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Re: Just as a rough estimate, how much oboe music is really written in Gb?

Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-02-08 15:27

You'll find a lot of military band oboe parts are in flat keys, with anything up to seven flats.

But these are mostly marches and arrangements of orchestral works written in a key to suit instruments pitched in Bb and Eb (if the originals are in keys of more than one sharp!), so us poor concert pitch instrument players (flutes, piccolos and oboes) usually have to endure remote keys with loads of flats. It makes things easier for the clarinets (sometimes their music is in the same key as the original, but played on a Bb clarinet instead of A), but horrendous for oboes.

Take the military band arrangement of 'Orpheus in the Underworld' - the oboe solo after the clarinet cadenza is in Ab minor (seven glorious flats), that's up a semitone from the orchestral version which is in G minor.

But in orchestral writing, some important oboe solos are in fairly remote keys - eg. Tchaikovsky 4th symphony and his piano concerto No.1 and the solos in the 1st and 2nd movement of Brahms 1st symphony. There are many more besides, and it's well worth knowing them by listening and learning them, breaking them down into small groups to get around some of the awkward intervals or fingerings and then putting the whole lot together once each section can be played fluently.

These are standard orchestral extracts which can be found in most books, but they only tend to cover the 1st oboe. The 2nd oboe parts tend to be much worse/awkward in some cases, and few orchestral extract study books include them.

And with flat keys with more than four flats, get used to using your LH Eb key so your right little finger is freed up for the Dbs to avoid sliding (and the Db will close the Eb pad automatically), and forked F instead of keyed F when next to Eb (and use the LH F wherever possible if fitted) and your RH G# (side key) if you have a sequence such as Db-Eb-Ab or Ab-Eb-Db repeated.

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

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