philharmonia.co.uk/explore/instruments/bassoon Happy Friday Music! Today we begin a seven week series on the bassoon. The link video, by an excellent orchestral bassoon player, shows us how to make a sound on the bassoon; we hear the different registers and learn how different composers have used it in their writing. It has a fairly narrow conical bore, with the double reed being attached to a crook. It has a range of over three octaves with very different timbres between the upper and lower notes. It (and its predecessors) has been around for at least 5000 years. To produce lower notes, more holes need to be covered – making a longer distance for the air to travel. Higher sounds are produced by opening up more keys and holes (and so using fewer fingers!), making a shorter tube for the air to travel through before it can escape. philharmonia.co.uk/explore/instruments/contrabassoon Here we discover more about the bassoon’s big brother – the contrabassoon. It is nearly 16 feet long and sounds an octave lower than the bassoon. Generally it plays the lowest notes in an orchestra. As it is much heavier than a bassoon it is supported by an endpin rather than a sling or seatstrap. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that makers corrected the earlier pitch problems it had had. This is the classic chicken and egg situation though: did composers start writing for it more because it had developed or did makers spend time and money perfecting its construction and quality of sound as composers and orchestras were using it more? Get ready to hear bassoon music you may have heard of already, as well as more unknown repertoire that might surprise you.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 06:40:00 +0000
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