribbert, who enters our story shortly in another
connection.) Clearly, Jancourt was a player who hoped to improve his
instrument by asking the right questions of his chosen craftsmen, rather
than attempting to devise innovative instruments of his own. It may be for
this reason that the French (or Buffet) bassoon of today (Pl. X (b)) has a
somewhat more archaic appearance than do any of the other woodwinds,
whose structures were shaped by men who combined the player's skills
with those of the craftsman. However that may be, Jancourt's bassoon is a
truly wonderful instrument in the hands of an expert. Its speed of
execution, dynamic range, flexibility, articulation, and precision of pitch
are breathtaking, and the living, breathing sound it produces today in the
hands of fine musicians such as Maurice Allard and Paul Hongue can exceed
even the abilities of virtuosos on the less-demanding Heckel.

The saxophone
There is only one woodwind that seems to have been invented and
perfected by a single individual - the saxophone of the Belgian instrument
maker and clarinet virtuoso Adolphe Sax. He had already contributed
significantly to the development of the Muller type of clarinet, especially
by devising the first really satisfactory bass member of that family. He was
also hard at work creating an ultimately profitable line of newly developed
brass instruments. Sax brought a similar diversity of skill and knowledge to
his attempt to create a conical woodwind that would use a single reed
instead of a double reed. This was a challenging undertaking, because he
planned to relinquish the double reed's great flexibility, which had kept the
other conical woodwinds at the forefront of music making since the earliest
days.
By 1846 Sax had his new instrument in fit condition to bring before the
public. The influence of the 1832 Boehm flute is clear in the almost
complete achievement of full venting and in some details of the pattern of
fingering. The side keys and little-finger keys of the MUller clarinet were
taken over unchanged, in part to make it easier for his prospective
customers to adapt to the new instrument. Because of the relatively wide
bore of the saxophone, the holes look very large to anyone accustomed to

93

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 the other instruments of the day. Acoustically, however, the holes are sized
relative to the bore in almost exactly the way that the holes of the clarinet,
oboe, or bassoon are related to their respective bores. The reason is very
simple: to get an acceptable tone and proper cooperation between the reed
and a tube having a set of woodwind tone holes, there is very little leeway in
the proportioning. That Sax was a master of his profession is shown by the
perfection of the cooperations that he was able to achieve for all the notes of
the playing range. Only a few details of the keywork have been modified in
the century since his invention first appeared, although the well-
intentioned meddlings of later makers have almost destroyed the prompt,
clean articulation and stable intonation that characterized the instrument up
through the 1920s. The early swashbuckling pieces composed to show off
the saxophone are considered terribly difficult today, despite the
composer's purpose of providing a flashy piece for a newly recruited sax
player to present before an audience accustomed to hearing florid music
performed cleanly.

The oboe

The oboe travelled a rather steady path along its essentially non-Boehm
evolutionary route during the mid-nineteenth century. The Germans were
willing as usual to pick up ring keys and other small benefits of the new
dispensation, but they left it to the French to choose new directions. The
Tribbert family was perhaps the most active in the French part of this
history. Frederic Tribbert (1813-1878) worked to 'regularize' the bore, to
make the fingering more uniform (Pl. XI (a), (b)) and to ameliorate a
number of the chief problems of the Classical oboe. We may liken the
Tribbert family's earlier work to that on the non-Boehm clarinet, but, by
the time of the Tribbert systime 5 in 1860, the instrument had begun to look
quite different from its ancestors. Fingering was relatively straightforward,
being mostly a smoothed-out descendant of the traditional patterns. The
long fingerings were destroyed, while a plethora of auxiliary mechanisms
provided escape hatches from some of the resulting technical traps. In other
words, the player's finger and embouchure tasks were lightened by means
of a fairly successful set of mechanical devices. Flexibility was sacrificed for
fingering simplicity to an extent that makes problems for today's players
when they perform the music of Schumann, for example. The systime 6
(P1. XI (c)) was adopted by the Conservatoire in 1882, and so took domin-
ation in France. The 6A (Pl. XI (d)) had carried the expensive evolution
even further by 1905.2 In Britain this type of oboe moved in with
considerable rapidity, and a close variant of it vies with the 'normal' version
for a position in the hands of essentially all oboists today.3 A German design
of 1963 (Pl. XI (g)) has a limited number of admirers.
In most of the German-influenced lands, the French oboe began to
predominate after the turn of the present century, although the more
traditional instruments were manufactured and sold through World War I.
94

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The only significant exception to this changeover is Vienna, where in 1890
the instrument maker Carl Golde (c. 1840-1873) emigrated from Dresden
with a superbly perfected version of the Classical German oboe. His
instrument (which is the only one to provide a proper solution to the 'FT
sharpening key' problem) has persisted against all attempts to dislodge it
(Pl. XI (f)). The reasons are clear: it is a perfect fit for the entire classical
literature, being able to perform it with fluency and comfort, and it shares
with the German and the French bassoons an aptitude for large skips and
flexible dynamics. Players such as Jairg Schaeftlein tend to do much less
complaining than their conservatory-oboe-playing colleagues about the
technical problems they face in their everyday work. It seems that they can
cope comfortably with everything the modern composer can come up with.
The Viennese oboist is valuable to the student of woodwind history
because he provides us with a direct view of the attitudes, skills, and
problems of the nineteenth-century player. It turns out that the finger
techniques taught at the Vienna Akademie almost exactly match what one
pieces together about habits of the players of the older oboe and of the non-
Boehm flute. It also explains why the Baroque oboe could be quickly
assimilated by Schaeftlein. We can examine these techniques and use them
to clarify our understanding of the closely related techniques of today's
bassoon players, and so cast a clear light on what took place over the past
three centuries.
Did the long-lived and energetic Boehm himself take any further part in
the development of instruments in the years following 1832? The answer is
yes. In 1844 he and August Buffet designed and sold a type of oboe that has
large, regularly laid-out holes and a very flute-like and elegant fingering
system. Tribbert also made a few instruments of essentially the same design.
These are beautifully tuned and they fit the hand very well, but the tone is
coarse, the dynamic range varies from loud to louder, and the notes can
only be started as an abrupt blast of sound. There were a few players who
could tame this beast, but even they gave it up, defeated by the problems of
producing refined music on it. The acoustical reason is to be found in
Boehm's belief that big tone holes are good tone holes. Boehm had set aside
the fact that his own invention of 1832 had ended up with holes
significantly smaller than those he had originally projected. Boehm and
Triebert also collaborated on a bassoon. This had an enormously complex
system of keywork and a vast number of tone holes. It, too, suffered
oblivion because it was expensive, tonally unacceptable, and in large
measure very difficult to control.
In the 1970s, sidestepping Boehm's devotion to large tone holes, I
computed a fully vented, small-hole scale to be applied to a bell-less French
oboe bore. This was built (by George Jameson of Racine, Wisconsin, for his
own use) using Boehm flute fingerings. It was very nearly a fine instrument
- losing some of the 'Conservatoire' anomalies, especially around Bb and
C in the staff, and around E in the right hand. Also, by chance, a full set of

95

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
long fingerings became available in the upper half of the second octave.
The rigours of preparing the text for Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics and
work on the NX clarinet relegated further work on this design to limbo.

Boehm's flute of 1847

The restless mind of Theobald Boehm did not surrender to the setbacks
outlined in the preceding paragraphs. His dream of a flute with truly large
tone holes was always with him. He was also having a serious and mounting
doubt concerning the special peculiarity of all the flutes we have discussed
so far: out of all the wind instruments, only the flute has an air column that
tapers to a smaller diameter at its lower end than it has at the top. This
seemed backwards to the metaphysical side of Boehm, despite the fact that
he knew very well the troubles caused by too much or too little taper.
To deal with the practicalities of large holes, Boehm gave up his
placement of ring keys around the finger holes in favour of pads to cover all
the holes, whether or not they had fingers directly over them. He knew
already that his well-proved fingerings would work even better on a flute
built this way than it did on his earlier model. What remained to be done
was to devise a proper shape for the air column and to choose the proper
placements for the holes. This task he assumed would be relatively easy,
since he believed that the use of large holes would remove some of the
puzzling behaviour that he had met and overcome during his earlier
experiments.
To seek the proper proportions for a flute based on a cylinder rather than
on a cone might seem quixotic to us when we recall that this was exactly the
place from which the Hotteterres had departed a century and a half earlier.
Nevertheless, Boehm succeeded. He found that satisfactory tone and
response could be achieved by contracting the head-joint bore toward the
embouchure hole on an otherwise cylindrical flute, whereas the earlier
flutes could best be considered to have a fundamentally conical shape, the
upper part of which was contracted to be cylindrical. To get a suitable
curving taper in the head joint proved to be a much more difficult task than
what the traditional makers had faced in getting a correct variation of size
distributed along the main length of the earlier type of flute: the whole
taper-adjustment job for all the notes of the new instrument had somehow
to be accomplished in about one-quarter of its length instead of three-
quarters. Nevertheless, Boehm found proportions that worked well with
tone holes that were nearly as big as the tube into which they were
drilled.
Boehm announced what he called the cylindricalflute in 1847 (P1. VIII (0))
generating universal interest and mixed reviews. The main judgments stand
today. Its behaviour can be described as follows:
The use of plates to cover all the holes greatly increases the player's
fluency because he no longer needs to seal the holes precisely with his
fingers.

96

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The tuning of all the notes of the scale is extremely good, and their
stability is excellent. Better yet, it is easy for a player to bend the pitch of
individual notes to suit his musical needs without significant loss of
tone.

The high notes are very easy to blow, and the tuning of the highest
considerably improved.
For all the notes above the bottom three or four, the tone is at le
strong and clear as on the 1832 version, and the bottom notes are per
acceptable in the hands of a practiced player.
The tone colour is full and interesting, but it is also distinctly diffe
from that of all the earlier flutes, and its blend with other instrume
the orchestra is significantly different as well.
The onset of notes, whether tongued or started via slurring from
notes, is significantly slower and less crisp than listeners were accus
to hearing from woodwinds made before this. Today's measurem
indicate that the start-up times for the low notes are as much as tw
long for the 1847 flute than for earlier types (as they also are for th
key or the 1832 Boehm).
Items 1 to 4 were much admired by everyone and made many conve
the Boehm instrument as well as to the essential soundness of Boe
design philosophy. Obviously, the Boehm fans at the Paris Conserv
were enthusiastic in their adoption of the new instrument. The Ge
were equally predictable: some players switched from the 1832-
1847-model flute, but some of the others were unwilling to grant that i
even a musical instrument. Conductors in many cities refused to allo
new instrument into their orchestras, but an occasional bold soloist
make his tours with it with good success. Today the 1847 flute has
complete control in the Germanic lands. The British lent a very inte
ear to the new development, in part because they had many fine p
who were adaptable, in part because they liked the sound, and in
measure because Rudall Carte stood ready to supply magnificent ex
of the new design. As happened before, this firm not only made
directly after Boehm's new design but also they worked out ing
variants in the fingering system that (despite their extra co
complexity) offered significant advantages to the player and were
same time mechanically dependable.
During the initial flurry of worldwide enthusiasm, some touted th
design as an acoustically perfect instrument. And a few people began
tempted into the notion that, with a flute such as this, they no longer n
to take responsibility for more than supplying compressed air and wo
their fingers. The inherently slow start-up of notes on the 1847 flut
always drawn the criticism of other wind players: 'Tell me, why are
players so mushy in their attacks?' is a question I have often been aske
answer is that players need not be mushy, even though their instrume
an inherent part of the acoustics of the contracted head joint, are

97

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
disease is fundamentally incurable without departing.from this type of
design. The tendency toward weakness in the lower notes stems in large
measure from the same structural feature.
We have here before us the reason why much of the earlier literature for
the flute lies neglected: it simply does not 'come off well enough today to
warrant the time spent in preparing it (see Ex. 3). Other music is played, but
only in forms that are (unconsciously) distorted by the necessity of phrasing
the notes in a way that makes the slow start-up and somewhat weak low
notes into an integral part of the musical line. Few professional players are
aware of these problems, because few have either heard a properly played
cylindro-conical flute or had a chance to try one with the aid of a
knowledgeable coach to convince them of the possibilities it offers. It has
always been much easier for a player to 'move forward' from an earlier
design than it has been for him to go in the opposite direction.

THE POSITION TODAY, AND A RETROSPECT

The classical music world of today is drawing ever closer together, not onl
in the sense of geography but also in the general nature of the woodwinds
employs. This is unfortunate for several reasons: it reduces the variety o
musical approach that one might hear, and it reduces the chance of hearin
a piece played in the spirit and with the sound intended by its compose
Perhaps most seriously from the point of view of those of us who wish t
understand and maybe to improve the instruments, it reduces ou
opportunities to gather the diverse data that we need and narrows th
outlook of the performers with whom we deal.
An encouraging development that at least to some extent offsets th
difficulties enumerated above is the growing interest in the correct playin
of music from earlier times and the broadening of this interest from th
Renaissance and Baroque eras forward to our times through the Classic
and Romantic periods. The growth in sophistication of this interest h
paralleled the growing knowledge of earlier instruments that has com
from the joint efforts of scholars, players, and occasionally scientists. Tod
we are therefore entering a happy period when all these disciplines
enquiry can usefully converge, helping us to a better understanding an
interpretation of the music of earlier times. Less and less often does on
hear a fatuous remark of the sort: 'Wouldn't Beethoven be glad to hear h
... played properly, on good instruments?' Sometimes he would indeed
happy, but I am sure that there would frequently be times when he woul
cringe at the stiff and halting way that some of his music has to be
performed on today's instruments.
Because there are many instruments of all kinds available to us from th
entire period from the Baroque to the present, it is worthwhile to look bac
over the territory we have visited to gain some general impressions. I
doing so, we will find it helpful to remember that the humble status of th

98

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
musician and the composer forced both of them to be extremely practical in
their labours. Useful evidence can be found in music written for any

FLUTE

SHEPHERD'S LAMENT

Andante espressivo.

.12 i-.wi

t I V fV con passione

Av
dolce 41
12 Pfe te ---

A 0 ,4c cricn, ". . - -....

ASK 1;0? FO FINALE1

.1 .PE-11 -1-#.,-
riten. , ~-.

sempre poco a poco pizi giojot ed acce

V " I'rI' i I d I

C) 'I m7a I, m 1I

EX. 3. From C. M. von Weber, Trio in G M

This is an example ofgood flute music from
today because it does not 'come off' very wel
of such music are easily found for the oboe a
bassoon literature has fared much

99

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
period's amateur player, offering a clear picture of what was considered
relatively easy to play. And musical junk written for the mild showing-off
of a second-rank virtuoso can teach us much about what an instrument
could handle that was a bit flashy and at the same time relatively safe.
In the Baroque era, then, the flute and recorder were considered equally
suited for the amateur and the serious musician to play. Composers having
all degrees of talent wrote a vast literature for these instruments, a literature
that involved running and leaping passages as well as beautiful slow
movements. We should note that the flute in particular was expected to
cope with the accompanying harpsichord, violin, or cello in worthwhile
balance right down to the lowest notes. Pergolesi and many others thought
nothing of writing a flute concerto in which the soloist pitted his notes
below G against an orchestral tutti! The oboes and the bassoon were treated
with equal respect, but generally at a higher overall level of sophistication,
because these instruments were normally played only by professionals.
Today we have many fine recorder players who 'feed their instruments
properly' and play with conviction, with just the right amount of
assertiveness. The same is beginning to be true of the Baroque flute and
oboe, despite their having suffered from players who revelled in quaint
inadequacies instead of remembering that every early player not only had
to pay his rent and feed his children but also had to do it sitting next to a
vigorous violinist and under the ears of some arrogant monarch. The
reputation of the early bassoon has not been so often endangered.
The instruments of the Classical period were, as we have seen, quite well
adapted to their tasks, and their tasks were adapted to their abilities. Once
again we find a large and instructive literature for the amateur flautist and
now the amateur clarinetist. By the time ofBeethoven this latter instrument
was everywhere, in the bands, in the bars, at dance halls, in the orchestra.
Thousands of five-key clarinets were made that show up today in antique
stores and at barn sales. Most of these clarinets show signs of hard usage, and
often traces of very humble employment. It is never safe to try dating one
of these instruments, unless the maker's name and his datable address
are on them. These instruments were manufactured well past 1850,
when the simpler forms of the Miiller-descended clarinet displaced
them worldwide.
Except for the fact that relatively fewer were made, the foregoing
remarks apply to the simpler forms of oboe. I know of oboes imported for
semi-professional use into the U.S. from Germany after 1900 (see Pl. XI (e))
that are almost identical with the symphonic instrument of 1830.
All through the period of rapid nineteenth-century change in
woodwinds, there were always many people, amateur and professional
alike, who used the older instruments as the new ones came in. After all,
many changes took place within the working life of any given player. He
may of course have simply been stubborn, or poor. On the other hand he
sometimes tried the new version and found it difficult to adapt to, yet saw

100

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
enough promise that he insisted that his students learn the newer one. This
last happened often, reflecting great credit on the older musician.
The United States was a microcosm of what was going on everywhere.
Because we are a nation of immigrants and have for a long time been an
importer both of instruments and of culture, the instruments seen before
about 1920 in our various orchestras reflected to a great degree the
national origins of the players and their conductors. The first-chair men
were generally excellent musicians, playing the finest instruments
available. Bands such as those of Arthur Pryor andJohn Philip Sousa were
noted for using the best and most up-to-date of instruments. The story for
the rest of the musical population was as mixed here as it was in Europe.
Note the evidence in the Sears Roebuck and the Montgomery Ward
catalogues: well past their 1909 catalogues, both listed flutes having any
number of keys from one to six and they offered the most straightforward
version of the thirteen-key Miiller-derived clarinet. Neither catalogue
even found it necessary to explain that there was any other kind of
clarinet (i.e., the Boehm) to be considered! To look further, we find that
the catalogues of Conn and of Selmer in the 1930s listed artist-quality
Miiller ('Albert system') clarinets without comment, along with the by-
now common Boehm instruments. Lindemann in Chicago and Bellison in
New York, as symphony principals, were using the so-called Albert
system clarinets well into the 1930s, and there were numerous 'business'
players who continued their use much longer. A very significant fraction
of the world's amateur and professional flute and clarinet players (outside
of France) who are over the age of sixty originally learned on non-Boehm
instruments.

With only one exception, we may say that the fundamental evol
development of the woodwinds was complete by 1850. The flu
Boehm were solidly launched, the two major types of clarinet
stabilized, and the saxophone had come into existence in a form
changed only a little in the years since. By 1905 the two types of
were in their present forms, and the Conservatoire-system oboe h
over the domination of the world's orchestras (except in Vienna; in
for very different reasons; and in Britain, where the thumb-plate s
still preferred). At first glance, then, it looks as though everything
stagnant for about a century, and this in a culture that is said to mak
of change and progress!
One example of undoubted and well-established progress in the
world is the Miiller-descended clarinet, which has continued to c
small but significant ways as the proportions of tone holes and bor
been gradually improved (Pl.IX (c)). In general, however, one mu
closely to detect the evolutionary difference between the instrume
inspired Brahms and the ones used by Alfred Boskowsky of Vien
for the past thirty years has been a leading exponent of nineteenth
Germanic clarinet playing. Clarinets of this sort are in mass produ

101

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
both Germanys and in Czechoslovakia today, where they are to be found in
every music store.
Further proof that there is still some creativity left in the twentieth
century is to be found in a second and much newer variety of German
clarinet, the Oehler system (P1. IX (d)). It too is in quantity production and
is also made in small-scale shops for the artist buyer. Its developer, Oskar
Oehler (1858-1936), started life as one of Germany's leading instrumental-
ists. Throughout his long life he formed personal acquaintances with most
of the significant players of his generation and the one before it. He was a
co-founder of the Berlin Philharmonic and played as principal in it until
1888. Meanwhile, his interests turned more and more toward the
improvement of his chosen instrument and toward helping his colleagues
improve theirs too. To this end he opened a workshop in 1887 and became
quite busy, but not too busy to think deeply.
The Oehler system clarinet that evolved through the 1920s is a superb
instrument that can be taken up readily by any German-oriented player
who can afford one. Curiously enough, this clarinet shows the most
complete and the only practical approximation of Boehm's full-venting
aspiration to appear on any reed woodwind. Its many keys simplify the
player's tasks only in constructive ways and do not foreclose any of his
options. One finds that most of the students in German and Austrian
conservatories follow in the footsteps of their established seniors by using
the Oehler clarinet. It is found also very frequently in Scandinavia and the
Netherlands, and to a certain extent in Belgium. To my knowledge there is
only one symphony player using this instrument in the U.S., although a
number of serious musicians employ them for special purposes.

THE PROSPECT BEFORE US

So far in this paper we have glanced briefly at some of the acousti

that underlies the functioning and thence the virtues of a w
instrument. We then have made our criss-cross way along the evo
paths followed by the major families of woodwinds to the pre
Throughout, we have observed the mutual influences acting
player and composer and between craftsman and player.
continually found evidence that the serious representatives of
groups place a high priority on making certain every newly
instrument has a trustworthy response, clean articulation, good
range, and the ability to be played in tune. In other words, depen
and well-defined patterns of instrumental response have gene
considered to be essential, while questions of fingering ease an
have tended to be treated as pleasant adjuncts to an other
instrument. A good instrument was one in which the em
adjustments for best tone coincided with those for correct tu
player did not mind making adjustments as long as adjacent notes

102

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
too different. Players have tended to be an extremely sturdy crew, willing
to work hard in the pursuit of their profession and willing to carry any
liftable burden on the way toward their musical goal. The amateur,
naturally enough, has tended to have less dedication and to be more willing
to try a simpler way, as long as it allows him to play at all.
As our knowledge of the physics of the woodwinds has matured to the
point that some of us can actually design and make instruments, we get a
continually clearer picture of the reasons underlying the reactions of
musicians throughout history. Sometimes our own designs are simply
scientific exercises, to see if we can 'get the right answer' concerning the
proportioning of some already-known instrument. Sometimes we test and
strengthen our muscles by attempting a new design representing a
rearrangement of virtues selected from historical instruments (Pl. X (c)).
(For example, with the encouragement of a well-known performer, I
designed a Boehm-fingered flute having the true acoustical properties of
the Baroque instrument - see Pl. X (d).) Sometimes we see if some entirely
new type of woodwind is possible, or one having drastically different tone
colour. Exercises such as these, usually sparked by the encouragement and/
or criticism of musicians, have helped us to appreciate with great vividness
the reasons for the instrumentalists' priorities. Sometimes they have also
helped us to stop worrying about some individual who is more interested in
easy fingerings than he is in making music. The interplay of the laboratory,
the mathematician's desk, the workshop, and the concert hall is quite
parallel to the interplay between laboratory and nature that feeds the
inquiries of the biologist: if you don't know how a critter lives, you cannot
learn much from it when it is in a bottle!
It is from this point of view that we can look both ways in an attempt to
divine what directions are possible for the future evolution of woodwinds.
Let us begin by contrasting my claim that the fork-fingered and long-
fingered notes of the Baroque instruments need not cause trouble when a
good instrument is properly played with certain later remarks to the effect
that in Boehm's day such fingerings were beginning to cause trouble. How
could a small problem begin to turn into a big one, especially since
continual progress supposedly was being made in other respects? The
answer turns out to be readily suspected, but not too easily proved. By
1820, much improved cutters and drills left the corners of tone holes and
joints much sharper than they had tended to be in earlier days. Craftsmen
took increasing pride in the burr-free sharpness of their corners as a mark of
care and skill, an attitude that has tended to strengthen with the years since.
This mechanical refinement had a most unfortunate acoustical consequence.
The oscillatory flow of air past these corners eats up energy in a manner that
chokes up a note if you try to blow it strongly (the difference between sharp
corners causing trouble and being marginally acceptable is very small). We
have also come to realize that the patterns of open and closed tone holes that
give rise to the most aggravated corner-flow problems are those that go

103

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
with the long and fork fingerings. In other words, the driving force in
design acting toward what was called full venting was caused by the very act
of refining the construction technique. So, one of the changes suggested
(and subsequently verified by cooperation between science and craftsman-
ship) for woodwinds is to make sure the tone holes have rounded corners.
Not only does this make them more smoothly responsive, but also it
automatically brings back the possibility of many long-lost auxiliary
fingerings (some of which were only destroyed in the past thirty years!).
WARNING! Only an idiot will tinker by rounding the corners of a present-
day woodwind. He can ruin many other of its virtues by a single well-
intentioned scrape of the knife! The responsible craftsman, however, can
predict the pros and cons of any change he is thinking of making in a
customer's instrument.
Another way instruments can be improved in future years is to make use
of our present ability to diagnose and correct problems in their acoustical
layout with the help of scientifically guided player's experiments. For some
twenty years we have been working to develop these, and have a useful
number ready at hand. The proof of these is best done by showing that they
lead to the same results that the geniuses of former years were able to attain,
and their justification comes from the fact that a non-genius can discover
them and can teach them usefully to his craftsman colleagues. There are
instruments coming onto the market now that have had helpful influences
of this type, and numerous musicians of stature are using instruments
prepared for their individual usage. Another benefit of our growing
understanding is the light it casts on past methods of construction and on
past performance practices.
A fairly recently uncovered aspect of the acoustic flow around tone holes
and other discontinuities is the recognition that any sort of complexity in the
flow can cause dissipation of oscillatory energy. Neighbouring complex-
ities can also mutually aggravate one another's effects. The historian's mind
leaps at once to the long (and allegedly irrational) tone holes on the upper
joint of a bassoon. The flow complexity at one end of each hole has a chance
to smooth itself out before the complexity begins at the other end.
Theory and experiment agree that it is possible to design reproportioned
holes having all acoustical features matched to the traditional one except for
its length-to-diameter ratio. If the chimney height is not sufficiently long in
comparison with the diameter, the instrument will be hopelessly 'stuffy'.
This leads one to look at all woodwind holes with a newly sharpened eye,
noting that the shallower tone holes of a woodwind tend to be the
troublemakers via the complexity problem and leading us to seek the very
special set of circumstances that permits Boehm's 1847 flute (Pl. VIII (f))
and the saxophone to work at all! So we might well look toward a
systematic lengthening of the chimneys of the holes as we understand one
more reason why Boehm's acoustical prescriptions could not be followed in
the past.

104

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Related studies explain how holes that are placed too close together can
trouble each other via the flow complexity phenomenon. Full venting at
the upper end of a woodwind, where the holes are close, can therefore
become nearly fatal. Once again, the educated eye finds evidence that some
of the innovators of the past have realized this in some subconscious way,
and have evaded the worst problems. We are often led further to
understand the reasons for some of the habitually quirky behaviour of
certain combinations of notes on modern instruments. Also, the historian is
fascinated to discover one more reason why the long fingerings and the
closed standing tone holes of early instruments worked so well: any holes
that were open were so far apart that their flows could not possibly
quarrel.
These represent only a few examples out of many that show our growing
understanding. However, we must be alert to the possibility of inadvertent
mischief being done, a crucial example of which follows. It is known that
the player can manipulate his reed by lip pressure, thereby assisting in the
alignments of his instrument's air column, and he can also harness the
response peaks of his own windway into cooperative service with the reed
and instrument air column. Through the entire history of woodwinds these
physiological resources of the player himself have made possible the fine
levels of playing that have always been achieved by the best players.
However, in the past forty years there has been a deliberate trend on the
part of makers and players (who after all talk a great deal with one another)
to exploit the facilities of electronic instrumentation in a destructive
activity. With the best intentions in the world, instruments have
increasingly been built in such a manner that the control of the player over
the sound production process has been reduced. This procedure (which one
of my craftsman friends sarcastically describes as 'tuned at the factory' or
mutters about the need for frets to 'stabilize' the notes of a violin) is
supposed to reduce the demands on the player, leaving him free to devote
his attention to the music. Not only is the player deprived of the ability to
use his lips and vocal tract to adjust his tuning to the chords of any ensemble
he participates in, but he also gives up his ability to control any
imperfection of the reed, or to modify his tone colour independently of
pitch and loudness. It also puts a literally impossible burden on the designer
of the instrument. He simply does not have enough variables at his disposal
to take care of the wide variety of adjustments and corrections that go into
the successful alignment of a woodwind. In former days the player was an
active part of the enterprise and took responsibility for picking up the
leftover corrections. The muscular demands on -a woodwind player's
embouchure have never been excessive - they are little different from
those required of a twelve-year-old cornetist if he is to play at all! Today,
when an oboist asks me why a clarinet cannot be built in tune, or why its
tone is often dull, he is reflecting the defensive remarks of his colleague
whose instrument has kept him from learning methods for coping.

105

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Fortunately, there are always thoughtful and skilful players around, but
life is often very difficult for them because they must fight with instruments
that cannot properly respond to their efforts. So far, the bassoon has been
most free of this foolish kind of 'improvement', while the oboe is only
partially affected. The flute today has very few capable makers, so that
many players have never learned what spectacular demands can be made of
the Boehm design. They are sometimes also seduced by the silly talk about
this instrument being the most perfect woodwind. It may make them take
too much for granted.
If the makers will focus their efforts more constructively, even the
traditional methods of development can lead to good progress. The fact that
Oskar Oehler is the only one of a small but significant number of recent
serious experimenters to have attained major success reflects well the
musical sophistication of German clarinetists, who have never given up
their responsibilities. Meanwhile, the fashionable arrival of multiphonics
and other strange noises as a part of the wind player's repertory has begun to
refocus interest on the ability of the human body to modify the operations
of a reed and air column. It has also begun to make people aware that
today's highly mechanized instruments interlock so many of the keys that
there is only limited opportunity to create new sounds via new sets of
fingerings. One can readily use a Classical flute, oboe, or flute to produce
enough multiphonics to turn the conventional player green with envy and
at the same time illustrate to him ways in which players used to operate
while coaxing more conventional sounds from these wonderful instruments.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A version of this article for the more general reader appeare

Evolution of Woodwinds') in The Garnut, Number 14, Wint
Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio 44120. Louis T
Editor and Photographer, made the photos included here as P
the two Benade instruments shown in P1. X (c) and (d). Teres
preparation of the musical score extracts shown in Examp

APPENDIX

Notes on Plates VIII - XI

PLATE VIII

(a) One-keyed Baroque flute, Benade, Cleveland, 1979. This instrument

modern distillation of the acoustical and musical virtues of many old instrume
Its basic proportions and external appearance are similar to those of flutes mad
the noted British craftsman Thomas Stanesby (c.1668-1734). The design is ty
of the 1730s era and is of the sort Bach, Handel, and Telemann expected player
their music to use.

(b) Five-keyed Classical flute, Clementi, London, c.1810. This flute carrie
name of [Muzio] Clementi, who gave up his musical career to preside ove

106

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
equally successful one in music publishing and instrument selling. The instrument
was almost certainly made by Thomas Prowse, who built the flutes used by Charles
Nicholson that so stimulated Theobald Boehm.

(c) Thirteen-keyed late-nineteenth-century flute, anonymous, 1880-1910. This

artist-grade instrument is typical of the flutes that predominated everywhere
outside the domain of the Boehm instrument. The extra keys on such flutes (beyond
the basic six of the Classical model) were considered to be useful luxuries and did
not eliminate the traditional use of long fingerings. Brahms, Tchaikowsky, and
Mahler are among the composers whose orchestras included such flutes.
(d) German Reform Model flute, Kohlert, Graslitz, pre-1914. An elaborate version
of the nineteenth-century flute that took its original shape in the hands of
Maximilian Schwedler and Friedrich Kruspe around 1884. Variants of this design
were made up until the 1930s. Such flutes play superbly, but their complexity,
weight, and expense are not compensated by any significant advantages over the
normal ten-key flute or the much more straightforward Boehm 1832 models. As a
result, flutes like this are extremely rare.
(e) Boehm's 1832 Model flute, Claire Godfroy l'aine, Paris, c.1860. Boehm's epoch-
making design quickly stabilized in the form typified by this fine example. The
excellent tone colour and responsiveness of such instruments are similar to those of
the best of the Classical flutes. It is, however, much easier to play. The maker of this
instrument, Claire Godfroy (1814-c.1878), was an admired instrument maker
who, with August Buffet, was the first of Boehm's carefully chosen licensees in
France. Godfroy was also the teacher and later the father-in-law of Louis Lot,
whose flutes are much prized.
(f) Boehm's 1847 Model flute, Emil Rittershausen, Berlin, c.1905. Although the
1847 model, with its cylindrical bore and covered holes, was slow in gaining
dominance in Germany, excellent examples of it were always made in that country.
The best of these came from the hands of Emil Rittershausen over a fifty-year
period ending in 1927. It is significant that he had served his apprenticeship in the
shop of Theobald Boehm and his partner, Carl Mendler.
(g) Carte's 1867 Patent System flute, Rudall Carte, London, c.1900. Britain was a
hotbed of creativity in the flute world during the entire nineteenth century. The
firm of Rudall (Rose) and Carte dominated the scene, coming forth repeatedly with
successful designs to meet every conceivable purpose. One such flute, widely used
in Britain until only a few years ago, is their 1867 Patent model. It weds the Boehm
1847 bore and tone-hole layout to a fingering system that successfully combines the
virtues of both Boehm and non-Boehm mechanisms. It is a fine musical instrument
with many resources for any player who has mastered it.
PLATE IX

(a) Classical five-keyed clarinet, Gerock, London, c.1835. This heavily w

instrument shares all the virtues of the instrument that so attracted Moza
Beethoven, and Schubert. Clarinets like this continued to be made and widely
into the 1850s, despite the inroads of the much more versatile Maller de
(Property of George Jameson).
(b) Miiller design, thirteen-key clarinet, Bilton, London, 1840. The fully equ
Miiller design attracted the serious attention of Carl Maria von Weber and Lud
Spohr, encouraging the development of a much freer approach to composition

107

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
an instrument that no longer had serious gaps in its abilities. Direct descendants of
this extremely good design are in regular use to this day.
(c) Late nineteenth-century German clarinet, anon., c.1890-1910. Shown here is a
truly fine example of the normal instrument used in German-speaking lands. It is
almost identical to the ones used by Richard Mohlfeld (who inspired Brahms to
write his sublime music for the clarinet) and by the recently retired Alfred
Boskowsky, whose recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Octet
provide us with examples of the finest of the traditional German school of clarinet
playing.
(d) Oehler System clarinet, Hammerschmidt, Wattens, 1964. The ultimate
refinement of the German clarinet came in the 1920s at the hands of Oskar Oehler
in Berlin. While the 'normal' German system instrument is available in every
German music store today, the choice of all serious classical players is the much
more elaborate Oehler version. It is unusual among the heavily mechanized
woodwinds in that many player's tasks are simplified without cost to tone,
flexibility, or responsiveness.
(e) Boehm (Klos&-Buffet) System clarinet, Boosey and Hawkes, London, c.1960.
Instruments of this type dominate the world of clarinets today over most of the
world. This design in its original form combined a skilful adaptation of the Boehm
philosophy of mechanism to a cleverly proportioned bore and tone-hole layout.
The quality of this particular example is attested to by the fact that it was used by the
British soloist Reginald Kell toward the end of his career.

PLATE X

(a) Heckel (German) System bassoon, maker's prototype, Germany, 1981.

instrument is an example of the type of bassoon that almost dominates the mu
world today outside of France. It was devised around 1825 by Carl Almenra
and was extensively perfected by the Heckel family (who are still the lea
makers). This particular instrument is the first version by its maker (who m
remain anonymous) that copies and adapts from a prototype prepared by the au
of this article. It shows significant improvement over the maker's original vers
and is good enough and self-consistent enough to warrant a further revision
(b) Jancourt (French) System bassoon (to low A), Buffet, Paris, c.1910. The Fr
bassoon is a cousin to the Vienna oboe in that it is a highly perfected survivor o
truly Classical prototype. However, it is a much more demanding instrument
the player, but it nevertheless amply rewards him and his listeners for his labo
Sad to say, in the last half-dozen years, French players have begun to shift to t
German system, just as their British colleagues did in the years following 1937. I
encouraging, however, that a few English-speaking players on both sides of
Atlantic have taken up this superb instrument and play it in public, choosing t
it or one of their German instruments, according to what best suits the music t
played.
(c) Benade NX System clarinet, 1981. This instrument, designed and built by the
author, is fingered almost exactly like a Boehm clarinet. It performs very well for
any player who wishes to exploit fully the resources offered by the embouchure and
vocal tract. Complex flow effects are carefully minimized, and the air column
resonance peaks are aligned with particular accuracy. It is historically and
scientifically significant that numerous features of the bore and tone-hole layout of

108

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
this clarinet - worked out in an entirely cold-blooded manner from basic physics -
echo a large number of the significant features of the older, pre-Boehm
instruments.

(d) Benade BCB flute, 1984. Designed (and constructed) by the author to co
the tone colour and response of the Baroque flute with the fingering convenie
Boehm's 1832 design. Its key design allows use of the long fingerings and
fingerings. (BCB stands for Baroque acoustics, conical bore, and Boehm-design
machinery.)
PLATE XI

(a) Tri'bert-Boehm System oboe of 1844, Triebert, Paris, c.1860. Boehm and
Parisian collaborators Buffet and Trikbert had high hopes for a 'rational' oboe b
on Boehm's design philosophy. Such instruments are as beautifully made and we
tuned as one might expect from the work of its distinguished progenitors, but
reasons that are now clear) they are unresponsive and tonally harsh.
(b) Triebert oboe, systeme 3 oboe, Kohlert, Graslitz, c.1890. Such instruments w
commonly used in French- and English-speaking countries from 1840 up to
1920s (toward the end, their sturdy simplicity kept them useful mainly in mil
bands). With proper reeds, such instruments can play extremely well.
(c) Triebert oboe, systeme 6, Martin Thibouville l'aind, Paris, pre-1890. This swe
toned and responsive instrument is an early example of the so-called conservato
system oboe that is dominant in the world today.
(d) Trikbert oboe, systeme 6-A, Alan Fox, South Whitley, Indiana, 1979. Sinc
introduction by Tribbert's successor, Francois Loree, about 1905, this elaboratio
the conservatory-system oboe has become progressively more standard amo
professional oboists. The complex mechanism of this instrument solves m
fingering problems for the player with relatively small expense to the smoothn
and flexibility of its tone.
(e) Nineteenth-century German oboe, H. F. Meyer, Hannover, c.1890.
particular instrument, of a design which was familiar by 1860, was made relativ
late in the history of its type. It was used professionally in the U.S. by its immig
original owner well into the 1920s.
(f0 Vienna oboe, Hermann Zuleger, Vienna, 1958. The Vienna oboe of today
which this is a fine example) shows clearly its relation to the German oboe sh
just above it. The precise design of this marvellous breed of instrument was wor
out by the distinguished craftsman Carl Golde of Dresden, brought to Vienn
the player Baumgaertl in 1880, and manufactured by Hajek, whose business
taken over by Zuleger. As with the instruments, the leading players of today tr
their professional lineage through only three generations to Baumgaertl.
(g) Obel 1963 System oboe, G. Rudolph Obel, Vogtland, 1965. This very re
design is not a musical success, although many features of its hybrid conservato
Boehm fingering mechanism are worthy of close attention from would
improvers of the oboe. The difficult task is to get a suitable marriage of mechan
with tone-hole design.

109

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NOTES

1 Note by V. Benade: This term was used by Benade to refer to where the
a tone hole changes its orientation from horizontal to vertical, which means
tone hole edge has two 'corners' that travel the circle of the hole. W
makers discovered the charms of instruments whose corners were rounde
by years of hard use, with fingers rubbing down the outer corners and s
wearing down the inner ones. It is understandably tempting to craftsmen
pride in neat, sharp corners, reflecting carefully sharpened tools and exper
over them, but a price will be paid in the turbulence such sudden discon
(particularly the inner ones) introduce into the air column.
2 Editor's note: Anthony Baines (1963, p.106) says the systime 6 was ado
the Paris Conservatoire 'in 1881'. Philip Bate (under 'Oboe' in The New G
claims that the 'systime A6 was adopted at the Conservatoire in 1882'.
3 Editor's note: By 'this type of oboe', the author must have been incl
Triebert's earlier, thumb-plate systime 5 model that gained favour in Britai
still preferred there (see Baines, op. cit., p.101).

FOR FURTHER READING

Anthony Baines, Woodwind Instruments and Their History, rev. edn (New
Norton, 1963). This book provides a comprehensive and dependable accoun
the woodwinds. More detail is to be found in the books listed below.

Philip Bate, The Oboe: An Outline ofIts History, Development and Construction, 3
(London: Benn, 1975).
Philip Bate, The Flute: An Outline ofIts History, Development and Construction, 2
(New York: Norton, 1979).
Arthur H. Benade, Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics (New York: Dover, 1
reprint, with corrections, of the 1976 edition. This presents in close-k
essentially non-mathematical form the basic nature of musical sounds and
perception. Chapter 20 introduces (via the brasses) the cooperative ways in
wind instruments generate their tones, while chapters 21 and 22 deal wi
woodwinds.

Oskar Kroll, The Clarinet, rev. Diethard Riehm, trans. Hilda Morris, ed. An
Baines. (New York: Taplinger, 1968). Kroll discusses the clarinet as it is see
member of the musical community that adheres to the non-Boehm instrum
today.

Geoffrey Rendall, The Clarinet: Some Notes upon Its History and Construction, 3rd edn,
rev. Philip Bate. (New York: Norton, 1971). This book emphasizes the Boehm
instrument that is dominant in the world today.

110

This content downloaded from

86.120.182.53 on Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:09:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms