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Re: Barouque Oboe

Author: Chris P
Date: 2011-01-06 07:54

Forget what you do on modern oboes as the majority of it won't translate onto Baroque oboe, but by all means do give it a try. It's a very different animal and requires a very different approach to modern oboe technique. A modern oboe will do almost everything for you - on Baroque oboes, you have to do everything.

Baroque oboe is more reliant on lip and breath pressure as it has no 8ve keys so you have to be very flexible with your embouchure, a lot of notes played with forked and cross fingerings will be stuffy in comparison to unforked notes (tone quality is far more inconsistent compared to a modern oboe) and there's a lot of tuning problems that have to be dealt with through reeds, embouchure and use of corrective fingerings as well as having a good ear.

I digress for a moment - what made me laugh a while back was a trumpet player talking about a performance of Bach - it was suggested the oboists played on Baroque instruments even though they've never played them and what really defeats the object is they were playing at 440Hz anyway, so no reason to play Baroque instruments if it only makes things far more difficult. If I was one of the oboists then I'd probably hit back with 'I will provided you play a natural D trumpet'. He assumes if anyone can play one woodwind instrument then they can play them all. Definitely not the case and not always that easy even within the same family of woodwinds.

Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.

Post Edited (2011-01-06 11:11)

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