A Date with China. Copyright -. All rights reserved. Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form.
China Edition. License for publishing multimedia online Registration Number: About China Daily. Advertise on Site. It is a versatile instrument, with a very wide range of notes from low to high, and also a wide range of different sound colors available to it.
In the orchestra, clarinets are no more numerous than the other woodwinds, but it is usually the most numerous instrument in bands and wind ensembles because of its useful versatility. There are many sizes of clarinet available, including bass and contrabass clarinets, but the most common is the B flat clarinet. The clarinet is the only common orchestral woodwind that is usually a transposing instrument, although there are less common woodwinds, such as English horn, that are also transposing instruments.
The bassoon is the largest and lowest-sounding standard orchestral woodwind. Bass clarinet and contrabassoon are used only occasionally. It is a long hollow tube of wood; you can often see the tops of the bassoons over the rest of the orchestra. Like the oboe, the bassoon is a double reed — the player blows between two reeds — but the player does not blow into the end of the bassoon.
The air from the reeds goes through a thin metal tube into the middle of the instrument. The orchestral brass are all made of metal, although the metal can be a silvery alloy instead of brass. A slide, or three or four valves, help the instruments get different notes, but players rely heavily on the harmonic series of their instruments to get the full range of notes.
Please see Wind Instruments: Some Basics for more on the subject. The orchestral brass instruments are the trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba. As with the woodwinds, the number of each of these instruments varies depending on the size of the orchestra and the piece being played.
There are usually two to five each of trumpets, horns, and trombones, and one or two tubas. The trumpet is the smallest, highest-sounding orchestral brass instrument. Trumpets may read in C or may be B flat transposing instruments. The cornet , which is more common in bands than in orchestras, is very similar to the trumpet and the two instruments are often considered interchangeable.
The cornet has a more conical, gently-flaring shape and a slightly mellower sound. The French horn, or horn , is much more conical than the trumpet and has a much mellower, more distant sound. It has a wide range that overlaps both the trumpet and trombone ranges, and in the orchestra is often used to fill in the middle of the brass sound. While the focus was on string instruments, oboists were sometimes used to strengthen the sound of the first and second violin section.
Longevity also has a lot to do with it: over time flutes, bassoons, French horns and clarinets drifted in and out of the orchestra; but oboes were nearly always written into orchestral scores. So they became the standard instrument for tuning.
Like any other instrument, oboes can be tuned sharp or flat. What if the oboe was actually out of tune for some reason. When the oboe is not present, who takes over? For piano concerti,would the piano take precedence? And why would all this happen? If there's a piano or even worse, an organ :- involved, typically the oboist will tune to the piano first, then let the orchestra tune to the oboe. String orchestras typically tune to the first violin; chamber ensembles work it out one way or the other.
FWIW wind ensembles aka wind orchestra, concert band tune to the first clarinet instead of the oboe. Damn if I know why. Cue the first song from Fiddler on the Roof. As to why the oboe Carl's answer is right: you can tune an oboe and if a fixed tuning instrument like a piano, an organ, a piano accordion, etc. I had always understood that the oboe was used because of the harmonic composition of its timbre, i.
However Wikipedia's page on the oboe suggests that it is the oboe's secure pitch and penetrating sound, resulting from its conical bore, that make it ideal for tuning purposes. It's entirely possible for an oboe to be out of tune. Poor reeds or emboucher can cause a very flat tone or a very sharp tone, well out of the standard MHz. It's up to he oboist to make sure you're tuned as close as possible as there is no adjustment within the instrument itself.
Every musician today owns, or should own, a tuning device. The instrument should already be in tune when you get up on stage, we tune backstage. So the initial tuning the audience hears is only for getting confidence that nothing is wrong. The oboe player, unless he has perfect pitch, uses a tuning device to play spot on.
We very seldom use a tuning device during playing, instead we listen to each other. I tend to use it when playing contra bassoon, as the low tones can be extremely difficult to hear beeing as unobrusive as I can. During the playing we musicians adjust the toning when necessary.
Often this means adjusting even single notes to the harmonic function of the note or to other players. As exemple, a harmonic major third is intoned quite differently from a harmonic minor third.
0コメント