The double reed is the most simple, as it is probably the oldest, of all reed contrivances. It is sufficient to flatten the end of a wheat straw to constitute an apparatus capable of setting in vibration by the breath the column of air contained in the rudimentary tube; the invention of this reed is certainly due to chance. An apparatus for sonorous disturbance thus found, it was easy to improve it: for the wheat stalk a reed stalk was substituted, and in the extremity of its pipe another reed stalk much shorter in length was inserted, pared and flattened at the end; and then came the lateral holes, probably another discovery of the great inventor chance. For the reed tube a wooden one was substituted, still preserving the reed tongue, and it is in this form, after having played an important part amongst the sonorous contrivances of antiquity, that we find the ancestor of the oboe playing a part no less important in the 16th century, in which it formed the interesting families of the cormomes, the corthols, and the cervelas. All these families have disappeared in the instrumental combinations of Europe, but they are still to be found in Eastern wind instruments, such as the Caucasian salamouri, the Chinese kwantze, and the hitshirild of Japan. It is important to remark that the column of air in a cylindrical pipe, disturbed by any reed, submits to the laws of vibration of stopped pipes; accordingly, to produce a sound of a given pitch, the pipe must be theoretically half as short as an open pipe would be to obtain a note of the same pitch. Moreover, open pipes under an increasing pressure of blowing, produce, in subdividing the air column, the harmonics according to the arithmetical progression 2, 3, 4, 5, &c., while the stopped pipes can only produce the odd harmonics in the series. In other words, the conical pipe reproduces its fundamental sounds in the interval of the octave, the cylindrical in that of the twelfth. A double reed associated with a cylindrical pipe can only be used for columns of air of small diameter. Practice has demonstrated that the reed stalk of which the tongue reed is made should not be of narrower internal diameter than the pipe containing the column of air it is to act upon. By the flattening necessary to form the tongues of a double reed, it must be tolerably large, from which it happens that its proper sound is relatively grave, and will only agree with instruments not above the region of the male voice. I⅛must be remembered that the reproduction of fundamental sounds in the twelfth is only possible by an artifice of modern invention. But it is evident that chance has again intervened to show that a very small double reed can set in vibration columns of air of considerable diameter, provided that the column becomes gradually narrower towards its superior extremity where it receives the reed, so as to terminate in a diameter equivalent to that of the reed itself. It is impossible to say when it was that man first employed the phenomena of double reeds and conical pipes, but the knowledge of them must at least have been later than that of the cylindrical pipe, which we may regard as directly furnished by nature. That antiquity made use of them, however, has been proved by Μ. Gevaert in his admirable Histoire de la musique dans V antiquité ; but this learned author shows that the double-reed pipes held but an insignificant place in the instrumental music of ancient Greece and Rome.

The instrument we call oboe appears for the first time in Sebastian Virdung’s Musica geputscht und auszgezogen (1511). It there bears the name of schalmey, and is already combined with an instrument of similar construction called bombardt. This beginning of the oboe family suggests the possibility of Virdung’s schalmey having existed in the Middle Ages. Where, when, and how it was introduced into western Europe is at present unknown, but the zamr-al-kebir still used in Moslem countries is practically identical with it, a circumstance which suggests the possibility of its having been brought into Europe by the crusaders.

The manufacture of musical instruments could not remain unaffected by the great artistic movement known as the Renaissance; accordingly, we find them not only improved and purified in form in the 16 th century, but also ranged in complete families from the soprano to the bass. Praetorius, in his Syntagma Musicum (1615-20), gives us the full nomenclature of the family with which we are concerned, composed of the following individuals.

(1) The little schalmey, he says, rarely employed; it measured about 17 inches in length, and had six lateral holes. Its deepest note was a ~≡l. (2) The discant schalmey (fig. 1), the primitive type of the modern oboe; its length was about 26 inches, and its deepest note (3)

The alto pommer (fig. 2), 30⅜ inches long, with its deepest note Ξ∣, (4) The

-≡r tenor pommer (fig. 3), measuring about 4 feet 4 inches; besides the six lateral holes of the preceding numbers there were four keys which gave the grave notes ≡~J J J ¾ (5) The bass pommer, having a length of nearly 6 feet, and six lateral holes and four keys which gave ⅛gΞp⅛∣∣l (6) The great double quint pommer, measuring about 9 feet 8 inches in length; the four keys permitted the production of the notes ^⅜Ξ≡i=≡EΞri~ι=~¾. These instruments, and especially numbers (2), (3), (4), and (5), occupied an important place on the Continent in the instrumental combinations of the last three centuries. The following illustration (fig. 4), borrowed from a picture, painted in 1610 by Van Alsloot, represents six musicians playing the following instruments indicated in the order of their position in the picture: a bass oboe, bent over and become the bassoon, an alto pommer, a cornet (German “zinke”), a discant schalmey, a second alto pommer, and a trombone.

The 17th century brought no great changes in the construction of the four smaller instruments of the family.

Of much extended use in France, they were there called “haulx bois,” or “haultbois,” to distinguish them from the two larger instruments which were designated by the words “gros bois.” Haultbois became hautbois in French, and oboe in English, German, and Italian; and this word is now used to distinguish the present smaller instrument of the family.

The little schalmey and tenor pommer seem to have disappeared in the 17th century; it is the discant schalmey and the alto pommer which by improvement have become two important elements in modern instrumentation. The oboe, as such, was employed for the first time in 1671, in the orchestra of the Paris opera in Pom<me by Cambert. The first two keys, ¾ ⅛5≡ ∣ , date from the end of the 17th century. In 1727 Gerhard Hoffmann of Rastenberg added the keys ∣ ^ΞS∙ i ξ⅜ ≡ 1. A Parisian maker, Delusse, furnished, at the end of the 18th century, much appreciated improvements in the boring of the instrument. The Méthode of Sellner, published at Vienna in 1825, allows nine keys, i~≡≡t and one which, when opened, established a loop or ventral segment of vibration in the column of air, facilitating the production of sounds in the octave higher. Triebert of Paris owes his great reputation to the numerous improvements he introduced in the construction of the oboe.

The alto pommer became but slowly transformed: it was called in French “hautbois de chasse,” in Italian “oboe di caccia.” In the 18th century we find it more elegant in form, but with all the defects of the primitive instrument. The idea of bending the instrument into a half circular form to facilitate the handling is attributed to an oboist of Bergamo, one Jean Periendis, who was established at Strasburg about 1760. The fact of the instrument’s resembling a kind of hunting-horn used at that time in England probably gained for it the name of “corno inglese,” which it still retains (“cor anglais” in French). The first employment of it in the orchestra is referred to Gluck, who had two “cors anglais” in his Alceste, as played at Vienna in 1767. But it was not until 1808 that the cor anglais was first heard in the Paris opera; it was played by the oboist Vogt in Alexandre chez Apelle by Catel. The improvements in manufacture of this instrument closely followed those introduced in the oboe. The 18th century produced an intermediate oboe between (2) and (3), which was called “hautbois d’amour,’’and was frequently employed by J. S. Bach. It was a third lower than the ordinary oboe, and fell into disuse after the death of the great German composer. It has been resuscitated by the firm of C.

Mahillon of Brussels, and reconstructed with the improvements of modern manufacture.

After the 16th century we find the instruments which were designated by the name of “gros bois,” the (5) and (6) of Praetorius, transformed into shorter instruments, the fagott and contra-fagott; so called because the column of air, the same as in the pommer, was formed of two conical tubes which communicated with the lower part of the instrument, and were pierced in a single piece of wood. It is probably owing to the aspect of this double pipe that the satirical name of fagot was given, preserved in Italian as fagotto, and in German as fagott. A canon of Ferrara named Afranio has been cited as the author of the transformation, about 1539, of the bass pommer, but Count Valdrighi, the curator of the Estense library, and Wasielewski, who has reproduced the drawing of Afranio’s invention, deprive him of the merit of the innovation. The fagottino is transformed in the same fashion.

Sigismund Scheitzer of Nuremberg acquired a great reputation in the 16th century for making the “basson,” a French word substituted for the old fagot, and adopted in England as bassoon. His instrument had only two keys, We cannot tell when the bassoon gained its present form, but it was probably at the end of the 17th century. It was made in exactly the same style as the fagottino represented in fig. 5. It appeared for the first time in the orchestra with the oboe in Pomone (1671). It had three keys then, _| I J I. The B? key rendering a lengthening hr *

of the instrument necessary, we may suppose it took its modern form at that epoch. The fourth key, g ¾≡~^^l, dates from 1751. The bassoon appears with four keys in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert (Paris, 1751-65). The number of keys increased by the beginning of the present century to eight, viz., i I I ∣ - J ⅜J —I, and two keys to facilitate the pro- b ⅛ √ √ * ****

duction of acute harmonics. It has since been improved by Almenräder in Germany, Savari, and more recently Triebert and Goumas, Paris, and C. Mahillon, Brussels.

The reform in the construction of the flute due to Theobald Boehm of Munich about 1840, a reform which principally consisted in the rational division of the tube by the position of the lateral holes, prompted Triebert to try to adapt the innovation to the oboes and bassoons; but he failed, because the application of it denaturalized the timbre of the instruments, which it was necessary, before all things, to preserve. But his efforts did not remain sterile. In 1856 a French bandmaster, Μ. Sarrus, thought out the construction of a family of brass instruments ι⅛ith conical tubes pierced at regular distances, which, diminishing the length of the air column, has rendered a series of fundamental sounds easy,—more equal and free in timbre than that of the oboe family. Gautrot of Paris realized the inventor’s idea, and, under the name of “sarrusophones,” has created a complete family, from the sopranino in Eb to the contrabass in Bb, of which his firm preserves the monopoly.

In 1868 the firm of C. Mahillon, Brussels, produced a reed contrabass of metal, destined to replace the old contrabassoon of wood, since much used in orchestras and military bands. The first idea of this instrument goes back to 1839, and is attributed to Schöll-nast and Son of Pressburg. It is a conical brass tube of very large proportions, with lateral holes placed as theory demands, in geometrical relation, with a diameter almost equal to the section of the tube at the point where the hole is cut. From this it results that for each sound one key only is required, and the seventeen keys give the player almost the facility of a keyboard. The compass written for this contrabass is comprised between ~j~=1

and ———— but sounds an octave lower.

We now turn to another kind of reed and its association with two kinds of cylindrical and conical pipes,—the beating reed, which is formed of a single tongue, and engenders vibrations in the column of air to which it is applied by the contact of the tongue with the frame of a groove to which it is adapted. The beating reed, though not having the extreme antiquity of the double reed, was used at a very early period, for we find it applied to the chalumeaus of ancient Egypt, still in use under the name of arghoul, to the Greek auloi, and the Roman fo‰. The beating reed is a piece of reed growth, closed at the upper end by the natural knot, beneath which a tongue is partly detached by a longitudinal slit. We do not see the probable operation of chance so clearly here as in the double reed. It may have been the inconvenience resulting from the employment of double-tongued reeds of large dimensions to make cylindrical pipes of a certain diameter speak that urged the invention of a more commodious substitute. With double auloi it would have been almost impossible to blow two double reeds at one time, while, on the contrary, it is easy to sound two pipes furnished with beating reeds introduced simultaneously into the player’s mouth. Such as these are the actual Egyptian arghoul and zummdrah. It is in the beating reed and cylindrical tube, a combination bequeathed to us by remote antiquity, that we find the principle of one of the leading instruments of the modem orchestra, the clarinet or clarionet.

The European chalumeau of the Middle Ages, in English “shawm,” differed but little from the ancient Egyptian chalumeau: its tube was of wood, and the upper part of the tube communicated with the bore by an opening made laterally and longitudinally, on the edges of which the reed-tongue was bound by repeated turns of string. Neither in the Middle Ages nor in the 16th century do we find the chalumeau much employed. Praetorius, who in his Theatrum instrumentorum has given exact drawings of the instruments he knew, does not cite the chalumeau. But there exists in the fine collection of the Liceo Musicale at Bologna a double chalumeau of wood covered with leather, the make of which takes it back to the 16th century. Drawings of this instrament occur in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert, and in the Muzykaal Kunstwoorderiboek of J. Verschure-Reynvaan (Amsterdam, 1795). The chalumeau was pierced with eight holes and with two keys, and produced the following series of fundamental sounds—

—1~~^∣— l ~^T^J~ j j j j j j—]

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 key key

The present writer has had the good fortune to find quite recently two examples in the National Museum at Munich, and has been kindly authorized by Herr von Hefner-Alteneck, director of the museum, to reproduce them for the museum of the conservatoire at Brussels. For one of these see fig. 6. It is from this reproduction that he has been enabled to determine the exact nature of the improvement of the chalumeau, about 1690, by Christopher Denner of Nuremberg, an improvement which has gained for him the reputation of having invented the clarinet. Every clarinet player knows that it is sufficient for one of the upper keys not to quite close the hole for it to produce, instead of the fundamental sound, the interval of the twelfth above it,—in other words, the second partial. This phenomenon is easily explained: the communication between the external air and the upper part of the air-column in the instrument forms a ventral segment or loop of vibration and forces the column to divide, and, as a cylindrical pipe affected by a reed sounds harmonically after the manner of stopped pipes, the possible partial after the fundamental is naturally the second. This phenomenon must have struck Denner, and have suggested to him the idea of obtaining the same result according to a regular manner and at the will of the executant. He arrived at it by raising a little the key governed by the thumb of the left hand, which when opened conjointly with the A key produced the Bh of the chalumeau. This change of position of the key did not hinder the production of the Bh, but doubled at one stroke the extent of compass of the instrument in giving it the following notes—

⅜u) f Γ ∣∣ ’ —— This was Denner’s in-

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 key vention; he did not invent the clarinet, but he was the first to make use of the artifice already referred to which permits instruments of cylindrical bore to produce fundamental sounds and then-twelfths.

About the middle of last century the clarinet was lengthened ∕ j--Γ ∣ and a key was added, v y. -. j≡ ≡3, which filled the vacant space between the two registers. Two new keys were also added,

-j- g -!—

it is said, by Barthold Fritz of Brunswick (ob. st P

1766). The sixth key, i⅛, is attributed to the clarinetist Lefebvre, Paris, about 1791. In 1810 Ivan Muller carried the number of keys up to thirteen, in which state the instrument has come to us, and is the system most employed. It has been improved by the Belgian makers, Bachmann, the elder Sax, C. Mahillon, and Albert, who have collectively established the reputation of Belgian clarinets. In Paris, Lefebvre, Buffet-Crampon, and his successor Goumas—in London, Rudall, Bose, and Carte, justly own a high position among famous clarinet-makers. The firm of C. Mahillon, Brussels, have invented the mechanism with double effect known by the name of C⅛ key. Invented in 1862, it is now universally adopted. In 1842 the Parisian maker Buffet, advised by a professor named Klosé, adopted from Boehm’s flute the invention of movable rings. His clarinet has consequently been ranked as of Boehm’s system, although the lateral division of the tube does not follow that which that clever maker applied to his flute. The clarinet was first employed in a theatre in 1751, in the pastoral by Rameau entitled Aeante et Cephise. The imperfections of the instrument at that time obliged them to be made in nearly every key. To avoid the burden of this the 18th-century players varied the key of their instruments by added joints. About the middle of the 18th century the clarinet was introduced in military music and by degrees supplanted the oboe. The instruments used, at first were in C and F. About 1815 they were replaced by the Bb and Eb clarinets.

Besides the high clarinets, the basset horn (Italian, corno di bassetto) was soon known in Germany; a clarinet in F with the grave fifth of the one in C, it was made to descend easily to with the help...