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Re: Baroque oboes

Author: Chris P
Date: 2007-04-25 22:38

I feel Baroque oboes should be built at 415Hz as opposed to 440Hz - to me it defeats the object of having a Baroque oboe built to 440Hz as you might as well just play a modern oboe.

If all others are playing modern instruments and you're the only one with a Baroque oboe tuned to 440Hz, the shortcomings are easy to spot due to the irregularities of the compass of a Baroque oboe in comparison to the smoothed out compass of a modern oboe, or other modern woodwinds.

If the entire group is performing on Baroque instruments (and most likely tuned to 415Hz), these tonal irregularities caused by cross, forked and harmonic fingerings, wide or narrow trills as opposed to the perfected trills as you get on a Gillet conservatoire oboe or Boehm system flute, there's much more of a blend.

Though a baroque oboe tuned to 440Hz can be used for practice at home with a piano (or better still - an electric piano set to harpsichord), though more often than not, Baroque performances on period or reproduction instruments are done at 415Hz, and pro quality Baroque woodwind instruments are most likely built to this pitch, copied form the originals in museums.

But if you have an electric piano (Clavinova or similar, on a harpsichord preset for authenticity!) and only have a Baroque oboe (flute or recorder) built to 415Hz, you can easily drop the pitch of the piano down a semitone by setting the transpose function to the note B and play the music as written.

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

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