Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2012-05-22 13:49
This is a question that I have thought about some. While an oboist can play highly technical passages as a soloist, it seems to me that in an ensemble context, the oboe is most constructively used for its tone color and expressive qualities, rather than to execute passage work or provide the harmonic foundation for an orchestra or wind ensemble.
One of my particular annoyances is the way a multitude of arrangers/transcribers (usually not composers themselves, who seem to know better) try to use the oboe in an ensemble. When the oboe is not being used for a melodic line, they don't know what to do with it, so they have it double the clarinets, or double the flutes, or (heaven help us!) recreate the viola part in a string transcription.
This guarantees technical issues for the oboist, because the instrument simply does not lend itself to the repetitious harmonic passage work that flutes, clarinets, and strings toss off so easily. The oboe does not speak as readily, nor does it do repeated leaps as readily. Try doing 24 consecutive bars of broken chord 16th notes in the low right hand, at m.m. 130, and you will see what I mean. (Not a hypothetical situation, unfortunately -- it's the second oboe part to the Mozart 'Marriage of Figaro'transcription.)
And I would like to get my hands on (preferably, around the neck of) the arranger who wrote the oboe parts for the wind ensemble transcription of "Pictures at an Exhibition". When not otherwise occupied, the oboes -- both first and second -- double the flutes, in flute range. Which means long, long stretches of chromatic passage work in high ledger line territory. This is, sincerely, not what the oboe does best. I don't want to hear it, and I doubt that anyone else does, either.
Susan
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
