Bassoon

(Fr. basson; Ger. Fagott; It. fagotto).

A wooden conical wind instrument, sounded with a double reed, which forms
the tenor and bass to the woodwind section. In the modern orchestra, the
family exists in two different sizes: the bassoon and the double bassoon or
contrabassoon, sounding one octave lower. Built in four joints, its precursor
the dulcian was of one-piece construction. Because of its wide compass and
its range of characteristic tone-colours, from richly sonorous at the bottom to
expressively plaintive at the top, it is one of the most versatile and useful
members of the orchestra. Certain design features are peculiar to it: the
doubling back on itself of the bore, like a hairpin; the ‘extension bore’ beyond
the sixth finger-hole; and local wall thickness allowing for finger-hole
chimneys. These features give the instrument its essential tone qualities and
condition its complex acoustics. The standard compass of the present-day
bassoon is from B ' to f'' or g''. It is a non-transposing instrument and its music
is notated in the bass and tenor clefs; occasionally the treble clef is also used.

In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification it is classified as an oboe.

See also ORGAN STOP.

1. The modern instrument and reed.
2. The dulcian and other precursors.
3. The early bassoon (to 1800).
4. Development of the modern bassoon.
5. The early reed.
6. Charts and tutors.
7. Repertory and use.
8. Performers and teachers.
9. The double bassoon.
10. Other sizes.

WILLIAM WATERHOUSE

© Oxford University Press 2005

How to cite Grove Music Online

1. The modern instrument and reed.

The modern bassoon exists in two versions: the German or ‘Heckel’ system,
and the French or ‘Buffet’ system of differing keywork and slightly modified
bore (fig.1). As the German type is more commonly used today, it provides
the frame of reference for general statements here about the construction of
the modern bassoon.

While early bassoons (like dulcians: see §2) were sometimes made of harder
varieties of wood, maple has been the wood traditionally used. Carl
Almenraeder (see §4) favoured North American dark maple (acer nigrum),
considering harder varieties to be unsuitable because they produced a duller
tone, while softer varieties, although giving a better tone, were less durable.

1
Most German makers preferred the medium-hard flamed or curly ring maple
to the harder and heavier grenadilla or palissander (Brazilian rosewood) more
often used by the French. The last serious attempt to make the body out of
metal was by Lecomte, and was exhibited in Paris in 1889. However, ebonite
has since been used in England for military instruments destined for the
tropics. German bassoons today are made of sycamore maple (acer
pseudoplatanus; Ger. Bergahorn). In America they are also made of local
sugar maple (acer saccharum), though plastics such as polypropylene are
successfully used as an alternative to wood. Before World War II the wood
was customarily seasoned for up to 12 years, and machined only in gradual
stages; now modern drying processes are used and the wood is often
impregnated under pressure to stabilize its inner structure.

The machining of the bore and tone holes needs to be done with the utmost
precision to achieve a good instrument. Final tuning has to be done by hand
and calls for considerable time and skill. The crook is a crucially important
element which needs to be carefully matched with its instrument. These
factors make the bassoon traditionally more expensive than other wind
instruments.

The bassoon stands about 134 cm tall and consists of four wooden joints
together with a metal crook and reed (fig.2a). The total length of the bore is
about 254 cm, flaring from a width of 4 mm at the narrow end of the crook to
39 mm at the bell. The components are:

(a) The tenor or wing joint, named after the projecting ‘épaule’ (a part of the
wall thickened to accommodate three obliquely drilled finger-holes); this joint
has a protective lining of hard rubber or plastic.

(b) The double or butt (boot) joint, which contains two continuously flaring
bores connected at the bottom by a metal U-bend bow, which is screwed on
to the body and protected by a metal cap. The narrower of these two bores is
also lined for protection against water. A ‘crutch’ or hand rest to support the
right hand is usually fitted to this joint.

(c) The long joint or bass joint, which lies adjacent to the wing joint.

(d) The bell joint, usually with a decorative outer profile and often tipped with
an ornamental rim of ivory or plastic. A longer bell for the A' was first
demanded by Wagner in Tristan und Isolde (1865); followed by Liszt, Strauss,
Mahler, Delius, Nielsen, Schoenberg and Stravinsky among others. It is
generally found to have a detrimental effect on playing characteristics.

(e) The crook or bocal which is inserted into the upper end of the wing: a
tapering metal tube with a nipple perforated by a pinhole near the wider end;
the reed is placed at the other end. The crook is usually bent into a
characteristically curved ‘S’, but this shape is sometimes altered to suit
individual players. Crooks are built in different lengths to assist tuning.

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 When played, the bassoon is held obliquely across the body. Its considerable
weight is supported by means of a neck strap or shoulder harness attached to
a ring on the butt, a seat strap or adjustable spike attached to the bottom of
the butt, or a leg support fitted to the top of the butt. The left hand is held
uppermost: raising the three middle fingers of each hand produces a basic
scale of G to f. With the help of the crook- and other register-holes these
overblow an octave higher. The other fingers control keys which extend the
range down to B '. This considerable extra length of ‘resonator’ is an
important factor in the acoustics of the bassoon, as are the wall thickness,
which produces chimneys of significant length on the wing joint, and the
relatively small size of finger-holes. (For a fuller discussion of acoustics see
Benade (1976) and Krüger (MGG2); see also ACOUSTICS, §IV, 6.)

Benade, Arthur (Henry)

(b Chicago, 2 Jan 1925; d Cleveland, 4 Aug 1987). American acoustician. His parents being
missionaries, he spent much of his childhood in Lahore. After returning to the USA to study at
Washington University, St Louis (AB 1948, PhD 1952), Benade was appointed in 1952 to the
physics faculty at Case Institute of Technology, Cleveland, which later became Case Western
Reserve University. Promoted to a full professorship in 1969, he continued in that post until
shortly before his death. A skilled woodwind player, he had an exceptional ability to relate the
results of acoustical research to the practical requirements of musicians and musical
instrument makers. Benade established a research programme which made many
fundamental contributions to the understanding of the operation of wind instruments. Also
active in string instrument research, he was a founding member of the Catgut Acoustical
Society and its president between 1969 and 1972. Through his technical papers, and through
the hospitality which his laboratory afforded to foreign visitors, Benade was a major influence
on a generation of music acousticians, and in popular articles and books he introduced a
much larger public to the basic science of musical instruments. The Acoustical Society of
America awarded him its Silver Medal in 1984 and its Gold Medal posthumously in 1988.

WRITINGS
Horns, Strings, and Harmony (New York, 1960/R)
‘On the Mathematical Theory of Woodwind Finger Holes’, JASA, xxxii (1960), 1591–608
‘The Physics of Woodwinds’, Scientific American, cciii/4 (1960), 144–54; repr. in The Physics of
Music, ed. C.M. Hutchins (San Francisco, 1978)
‘The Physics of Brasses’, Scientific American, ccxxix/1 (1973), 24–35; repr. in The Physics of
Music, ed. C.M. Hutchins (San Francisco, 1978)
Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics (New York, 1976, 2/1990)
with W.B. Richards: ‘Oboe Normal Mode Adjustment via Reed-Staple Proportioning’, JASA, lxxiii
(1983), 1794–803
with S.N. Kouzoupis: ‘The Clarinet Spectrum: Theory and Experiment’, JASA, lxxxiii (1988), 292–
304
‘Woodwinds: the Evolutionary Path since 1700’, GSJ, xlvii (1994), 63–110

MURRAY CAMPBELL

The fingerings of the upper register are complicated: above c'' the notes
become somewhat more difficult to produce, requiring a progressive increase
of wind pressure. While the French instrument with its slightly narrower bore
and different layout of tone holes is able to reach e'' and f'' without undue
difficulty, these notes are less easy on the German bassoon, though extra
keys are now available to facilitate them.

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Response and intonation is greatly affected by comparatively minute
deviations in the conicity of the bore. In recent years makers have devoted
great efforts to designing a more evenly-scaled instrument. Luckily the degree
of pitch alteration available to the player through regulating air support and
embouchure is comparatively great, and players often use individual
fingerings to ‘humour’ certain notes. A new bassoon requires ‘playing in’ and
thus players are hesitant to change their instruments. The problem of playing
softly is sometimes assisted by the use of a mute; this can take the form
either of a piece of cloth stuffed in the bell (e.g. as demanded by Ligeti) or of a
short sleeve-like metal cylinder (see MUTE). Many players (especially in the
USA) take great pains to seal every trace of porosity in pads and body to
facilitate response.

In London there have been two efforts made in the late 20th century to reform
the instrument. The ‘Logical Bassoon’ of Giles Brindley employed an
electronic circuit to open and close the tone holes, thereby simplifying the
fingering whilst making possible ideal combinations of holes for each note
(Brindley, 1968). Edgar Brown's promising experimental bassoon, developed
in collaboration with the bassoonist Zoltan Lukacs (1936–91), is built to a
design by the distinguished acoustician Arthur Benade (1925–87); in the
interests of greater tonal homogeneity, ‘the hole proportions are such as to
give a uniform tone-holes lattice cut-off frequency’ (Brown, 1998).

The French bassoon differs from the German in bore, disposition of tone
holes and system of keywork (see fig.1). In general it has retained the basic
design of the early bassoon, in contrast to the reformed Almenraeder
instrument with its low-register open holes enlarged, increased in number and
placed further down the bore. Formerly in common use throughout the non-
German-speaking world, it has since the 1930s been replaced by the German
model. There is controversy over their respective merits – the light, free tone
quality of the French contrasts with the dark homogeneousness of the
German. However, much depends on the style of playing and of the reed
chosen by the individual player. In general the German instrument may be
considered ‘safer’ and easier to control for the player.

Like the oboe, the bassoon uses a double reed (see fig.11d below) made of a
type of bamboo cane (arundo donax), of which the most suitable quality grows
in the Var district of southern France. Cane from Italy, America, southern
Russia and China is also used by local players. The modern method of
manufacture is as follows: a piece of tube 12 to 14 cm long and about 2·5 cm
in diameter is split vertically into three or four pieces and the inside of each
planed to the desired thickness by a gouging machine; on the outside the
‘bark’, except on the top and bottom quarters of the length, is removed to a
contoured bevel by a ‘profiler’. The piece is then folded to half its length, cut to
size in a metal ‘shaper’, formed on a mandrel and bound with three wires and
thread; lastly the tip of the fold is cut off. The final thinning of the reed blades
may be done with a tip profiling machine, or with a file and scraping knife. The
reed is very fragile and sensitive (the blade tip is only some 0·1 mm thick) and
plays a crucial role in the tone and response of the instrument. Both the
quality of the cane and the contour of blade thickness are very important.

4
Recent research by Heinrich (1987), subjecting reed cane to analysis under
laboratory conditions, has yielded new insights into the behaviour of what he
defines as a bilâme hydrique (bilaminate reacting variously to water), and the
interaction of the banding wires with cane density. Reeds for the German
instrument differ from those traditionally used on the French in the way they
are finished; ‘French’ reeds are usually bevelled evenly like a chisel while the
‘German’ scrape leaves a thicker spine down the centre. There is
considerable divergence of style and scrape between players. Formerly made
exclusively by hand, nowadays reed manufacture has become increasingly
mechanized. Various experiments have been made with plastic reeds, but so
far they have not proved suitable for professional use.

At times the bassoon has been played with a clarinet-type mouthpiece.

According to GerberL the clarinettist J.W. Hesse attempted to do this in 1786,
and in England small bassoon mouthpieces from the early 19th century have
survived. They have never been used seriously because of the way they
denature the tone, although they were formerly used for tuning instruments.
They are still marketed in the USA.

2. The dulcian and other precursors.

The early history of the bassoon is obscure: few early specimens survive and
it is not possible to be sure when and where these were made. Iconographic
evidence, though sparse, is more trustworthy than that from written
documents, which, because of ambiguities of nomenclature, must be
interpreted with caution. In general, two successive versions of the instrument
may be distinguished: the earlier, in use up to the beginning of the 18th
century (though later in Spain), was essentially in one piece and is best
labelled ‘dulcian’ (fig.2c) to distinguish it from the later ‘bassoon’ proper (i.e. in
four joints). Although one early specimen in Vienna (a 16th-century Italian
instrument by HIER.S, refurbished during the Baroque era) is inscribed ‘DER.
DULCIN. BIN. ICH. GENANT …’ the names given to the instrument in early
times were, unfortunately, seldom consistent or unambiguous. Derivatives of
at least four different names have been in use since early times, ‘Fagott’ and
‘curtal’ as well as ‘dulcian’ and ‘bassoon’ (also ‘tarot’ and ‘sztort’). Since, of all
the derivatives of these names, ‘dulcian’ has arguably been the least
ambiguous, this is the preferred terminology.

The first term originated in 14th-century France as ‘fagot’, meaning a bundle

of sticks, a faggot. While also used as the name of a dance by Phalèse (i)
(1549) and Susato (1551), it was first used to denote a musical instrument in
the early 16th century in Italy. ‘Choristfagott’ was an early name for the
dulcian, and the name ‘Fagott’ was applied in the 17th century to the bass
pommer as well, in spite of the fact that neither resembled a bundle of sticks.
From the mid-18th century onwards Fagott and fagotto have been
respectively the German and Italian names for the bassoon. The name
‘dulcian’ is commonly used today for the original version of the instrument in
one piece (as opposed to the later type in joints). Deriving from the Latin root
dulc (soft, sweet), it has traditionally been held to refer to the instrument’s
more subdued tone quality than that of the louder shawms and pommers.

5
However, Klitz (1971) showed that forms like dulzan can refer to the pommer
as well as to an earlier type of shawm called the ‘dolzaina’ (douçaine). In
England the earliest name for the dulcian was ‘curtall’, which was used well
into the 18th century for the bassoon as well, and is related to other wind
instrument names such as the French courtaud and the German Kortholt,
which all derive from the Latin curtus (short), referring to instruments
shortened because of their folded bore. ‘Basson’ meant originally the bass-
register version of an instrument (e.g. basson de hautbois, basson-flûte). In
18th-century Germany it became the name of the new jointed version of the
dulcian, which had been developed in France. In England, Talbot’s
manuscript made a similar distinction: ‘Basson has 4 Joynts, Fagot entire’.
Purcell’s Dioclesian score of 1690 specified ‘bassoon’ and this anglicized
version of the word has been used ever since.

With the rise of instrumental playing in the 16th century, the desire to extend
the range of instruments into the lower register caused them to be developed
in families: larger versions of the shawm and recorder were made possible by
an improved technology which enabled makers to bore longer tubes and to
control widely spaced extension holes with the aid of keys. As Kolneder
(MGG1) showed, there must have been a demand in the 16th century for a
deep instrument to form a bass to the wind band that would surpass the
trombone in agility, the bass recorder in loudness, and the bass pommer in
ease of handling. Early in the 16th century all the constructional elements of
the dulcian would have been available: the double reed of the shawm, the
curved crook of the bass recorder and bass shawm, and the doubling back on
itself of the bore (within a single block of wood) of the phagotus.

The shawm had already been built in large versions which were known as
‘bomharten’ or ‘pommers’: it may be assumed that the largest of those made
in Nuremberg by Sigmund Schnitzer the elder and described by Johannes
Apel in a letter of 1535 as ‘vill höher und lenger den ich’ (i.e. ‘much taller than
I’) was already like the largest pommer illustrated by Praetorius in 1620. It
must have been a cumbersome instrument to manage, especially out of
doors.

The first mention of the dulcian in a reference work is in Zacconi’s Prattica di

musica (1592); Virdung (1511), Agricola (1529, 5/1545) and Luscinius (1536)
made no reference to it. Zacconi wrote that ‘the Fagotto chorista has a range
C-b. It is so called because there is another kind which is not of its pitch but
either a little higher or lower’. Sachs derived ‘chorista’ from the instrument’s
usual function of supporting the bass in choral music; however this term was
applied to other instruments as well to mean a certain register or PITCH level,
for example ‘Dui corneti, uno di ton chorista, et uno più basso’ (Accademia
Filarmonica inventory, Verona, 1562).

Of these different types, the Choristfagott soon established itself as the most
useful member of the family. It consisted of a single shaft of wood (maple or
fruit), oval in section, nearly a metre tall, drilled with two bores connected at
the bottom so as to form one continuous, conical tube. At the top a curved
brass crook was inserted into the narrow end of the bore, and the other end

6
was slightly extended to form a flared bell. This bell sometimes took the form
of a perforated cap, thus making the instrument gedackt (i.e. covered) as
opposed to offen, and doubtless affecting both the tone quality and pitch. The
thickness of the walls enabled the finger-holes to be drilled obliquely to
accommodate the span of the fingers. There were eight finger-holes and two
open keys protected by perforated brass boxes: six fingers gave G, and by
adding the keys and using the player’s thumbs, notes down to C could be
played. The basic scale overblew the octave, giving a range up to about g'.
The ‘swallow-tail’ end of the little-finger key allowed the player to hold the
instrument on either side of his body with right or left hand uppermost.
Sometimes, especially in the larger sizes, the body of the instrument was
made in two half-lengths, or even in three sections, which were joined
together under an ornamental band, as in figs.4 and 5 below.

Over 50 dulcians of various sizes datable to the 16th and 17th centuries are in
museums at Vienna (10); Berlin, Brussels (7); Augsburg, Linz (6); Frankfurt,
Nuremberg, Salzburg (4); Brunswick, Leipzig, Merano, Sondershausen (2);
Barcelona, Dresden, Hamburg, Paris, Prague (1). Of those in Vienna, eight
come from the famous collections of Catajo and Ambras and include several
of the earliest dulcians known. The four signed by J.C. Denner (d 1707) may
be presumed to be among the last non-Spanish examples made. Sachs was
the first to dispute the traditional view that the dulcian was a development of
the pommer. That the two instruments coexisted for some time is shown in the
paintings of a wind band by Alsloot (in the Prado, Madrid; see SHAWM, §3,
fig.9) and Sallaert (in Galleria Sabauda, Turin). The Nuremberg Stadtpfeifer
dropped the pommer in 1643 in favour of the dulcian, but in some places the
bass pommer survived into the 18th century.

Where, when and how the dulcian evolved is unknown, there being
insufficient evidence to allow tidy conclusions to be drawn. The sparse
evidence available shows different forms appearing in different places and at
different times. Lockwood’s researches (1985) into the Ferrara guardaroba
archives of Willaert’s patron Cardinal Ippolito I d’Este reveal that as early as
1516 the musician Gerardo francese, in the cardinal’s service since 1504, was
paid for ‘uno faghotto da sonare cum le chiave d’argento’ and identified that
year as a ‘sonator de fagoth’. There is a further reference to payments in 1517
‘per fagotto che sona Janes de pre Michele’, evidently a colleague. The
following year we find the lutenist Giovanni Angelo Testagrossa in a letter
written to Isabella d’Este at Mantua, offering instruments and referring to ‘un
altro instrumento quale se chiama un fagot’ (Bertolotti, 1890). The phagotum,
demonstrated in 1532 at the court of Mantua by its inventor Afranio degli
Albonesi and described in 1539 by his nephew Teseo Ambrosio, was
traditionally considered to have been the earliest ancestor of the bassoon on
the strength of its name; however, with its bellows-blown pair of twin
cylindrical bores (each called a fagoto) sounded by single metal reeds, it is
rather a type of bagpipe. The next earliest Italian citation is from the Verona
Accademia Filarmonica Libro degli atti of 1546 which mentions ‘il 9 maggio
furono comperati da Alvise soldato un Fagotto ed una Dolzana’.

7
 Of all the signatures known on early wind instruments, variants of hier.s (25;
see Hier.s) and of the so-called ‘rabbits foot’ (about 143) by far predominate.
An attractive theory links both to the Bassano workshop. Significant research
by Lasocki and others has revealed much concerning the activities in both
Venice and London by members of this remarkable family. He has identified
three generations of makers and players descended from Jeronimo (i) (d ?
1539), a native of Bassano, some 65 km north-west of Venice. By 1531 four
of his sons had visited London in their capacity as sackbut players, where
they settled by about 1538. Both they and two subsequent generations were
active there and in Venice making and repairing instruments. It is most likely
that the eight surviving dulcians signed ‘hier.s’ and ‘hiero.s’ may be products
of the Bassano workshop – the instrument depicted by Castiglione (fig.4)
shows a two-section dulcian made in a similar style – as are also the eight
others bearing the ‘rabbit’s foot’ mark. HIER.S [Hie.s, Hiero.s].

HIER.S Italian wind instrument maker(s) of unknown identity. The maker's marks HIE.S, HIER.S
and HIERO.S are found on 31 wind instruments discovered to date: nine cornetts, eight
dulcians and 14 recorders, most of them known to have come from the area of Venice. A
quartbass dulcian depicted in Praetorius’s Theatrum instrumentorum (Wolfenbüttel, 1620/R)
and a bass dulcian in a painting by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Rome, c1645; see
BASSOON, fig.5) are similar in design to the surviving instruments. The marks are presumably
contractions of the name Hieronymus (a Latin version of the Venetian Jeronimo), but the
identity of the maker(s) has not yet been established. The most favoured suggestion is the
Venetian branch of the Bassano family, which was founded by Jeronimo Bassano the elder,
whose sons at first used the last name de Jeronimo; the instruments resemble those with the
‘!!’ maker's mark, which probably belonged to the Bassanos. Other suggestions have been
Hieronimo da Udine (mentioned in a Venetian letter of 1574) and Hieronymus Geroldi (from
whose heirs dulcians were bought by the Ambras court in 1596), as well as Hieronimo de li
flauti (mentioned in Venetian documents of the second half of the 16th century), possibly the
same man as da Udine or Geroldi.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. Lasocki : ‘The Anglo-Venetian Bassano Family as Instrument Makers and Repairers’, GSJ,
xxxviii (1985), 112–32
M. Lyndon-Jones : ‘The Bassano/HIE(RO).S./!!/Venice Discussion’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.47
(1987), 55–61
D. Lasocki : ‘The Bassanos' Maker's Mark revisited’, GSJ, xlvi (1993), 114–19
D. Lasocki and R. Prior : The Bassanos: Venetian Musicians and Instrument Makers in England,
1531–1665 (Aldershot, 1995)
M. Lyndon-Jones : ‘Who was HIE.S/HIER.S/HIERO./S?’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.83 (1996), 10–17

In Germanic countries references appear somewhat later. A Graz inventory of

1577 lists ‘a set of old, bad [or plain] fagati, 2 bass, 2 tenor and 1 descant’ and
‘1 good fagat in daily use’; from this, Kolneder deduced that they were at least
40 to 50 years old, setting the time of their introduction in Graz at about 1530.
In Augsburg, where a unique set of six (made in Italy) survive (fig.5), they
were first listed in 1566.

Nickel argued that in Nuremberg the instrument did not make an appearance
until 1575, when a dulzin (here meaning dulcian) was procured from Antwerp:
earlier references elsewhere to dulzana, doltzana and the like refer to the
dolzaina, an instrument in common use since the 15th century; and the fagati

8
of Augsburg and Graz, he suggested, were pommers. Neudörfer (1547)
praised the Nuremburg maker Sigmund Schnitzer the younger (d 1578) for his
ability to turn, tune and perform on large oversized Pfeiffen, which
Doppelmayr (1730) called Fagotte. That this might refer to a
Grossbasspommer, rather than a dulcian, is supported by the fact that the
player Rosenkron who was engraved holding one in 1679 is called fagotist. In
view of these verbal ambiguities, pictorial sources are more reliable. A relief
carved in Antwerp by Antonius von Zerun for the Moritz monument erected in
1563 in Freiberg Cathedral (Lower Saxony) shows a dulcian among a group
of wind instruments (see fig.3); the instrument is portrayed again in an
engraved frontispiece by Collaert of about 1590 (reproduced in Fraenkel,
no.39). These and other sources suggest that it appeared early in Flanders.
Venice was also supplying instruments to courts in Germany and Austria in
the late 16th century (in 1588 the Munich Hofkapelle acquired ‘ein Vagott von
Venedig’); in Nuremberg, the leading centre of wind instrument making of the
period, the first dulcian was made in 1595.

By the time of Praetorius, the family had reached its maximum extent: in
Syntagma musicum, ii (2/1619) he described a complete consort of Fagotten
or Dolcianen consisting of eight instruments of varying size – the
Discantfagott (g to c''), the Fagott Piccolo or Singel Corthol (G to g'), the
Choristfagott or Doppel Corthol (C to g'), and two varieties of Doppelfagott, a
Quartfagott (G' to a) and a Quintfagott (F' to g). In his Theatrum
instrumentorum (1620) he showed in addition an Altfagott (presumably c to f').
A hitherto unknown source was discovered in 1994 in Edinburgh (GB-Eu
Dc.6.100). The Instrumentälischer Bettlermantl by ‘A.S.’, a south German
manuscript datable to the mid-17th century (Campbell, 1995) describes and
illustrates four sizes of Vagött – Discant, Alt, Tenor and Bass; the
accompanying instructions for reed making (see §5 below) are the earliest
known. How long the use of the dulcian persisted is hard to ascertain. Eisel’s
treatise (1738) dismisses the Teutscher Basson as outmoded, but still
supplies a chart. Its use by the Pfeifergericht at the ceremonial opening of the
Frankfurt fair persisted well into the 18th century.

In Spain the dulcian (Sp. bajón) enjoyed a long and well-documented period
of use, which, according to the researches of B. Kenyon de Pascual,
extended from the early 16th until the early 20th century. The earliest
reference dates from 1530, when Juan de la Rosa of Pamplona was paid two
ducats for repairing bajones. The 1616 workshop inventory of the court maker
Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde included small and large dulcians. The four
Spanish dulcians preserved in Brussels comprise a tenor, two altos, and one
descant, indicating that such smaller models were also in use. Surviving
music and inventory records show that they were frequently used through to
the 18th century. The fact that all known iconographic sources have an
ecclesiastical setting indicates that they were primarily played in church,
though there is some evidence of secular use. They were still made and
played after the jointed bassoon (fagot) was introduced; a 1739 Royal Chapel
report specified that ‘the fagoto – which is an instrument of the same family,
though its voice is not so full as that of the bajón – will also play’. An early
19th-century listing of ‘bajón’ with choristers and two ‘fagots’ with orchestra

9
shows the different functions discharged by each instrument. As late as 1902,
a cathedral chapter record mentions a bajonista. A painting by the Italian
Bernardo Bitti on an organ from a Peruvian convent datable to 1590–95
shows early evidence of a kind of longitudinally sectioned dulcian. Several
early 19th-century examples of a five-keyed jointed bajón in three or four
sections survive.

Evidence for the dulcian’s early use in Flanders is the fact that it was there in
1563 that the earliest known represention was carved (see fig.3), while in
1566 some bajones were ordered for Valladolid. A print from Philipp Galle’s
Encomium musices(Antwerp, c1590) shows another longitudinally sectioned
dulcian. In the following century it was portrayed by such painters as Denis
van Alsloot, Jan Breughel the younger, Theodoor Rombouts and Anthonis
Sallaert, among others. Evidence from other countries (Poland, Denmark etc.)
also shows considerable use of the instrument.

In England it is likely that members of the aforementioned Bassano family

were making and repairing dulcians from about 1538 onwards. A Suffolk
account book of 1574 records payment ‘for an instrument called a curtall’. In
1575 the Waits Band of Exeter was using a ‘Double Curtall’, and in 1597 the
chamberlain of the Corporation of London was ordered to provide a curtall for
the musicians at the charge of the City. About 1582, Stephen Batman referred
to ‘the common bleting music in ye Drone, Hobius and Curtall’ (i.e. bagpipe,
shawm and dulcian). The Talbot manuscript, which was probably written
between 1690 and 1700 (GB-Och Music MS 1187), while describing fully the
‘Basson’ (jointed bassoon) still sees fit to describe fully the ‘Double Courtaut’
(dulcian). The ‘Tenor & Treble Courtaut’ and ‘Fagot’ are briefly mentioned; he
tells us that the ‘Fagot’, which is ‘entire’ and thus evidently also of dulcian
construction, is ‘unused’, while the ‘Double Courtaut’ is ‘not used in Consort’.

Evidence of the dulcian in France is mysteriously lacking. The fact that it does
not figure in Cellier’s manuscript of c1585 (F-Pn fonds fr.9152) suggests that
at that time it was still unknown. It is however in France that evidence
regarding other precursors of the bassoon may be found. Predecessors other
than the dulcian, such as the ‘fagotted’ bass shawm and the sectioned
dulcian, were evidently also filling the gap before the emergence of the jointed
bassoon. Mersenne described and illustrated instruments which may loosely
be considered transitional, and recent researches by Kopp and White have
yielded fresh insights. Comparing closely Mersenne’s Latin version
Harmonicorum libri (1635–6) with the French Harmonie universelle (1636–7),
Kopp (JAMIS, 1991) has been able to resolve confusing inconsistencies of
nomenclature. White (‘The Bass Hautboy in the Seventeenth Century’, 1994,
167–82) challenges the conventional assumption of a straight development
from bass shawm to dulcian to bassoon, arguing that of these the dulcian, far
from being more primitive, requires tooling capable of greater accuracy; none
of the instruments illustrated show one-piece construction, but rather two
discrete tubes wrapped externally (the illustration of the bass hautbois de
Poitou showing just such a construction). Mersenne wrote that they were
‘different from the preceeding bass [shawm] only in that they break into two
parts to be able to be managed and carried more easily; that is why they are

10
called Fagots because they resemble two pieces of wood which are bound
and faggotted together’. White surmises: that ‘the bassoon may not have
evolved directly out of the dulcian, but rather out of an interim “fagotted”
version of the bass shawm early in the sixteenth century’; and that the
dulcian’s simplified ‘modern’ design allowing for oblique chimneys
represented an improvement over the sectioned instrument that must have
preceded and then co-existed with it. Trichet appeared to corroborate his
contemporary Mersenne in his treatise (c1640) by describing, in addition to a
small conventional dulcian, a three-piece ‘basson’ constructed of two discrete
tubes, ‘deux tuiaux joincts ensemble’, the larger of which ‘pour la commodité
se peuvent desmonter et se briser en deux parts’. Only one sectioned model
of dulcian survives, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Sammlung
Alter Musikinstrumente no.201); unsigned, but of Italian provenance and
datable to about 1600, its upper part is divided into two halves.

3. The early bassoon (to 1800).

It is not clear when or where the precursors of the bassoon evolved into the
four-jointed instrument of today, descending one extra tone below the C of the
dulcian. The gradual abandonment and replacement of the dulcian was
doubtless brought about by such factors as the need for an instrument to
match the range of the contemporary ‘basse de violon’ which descended to B
', and to replace the old high church-pitch instruments that were incompatible
with new instruments built at French flat pitch. There was an evident demand
for such an instrument with this extended range. Selma y Salaverde had
already called for it (see §7 below) and the compass of one of Mersenne’s
instruments had also been extended to B ' with the aid of a third key. The
impulse for this development can be identified as emanating from Amsterdam,
Nuremberg and Paris.

An important early iconographic source for the new bassoon is the Dutch
painting Der Fagottspieler in the Suermondt Museum, Aachen. Unsigned, its
attribution to Harmen Hals (1611–69) is dubious, White dating it to nearer the
end of the century. The instrument has turned mouldings on the upper joints
that served both as decoration and mounts for the keys. The wing joint has
the characteristic ‘épaule’ or thickening of the wall necessary to retain the
oblique bore of the finger-holes. The extra length afforded by the bell, which
has a bulb-like cavity at the end, enabled the range to be extended a whole
tone downwards to B ' with the aid of an extra key, and the longer bore and
lighter construction made the instrument more free and flexible in the upper
register as well. A well-preserved three-keyed bassoon by Richard Haka
(Schlossmuseum, Sondershausen), datable to a terminus ante quem of 1699,
provides significant evidence. Its Baroque profile resembles that of the
instrument portrayed in Der Fagottspieler. His contemporaries Jan Juriansz
van Heerde (fl 1670–91) and Jan Juriansz de Jager (fl c1684–1694) also
made bassoons. The additional G key for the right little finger, shown on the
trade card of the Amsterdam maker Coenraad Rijkel (c1705), stabilized the
position of the player’s hands; formerly the swallow-tail design of the F key
had permitted interchangeable hand position. Rijkel’s contemporaries,

11
Abraham van Aardenberg, Thomas Boekhout, Michiel Parent and Hendrik
Richters, among other notable Dutch woodwind makers, also made bassoons.

The bassoons from J.C. Denner’s Nuremberg workshop (fig.6a) resemble

Richard Haka’s model. It is known that by 1684 Denner was copying the new
French recorders and oboes, and his bassoons may have been built to a
French pattern. An engraving by Weigel of a bassoon maker – possibly
Denner – at work shows both the two-key dulcian and three-key Basson being
made (fig.7), but soon the new instrument with its greater potentialities was to
dominate. Some 33 three-key bassoons survive.

The traditional view is that the bassoon, along with other Baroque woodwinds,
was developed in the time of Louis XIV in France by members of the
Hotteterre family, working as wind players and makers in Paris. Nicolas
Hotteterre (i) (c1637–1694), a bassoonist for the royal chapel from 1668 and
the first identifiable bassoon maker of the family, was possibly foreshadowed
by other earlier relations. However, both the dulcian and bassoon are
conspicuously absent among the woodwind instruments represented in the
Gobelin tapestries of 1669, which show instead the cromorne, which appears
to have functioned as bass to the reed group in France at this time (see
Haynes, 1997). Borjon de Scellery’s Traité de la musette (1672) mentions the
use of musette with ‘cromornes, flûtes & bassons’. Haynes concludes that
‘since bassoons played with cromornes and musettes, and hautboys did as
well, hautboys and bassoons were probably able to play together by 1672.
Thus some new model of bassoon would have been in existence by that
date’. By the 1680s there are references to bassoons of the new type, i.e.
designed to play at flat pitch like the other new Hotteterre woodwind
instruments. In 1680 Lully scored for basson in his opera Proserpine and
regularly thereafter (with a range of B ' to f). In 1686 the Darmstadt court
appointed the bassoonist Maillard, presumably from France.

It was in England that the new instrument was first described and illustrated.
Here James Talbot gathered detailed information from London professional
players, both native and French: White tentatively dates his inquiries to 1685–
8. Talbot confirmed that the ‘French Basson’ in ‘4 Joynts’ had three keys and
a compass extending down to B '. According to his brass authority William
Bull, it had been the ‘Fr. Basson’ that had replaced the trombone after it had
been ‘left off’ towards the end of the reign of King Charles II (d 1685). Around
this time, Randle Holme (before 1688) described and illustrated what he
called a ‘double curtaile’, which however appears to be a three-jointed
bassoon. The employment of Jacques Hotteterre, brother of Jean (1648–
1732), in London as an oboist is documented in 1675 (Giannini, 1993);
doubtless he helped introduce the family products. Both the tenor oboe and
bassoon had arrived from France by 1687 (see Lasocki, 1988). This traffic is
documented later in a letter of 1711 by Louis Rousselet, another French
oboist employed in London, who ordered two bassoons, one right-handed and
one left-handed, from the well-known Parisian maker Jean-Jacques Rippert
(Giannini, 1987). The earliest French illustration of the new bassoon is on the
title page to Marais’ Pièces en trio (1692). The plain severity of its bell, free of
Baroque turnery, resembles that of Stanesby.

12
Two unique double-reed instruments – the basse de musette and basson
d’amour – built in the 1760s in a French-speaking Swiss valley colonized by
Huguenot refugees, were possibly derived from lost French models. The four-
jointed, three-keyed basson d’amour, 14 examples of which survive, displays
unique features; these include a globular brass bell, which augments the tone
like a Helmholtz resonator, and a pirouette at the crook end to facilitate
playing (see HAUTBOIS D’EGLISE). Designed for church use, many lack the left-
hand keys deemed unnecessary for psalm accompaniment (see Staehelin,
1969–70). Hautbois d'église.

A group of conical-bore double-reed aerophones of the SHAWM type, unique to the Protestant
region of western Switzerland, and in use between about 1750 and 1810. The group is
formed of three members (see illustration): a treble, the dessus de musette, often referred to
simply as ‘hautbois’; a tenor, the basse de musette (Ger. Musettenbass; the French term was
coined by Gustave Chouquet in his 1884 catalogue of the Paris Conservatoire collection); and
a bass, known as the basson d'amour, a term coined by the anonymous author (?F.W.
Galpin) of the Catalogue of the Crosby Brown Collection, vol.i (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1904), p.148, no.883, due to the instrument's spherical brass bell, analogous
to that of the oboe d'amore and other period woodwind instruments.

Documented original extant specimens include 28 tenors and 14 basses, but only five trebles,
indicating that the latter were the least frequently used. The dessus and basses de musette
have a wide, sharply conical bore and thin walls, usually of maple. None of the six tone holes
is doubled and all are of large diameter. Both types are built in three sections and terminate in
a wide flaring bell. On all three instruments the lowest hole has a brass key which bears the
maker's mark, and the reed fits into a pirouette. The dessus de musette are pitched in C and
are about 61 cm in length, similar to an oboe pitched in Cammerton. The basses are pitched
an octave below the dessus, and have a long, coiled, brass crook equipped with a pirouette.
They measure about 81 cm, with another 45 cm in the crook. Brass keys cover the first, third,
fourth and sixth holes. The resulting tone is powerful, but not strident. The bassons d'amour
are about 116 cm in length including the bell, are in F, and some examples have two thumb-
keys in addition to the low-F key.

Although several makers are represented among the extant instruments (approximately 35
have been identified), the majority were made by a single maker with the mark ‘I.IR’.
Chouquet's identification of this as J.-J. Riedlocker is now known to be false, and Staehelin
has shown that this was Jean (or Jacques) Jeanneret (fl 1864–86) of La Chaux du Milieu,
near Neuchâtel.

The church ensemble, which at its fullest consisted of two trebles, a tenor and a bass, was
employed only in the accompaniment of psalms, primarily in the smaller parishes of German-
speaking Protestant Switzerland, where wind instruments had recently been readmitted to the
service (and were eventually replaced by organs). Textless part-books containing music for
psalms survive in several locations, the title page of one example dated 1781, at Gurzelen,
referring to the ‘Neue Hobua u[nd] Facot Music’. Often only the tenor and bass part-books are
present, the lack of treble parts reflecting the proportion of surviving instruments, and
indicating that the basse de musette and basson d'amour were used for instrumental support
rather than playing the familiar melody lines.

A possible French origin is suggested by the similarity, primarily in the keywork, of the basse
de musette to an instrument depicted in the frontispiece of Pierre Borjon de Scellery's Traité
de la musette (Lyons, 1672; see OBOE, fig.3), but also found in contemporary large oboe
types.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Grove5 (‘Basse de musette’; L.G. Langwill)
Waterhouse-LangwillI (‘Jeanneret’)

13
M. Staehelin: ‘Der sogennante Musettenbass’, Jb des Bernischen Historischen Museums in Bern,
xlix–l (1969–70), 93–121

MICHAEL FINKELMAN

The four-key instrument was to remain the model in standard use for the rest
of the century. Halle (1764) reported that the best were made of boxwood:
examples by J.H. Eichentopf, Poerschmann and Scherer survive. The
Baroque mouldings of the upper three joints disappeared, the keys being
mounted instead on projecting bosses or on saddles. The bore of the bell was
changed to an inverted taper and sometimes a small resonance hole was
added. The earliest extra keys to be added were for those low notes for which
the standard ‘forked’ fingerings were less satisfactory: a chart by Hotteterre
and Bailleux (c1765) first shows the fifth E key for left thumb (later moved by
Grenser to left little finger), and a right-thumb key (for a'; also F ) followed
later. A more significant advance was the addition of a ‘harmonic key’ on the
wing joint to obtain high-register notes, sometimes even being added to
existing instruments (fig.6c). This was first reported in France in 1787
(according to Ozi, it was ‘in almost universal use’) and 1786–7 in Germany (a
six-keyed instrument, complete with hand rest, is depicted on the seal
attached to the will of Franz Anton Pfeiffer, court bassoonist at Ludwigslust).
From Ozi (1787) we also learn that French makers had by this time already
shifted the G key-hole away from its traditional site on the narrow butt bore to
just below the F key-hole; other makers were not to follow suit for at least a
generation. Ozi used an instrument by Keller of Strasbourg; the best-known
Paris makers of this period were Bizey, Lot, Porthaux and Prudent. In
Germany, the Dresden Fagot was considered the best; most notable were
those made by the Grensers and their contemporaries Grundmann and Floth.
A portrait of Felix Rheiner, painted in 1774 by Horemans (fig.8), shows the
earliest recorded use of a pinhole in the crook, here operated by a key.
Cugnier also advocated the pinhole in 1780, but it was not to come into
general use until the 19th century. Almenraeder considered that it might be
dispensed with on a broken-in, but not on a new, instrument. Extra keys of
any sort were slow in becoming standard: Koch’s lexicon of 1802 describes
the five-key instrument with two octave keys ‘found on recent instruments’.

In England, bassoons were made in considerable quantities throughout the

18th century; John Ashbury (fl London, 1698), Peter Bressan (1663–1731)
and Thomas Stanesby (i) are the earliest recorded makers. However, only two
English bassoons have survived from before 1750 (one each by Stanesby (i)
and (ii); see fig.6b). The Milhouses of Newark and London later became the
most notable makers. The bell of these earlier English instruments has a
characteristic baluster contour and a pronounced inverted taper. The
widespread use of church bands, in some places having up to seven
instruments, as well as the demands of professional and military music
making, gave work to numerous makers in London and the provinces. The
tone-colour of the bassoon became more mellow and expressive throughout
the 18th century. In Germany, Mattheson’s ‘stoltze Basson’ (1713) became

14
the ‘Instrument der Liebe’ of Koch (1802), while French writers stressed its
powers of expression, comparing it to the human voice. The early Sonata by
Telemann (1728) already makes considerable technical demands, and the
works written by Mozart in 1774 (K191/186e and 292/196c) indicate the
expressive range expected from the instrument by then.

4. Development of the modern bassoon.

In the 19th century, several factors helped to bring about developments in

instrument making. These included the increasing demands of composers
regarding technique, expression and extension of the range upward; the rise
of the solo virtuoso-composer; larger orchestras and concert halls demanding
louder-toned instruments; international trade exhibitions encouraging
competition and experiment; instrument makers who had backgrounds as
excellent performers (including Savary jeune and Almenraeder); and technical
advice from acoustic experts such as Gottfried Weber.

While Cugnier’s exceptional chart of 1780 showed fingerings up to f''

apparently possible on a five-key instrument without octave keys, the gradual
introduction of up to three such keys on the wing undoubtedly facilitated notes
from a' upwards, even if composers were still reluctant to write above g' in the
orchestra. Simiot of Lyons, an important innovator, provided, in addition to
these, closed keys for B' and C , notes hitherto unobtainable except by
‘faking’; other refinements included bushing finger-holes with metal tubes
against water, and (in 1817) replacing the cork plug with a metal U-bend bow,
an improvement later adopted in Germany.

Improvements made by the leading Paris makers Savary jeune and Adler
included key-rollers (introduced in 1823) and one or two tuning-slides on the
wing to obviate the need for several corps de rechange. Attempts were made
to obtain the greater volume desired for the military band by widening the end
of the bore with a broad flaring bell, or even widening the bore of the entire
instrument (Winnen’s ‘Bassonore’ of 1834), and by making the instrument in
metal. Both Charles-Joseph and Adolphe Sax experimented with brass
instruments with covered keys; Sax fils patented in 1851 a 24-key metal
bassoon with regularly spaced holes which was demonstrated at the London
Exhibition that year. The instrument favourably impressed Boehm, who
subsequently calculated his ‘Schema’ of hole dimensions for a bassoon bore
which Triébert and Marzoli of Paris used for their model of 1855, together with
many of Boehm’s innovations for the uniquely intricate keywork (shown in
fig.6d). Another system comparable to that of Sax was worked out in London
by Ward and Tamplini and patented in 1853. However, altering the traditional
relationships between size and position of holes and wall thicknesses caused
the instrument to lose its characteristic tone quality. The complexity and
expense also militated against the ‘Boehm bassoon’, and it failed to catch on.
Meanwhile, however, the efforts of the player and teacher Jancourt, working
with Triébert, Gautrot aîné and Buffet-Crampon, led to the development in
1879 of the 22-key model which has with minor modifications since
established itself as the standard French-system bassoon (see fig.1b).

15
In spite of the achievements of the Dresden makers, the bassoon in Germany
was still far from satisfactory, especially as compared to the other woodwinds.
Fröhlich (1810–11), who praised its qualities – the majesty of its bass and the
grace of its middle and high registers – described the situation at this time: to
adjust to different pitches, instruments were sold with a set of three wing joints
of differing lengths, and with as many crooks. Standard bassoons had six
keys, the more recent ones with two extra ‘octave’ keys on the wing for a' and
c''; but many instruments still had only five or even four keys. Because of the
lack of standardization of keywork or bore, no given set of fingerings would
suit everyone; different notes were always out of tune, needing correction with
special fingerings. On French bassoons of the period many fingerings were
different; those given in the 1805 and 1806 translations of Ozi’s 1787 tutor
were impracticable on German-built instruments.

This state of affairs was to be remedied by Carl Almenraeder (1786–1843),

the ‘Boehm of the bassoon’ (Sachs, Reallexikon, 1913). Though some of his
innovations can be traced to others, he nevertheless remains the most
important figure in the history of the instrument. With the advantage, like
Boehm and Savary, of a virtuoso ability on his instrument, he had experience
as bandmaster, teacher, player and composer. In 1817, while playing in the
Mainz orchestra, he met Gottfried Weber, who had recently published
valuable articles on woodwind acoustics, and started working in the Schott
factory at those experiments to improve and reform the bassoon which were
to occupy him almost up until his death in 1843. His treatise of 1823 and
subsequent articles describe how, by adding certain keys and relocating
others, he improved the intonation and response of certain notes, extended
the range up to g'' and facilitated passages in extreme keys. While leaving the
bore as far as the fifth finger-hole essentially unaltered, he enlarged the tone
holes sounding from A downwards and moved them further down towards the
bell. Highly significant too was the replacing of the old resonance hole in the
bell with an open key for B'. Reports of these improvements appearing in
Schott’s house journal Caecilia attracted the attention of Beethoven, who
closely questioned the local Viennese player Mittag about them and even
asked Schott (letter of 25 November 1825) to send him one of the new
instruments. An important discovery was that the intonation and response of
certain notes could be improved by opening a second vent hole into the large
bore of the double joint; other innovations included fitting a metal U-bend bow
at the end of the butt, using stuffed pads and connecting keys with a pin
through the inner wall of the double joint.

Almenraeder’s monumental tutor (completed 1836, but not published until

1843) is for his improved 17-key model with a complete chromatic range of
four octaves (B ' to b ''), and gives many interesting data on technique, reeds
and instrument construction. In 1831 he had founded his own factory in
Biebrich with J.A. Heckel (1812–77). After Almenraeder’s death in 1843
Heckel (and his descendants for two generations) continued the manufacture
and gradual refinement of what has since become known as the Heckelfagott,
the model gradually adopted by the other German makers. Wagner, who in
1862 was living nearby and took an interest in these developments,
persuaded Heckel to build a longer bell to reach A', and later endorsed

16
Wilhelm Heckel’s improved double bassoon of 1879, which he subsequently
employed in Parsifal.

By 1887, when Weissenborn's tutor for the Heckel bassoon appeared, this
model of the instrument was starting to predominate throughout Germany and
also in Austria, where the traditional ‘Wiener Fagott’ of Ziegler and Uhlmann
(which retained the traditional venting of the bell by having a closed B' key like
the instruments of the French makers) had hitherto held its own against the
reformed instrument. As early as 1825 C.-J. Sax exhibited a model entirely
key-operated, while his son Adolphe patented a similar 23-key model in metal
in 1851. Elements derived from Boehm’s 1832 and 1847 flute models were
soon adopted by such makers as Ward-Tamplini, Triébert-Marzoli and
Haseneier. The latest and most promising of such ‘reform’ models was that of
F.W. Kruspe (patented 1893), a radical new design that offered logical and
simple fingering patterns, though it failed to catch on. Heckel’s achievement
had been to recapture the good singing qualities of the old Dresden
bassoons, which the earlier Almenraeder instruments with their harder tone
quality had forfeited, while retaining the technical advantages developed by
Almenraeder. Further improvements by Heckel, who in 1898 claimed to have
made over 4000 bassoons, included minor alterations to bore and tone-hole
placement, especially on the butt; lining the wing, an idea first adopted by
Morton (London, c1870), with hard rubber (1889); and fitting a key for the
crook-hole (1905).

In England the local production of instruments had dropped considerably by

Victorian times owing to the disappearance of the church bands and the
preference of professional players, many of them foreigners, for French
instruments. Ward’s ‘Boehm’ model, patented in 1853, failed to raise any
further interest. The foremost maker, Morton, trained in Vienna, made
instruments on the French pattern. From about 1900, while English bassoons
remained in military use, the requirements of low-pitch orchestras were met
by instruments from abroad.

In the 20th century the use of the German bassoon gradually became more
universal. In England the importing by Hans Richter of a pair of Viennese
players to Manchester in 1899 subsequently established there a cell of
‘German’ players which, as Baines related, later spread to London. Cecil
James, who retired in about 1980, was the last English protagonist of the
‘Buffet’ model. In the USA, the takeover occurred even earlier, and Italy and
Spain have now followed suit. This process has been brought about by the
ever-increasing demands of conductors and record producers for power of
sound, homogeneity and balance, but has not always met with approval. In
1934 the English composer and conductor John Foulds remarked that:

it was the common practice of Schubert (and his contemporaries) to eke out his two horns
with two bassoons in four-part harmony. Now the bassoon is the bass instrument of the oboe
family. But so intent have been both players and conductors upon producing instruments
capable of fulfilling the duties of deputy horns, so to say, that German bassoons of today,
forsaking their true family, have become a sort of wooden horn and have, to really sensitive
ears, lost more than they have gained.

17
He went on to say that ‘French, Belgian, and some English bassoons retain
the true, slightly more reedy, certainly more sympatheitc quality which allies
the instrument to its true double-reed family’ (Music To-Day, London, 1934).
The dying-out of the French instrument would indisputably be a deplorable
loss, and there are continuing efforts to improve the instrument and to
safeguard its future. At the Paris Conservatoire both systems are currently
taught in separate classes.

Among players of German bassoons, the instruments by Heckel maintained a

unique status for many years. The production of instruments from other
factories, however, has steadily increased. Before World War II the makers
Adler, Hüller, Kohlert and Mönnig were notable. Current makers include:
Adler-Sonora, Amati, Heckel, Mollenhauer, Mönnig, Moosmann, Püchner,
Schreiber, Soulsby, Walter, Wolf (Europe); Bell (Canada); Fox, Linton (USA);
and Yamaha (Japan). There are others in China and Brazil. ‘Buffet’-model
instruments, formerly produced not only in France (Paris and La Couture) but
in Belgium (Mahillon) and London (Boosey, Hawkes, Morton), are now made
only in Paris (Buffet-Crampon, Selmer). Current makers of replica models
include: Olivier Cottet, Laurent, Vergeat (France); Moeck, Rainer Weber,
Guntram Wolf (Germany); Matthew Dart, John Hanchet, Graham Lyndon-
Jones, Barbara Stanley (UK); Peter de Robinson and Koningh (the
Netherlands); Robert Cronin, Robinson and Ross (USA).

5. The early reed.

In view of the relative importance of the reed, which is continually stressed by

the writers on the instrument, it is unfortunate that so little is known about
what they were like until comparatively recent times. As an ephemeral
accessory in constant need of replacement, surviving specimens (and their
reed cases) are relatively rare. Of these, pitifully few can be tentatively
assigned to the 18th century.

The earliest iconographic source for a dulcian reed is the painting by

Bernardo Bitti in Cuzco, Peru (1590–95); reeds are also illustrated in
Praetorius (1620), Mersenne (1636–7) and by Jan de Reyn (c1670; fig.9); all
are shaped somewhat like a straight-sided isosceles triangle. A still life by
Franz Friedrich Franck (Städtische Kunstsammlungen, Augsburg) shows a
dulcian with reed attached of a longer bassoon-like model with a long ‘V’
scrape extending to the thread wrapping. The earliest reed-making
instructions are those in the Instrumentälischer Bettlermantl (mid-17th
century); though tantalizingly vague, they offer some valuable data – the reed
is to be bound with either wire or resined thread – that is not otherwise
available at this early date. Otherwise, the sole evidence available is offered
by the 21 reeds in Madrid that accompany the late-18th-century bajones there
(Kenyon de Pascual, 1984; White, 1992). Most are shorter (55–6 mm), flatter
and wider (19–20 mm) than bassoon reeds: like these, they are wired.

With regard to the historical bassoon reed, White’s ground-breaking research

(1992, 1993, 1994) has shed light on many aspects of this hitherto neglected
area, while raising many intriguing questions that have yet to be answered.

18
He has subjected the available written sources, together with some 22 reeds
for bajón and 91 for bassoon, to close scrutiny. His methodology delineates
scrape patterns topographically, distinguishing between cane stratae – bark,
dermis, dense and broad parenchyme (fig.10). He is able to show that 17th-
century reeds were built on staples, were relatively long and narrow, bound
with waxed thread rather than metal bands, and scraped to a V or U shape.
Several stapled reed-forms co-existed: a conventional oboe-type staple; a
cane section inserted into an external staple; or direct reed insertion into a
wide-mouthed crook. The transition from stapled to ‘cane only’ construction
occurred towards the end of the era of the four-key bassoon (although
persisting locally well into the 19th century). Thread binding was replaced by
metal banding. Pre-formed bands were pressed into position to tune the reed,
like the rasette (tuning-wire) of an organ reed-pipe, a system persisting
longest in England. Continental reeds mostly conformed to Ozi and
Almenraeder models well into the late 19th century. The gouge, scrape,
banding, size and proportions of early reeds differ markedly from their modern
counterparts. Early reeds were hand-gouged, often internally tapered towards
the tip, allowing blade material to be of denser cane quality. External scraping
was shallow, resulting in a V or U shape stopping well short of the front
banding. The adjustment capability of the ‘positional’ pre-formed band differed
both from the continuous support of the earlier thread-wrap and the re-
distribution of fulcrum forces through the fixed-position, double-wire banding
of today’s reed. Tensional difference between these systems may have
required compensational alterations in scrape, gouge thickness and
embouchure support. White’s findings raise uncomfortable questions
regarding how certain anachronistic practices employed today relate to
‘authenticity’.

Early bassoon reeds were considerably longer than modern ones (fig.11). In
Der Fagottspieler, the bassoon player’s reed is approximately the length of his
middle finger and has a wide flare. An engraving (1760) of the virtuoso Felix
Rheiner shows him holding a broad reed of similar length with a horseshoe-
shaped area of bark removed as in some modern oboe reeds. De Garsault
(1761) illustrated a narrow reed 7·5 cm long and 1 cm wide at the tip (fig.11a),
while Cugnier (1780) recommended a length of 28 or 29 to 32 lignes (6·5–7
cm). Ozi (1803), Fröhlich (1810–11), Neukirchner (1840) and Almenraeder
(1843) all gave detailed accounts of reed making which broadly correspond,
although Almenraeder’s reed is narrower and longer than that of Fröhlich
(fig.11c). All agree on one significant point: the piece of cane was placed in a
wooden mould for gouging by hand with a scoop-shaped chisel in order to
leave it thinner at the middle, so that when made up little thinning at the blade
was required once the bark was removed. The cane at the tip of the blade
was thus of finer texture and more durable: Almenraeder achieved a life of up
to two years for a reed in daily use. However, the subsequent universal
adoption of the gouging machine (invented by the oboist Henri Brod 1834,
later developed by Triébert c1845) which gives a rigidly vertical gouge to the
piece of cane means that with most modern reeds this rind-wood is removed
towards the tip, exposing coarser-grained pith-wood. Flament (Exercises
techniques, op.40, 1919) recommended storing reeds for four years to avoid
spongy cane, but still expected them to last only about a week. It cannot be

19
said that modern machinery and precision techniques have done much to
alleviate these perennial problems.

6. Charts and tutors.

Early fingering charts and tutors constitute a valuable reference source that
documents the history and development of every woodwind instrument. With
the bassoon, given the virtual non-availablity of surviving historical reeds,
authentic matched crooks and even ‘uncorrupted’ instruments, fingering
charts alone are able to offer unimpeachable evidence. White (1990) states
that ‘by applying these fingering patterns to surviving original bassoons, or
modern copies of these instruments, one can determine how close the
modern player/maker is coming to an original concept of sound, reed style,
temperament, pitch standard, and tuning’. Likewise, guidance on questions of
performing practice may be derived from tutors of the period.

Fingering charts are found in many treatises and encyclopedia articles, as

well as in tutors and independently published flysheets. They are usually
presented in the form of a table: they are especially useful when also
accompanied by written annotations regarding individual notes. Apart from the
fingerings themselves, other significant information can be gleaned by the
way in which they are differentiated, how some distinguish between d ' and e
', the compass selected, and the illustrations of contemporary models that
usually accompany them. Table 1 lists a selection of works containing dulcian
and early bassoon charts.

20
21
Early tutors can offer information unavailable elsewhere on such significant
topics as ornamentation and reed making, as well as playing techniques. The
mid-17th-century German treatise Instrumentälischer Bettlermantl is an
important early source regarding reed making (see §5 above); J.S. Halle’s
Werkstätte der heutigen Künste, iii (c1779) also includes brief but significant
information on the subject (p.368). The earliest known monograph dedicated
to the bassoon is the anonymous Compleat Instructions for the Bassoon or
Fagotto (London, c1770). However the informative 20-page article in La
Borde's Essai (pp.323–43) by the player Pierre Cugnier constitutes the first
real tutor for the instrument. Two significant methods were published by
Etienne Ozi: his Méthode nouvelle et raisonée pour le basson (1787) has
seven pages of material relating to playing position, model of instrument,
embouchure, choice of reed and tone production. Ozi’s later work, Nouvelle
méthode de basson, first published in 1803, is the earliest comprehensive
tutor for bassoon and has remained in print ever since. It includes information
on reed making, with illustrations of tools, and is an entirely different work
from his 1787 tutor. The earliest original tutor published in German is Wenzel
Neukirchner’s Theoretisch practische Anleitung zum Fagottspiel (1840); the
significant works of Carl Almenraeder have already been discussed (see §4
above). Julius Weissenborn’s Praktische Fagott-Schule (1887) relates
specifically to the Heckel bassoon; it remained in use for a century. More
recent examples are by Seltmann and Angerhöfer (based on the German
system), Maurice Allard (French system) and Sergio Penazzi (for avant-garde
techniques). Additional pedagogical sources are cited in the bibliography.

  
Bassoon

7. Repertory and use.

While the earliest use of the dulcian was as a strengthening element to the
bass, it began in the early 17th century to assume a more independent role;
Schütz in his Psalm xxiv (SWV476) used a consort of five dulcians of different
pitches (total range A' to a'') as a self-contained group. The instrument also
began to be used with just one or two other instruments and continuo, for
example by Mikolai Zielenski (Fantasia, 1611), Biagio Marini (Affetti musicali,
op.1, 1617; Sonate, op.8, 1629, ded. 1626), Gabriele Usper (Compositioni
armoniche, 1619), Giovanni Battisti Riccio (Terzo libro delle divine lodi
musicali, 1620), Stefano Bernadi (Madrigaletti, 1621), Giovanni Picchi
(Canzoni da sonar, 1625), Dario Castello (Sonate concertante: libro primo,
1621, libro secondo, 1629), Mathias Spiegler (Olor Solymaeus nascenti Jesu,
1631), Giovanni Battista Buonamente (Sonate et canzoni, 1636) and Giovanni
Battista Fontana (Sonata, 1641). (For an extensive listing of 17th-century
dulcian music see Wagner, 1976.) The first solo composition was a Fantasia
per fagotto solo in the Canzoni, fantasie et correnti by Selma y Salaverde
(Venice, 1638), who was descended from a family of Madrid instrument
makers. In a dedicatory sonnet he is praised for his skill on the instrument;
exceptionally, the piece descends to B '. The nine sonatas comprising the
Compositioni musicali (1645) by the player Bertoli, the earliest set of sonatas
for any one instrument, were written for the two-key dulcian (range C to d'), as

22
was the Sonata sopra La Monica (from Sacra partitura, 1651) by the
Darmstadt Fagottist P.F. Böddecker, a tour de force of technical virtuosity for
its time. A sonata by ‘M.G.’ (c1686, I-MOe) remains unpublished. Daniel
Speer’s tutor (1687) contains two sonatas for three dulcians designed to
exemplify writing for the two-keyed instrument. Its use in ensemble is
documented as early as 1589, when tromboni, cornetti, dolcaina e fagotti took
part in the intermedi composed for La Pellegrina in Florence by Christofano
Malvezzi (Elsner, 1935, p.58). The earliest known use of the instrument in
opera is in Cesti’s Il pomo d’oro (performed 1668), where it is grouped with
cornetts and trombones.

The late 17th century was a point of transition when the dulcian still co-existed
with the new jointed instrument; therefore it is hard in certain circumstances to
know which instrument may have been intended. However, the advent of the
new jointed bassoon, with its increased range of tone and expression, gave
new impetus to composers, and orchestras increasingly began to include the
instrument. In Hamburg, where up to five were available, Keiser’s Atlanta
(1698) and Octavia (1705) each included an aria accompanied by five
Fagotte. With the operas of Lully the instrument assumed a new function of
bass to a wind trio consisting of two hautbois and basson, which are used as
a contrasting group to the strings (e.g. Psyché, 1678); the same pattern was
followed by Purcell in Dioclesian (1690). Mattheson (1713) perceived the role
of the ‘Proud Bassoon’ as forming ‘the usual bass, Fundament or
Accompagnement to the oboe’. He went on to say that ‘it is reckoned easier to
play, not calling for the same Finesse or ornamenting (but perhaps other skills
instead); however anyone wishing to distinguish himself on it in the upper
register with delicacy and speed has a considerable task’. In 1728 Telemann
published his Sonata in F minor, with its pathetic echo effects and tenor
cantilena. Two sonatinas followed in 1731. From this period there are also
sonatas by Carlo Besozzi, J.F. Fasch, J.D. Heinichen and Christoph
Schaffrath. Vivaldi’s 39 concertos for fagotto (preserved at I-Tn),
outnumbering those he wrote for any other instrument save the violin,
represent a unique legacy. While RV502 was dedicated to a local player
Gioseppino Biancardi, and RV496 to his Bohemian patron Count Wenzel von
Morzin, the others were presumably written for the girls of the Pietà
orphanage where the composer taught from 1703. Fertonani (1998) dates
their composition to between 1720 and 1740. The remarkable solo writing pre-
empts many of the characteristics of later bassoon style, including rapid
leaping between registers, lyrical tenor passages, and the occasional use of
dynamic and expression marks. While the a' in RV487 and the B ' in RV495
would appear to demand bassoon, the somewhat restricted compass of C to
g' employed in the other concertos suggests dulcian, raising doubt as to the
instrument intended. Other concertos are by J.G. Graun, Graupner, Müthel,
J.F. Fasch and J.C. Bach. Chamber works include trio sonatas by Telemann,
Handel and C.P.E. Bach and a remarkable set of sonatas with two oboes by
Zelenka. J.S. Bach in his cantatas gave the bassoon several important
obbligatos; his use of the instrument was limited by the players at his
disposal, but for players like Torlle at Cöthen he was able to make
considerable demands: movements like the second Bourrée in the fourth suite
require fluency in an extreme key, and the ‘Quoniam’ of the B minor Mass is

23
written up to a'. C.P.E. Bach gave the bassoon an obbligato in his oratorio Die
Israeliten in der Wüste (1769), while ‘Non m’alletta’ from Temistocle (1772) by
J.C. Bach resembles a concerto in miniature.

In England in 1733 Galliard published his six sonatas, which display

characteristic writing for the instrument: no.4 descends to B', a note obtained
by ‘pinching’. Merci’s six sonatas followed in about 1735. The use of the
bassoon in English orchestras was also increasing. Galliard’s ‘New Concerto
grosso [for] 24 Bassoons, accompanied by Caporale on the Violoncello’,
performed on 11 December 1744 in London, has not survived. Concertos with
string accompaniment were written by Capel Bond (1766) as well as Henry
Hargrave (1762). Boyce’s Solomon (1743) contains the once well-known aria
‘Softly rise’ with bassoon obbligato: a reported concerto is lost.

In France Boismortier published, from 1726 onwards, several sets of duets for
two bassoons; his were the earliest of a considerable quantity subsequently
written for teaching purposes. Corrette wrote a charming work, Le Phénix, for
four bassoons as well as Les délìces de la solitude (c1739) with continuo. In
Germany the bassoon was considered indispensable in the orchestra (even if
not always given an independent part) as a means of consolidating and
clarifying the bass line. Writing in 1784–5, C.F.D. Schubart asserted that the
bassoon was able to ‘assume every role: accompany martial music with
masculine dignity, be heard majestically in church, support the opera,
discourse wisely in the concert hall, lend lilt to the dance, and be everything
that it wants to be’ (Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, Vienna, 1806/R).
For orchestral playing Quantz in 1789 recommended the proportion of one
bassoon to nine strings, two bassoons to 13 strings and three bassoons to 21
strings. A pair were to become the regular complement of the Classical
orchestra, although in France two pairs were usual. There the demand for
players was so great that for a period at the end of the century the
Conservatoire was employing four professors to teach the bassoon.

Mozart’s use of the instrument shows a great understanding of its nature and
potentialities; his early Concerto in B K191/186e (1774) remains the most
significant in the bassoonist’s repertory. It is not known who commissioned
the 18-year-old composer to write it; the amateur Baron Dürnitz, a composer
of bassoon music himself for whom the sonata with cello K292/196c was
probably written, can be discounted. Jahn’s supposition that he wrote three
further concertos for Dürnitz is unfortunately not supported by any other
evidence. A second concerto (KA230/196d), first published by Max Seiffert in
1934, was attributed by Hess (MJb, 1957) to Devienne, although Montgomery
(1975) convincingly disproved this. Chamber works for bassoon and strings, a
combination unlikely to entail problems of balance, were written in
considerable quantities in the Classical period. G.W. Ritter’s lead (1778) was
followed by Carl Stamitz, Devienne, Krommer, Danzi, Johann Brandl, Reicha
and many others.

Works for bassoon with orchestra from this time fall into two categories. The
first consists of concertos written by professional composers, usually with
specific players in mind. Among these are notable works by Danzi, David,

24
Michael Haydn (that by Joseph Haydn, c1803/4, is lost), J.N. Hummel, J.W.
Kalliwoda, Kozeluch and Berwald. Efforts to identify definitively a reported
Concerto da Esperienza (c1845) by Rossini have not so far proved
convincing, although more than one work has been proposed. A Pezzo da
Concerto (1813) for bassoon and horn by Paganini has recently come to light
(as has also his youthful set of three Duetti concertanti for violin and bassoon
commissioned in 1800 by a Swedish amateur). Weber composed two works
of capital importance to the repertory: the concerto written in 1811 for Brandt
of Munich, in which the alternation of brilliant passage-work and lyrical melody
shows off well the bassoon’s capacity for both wit and pathos, and the
Andante and Hungarian Rondo, a successful reworking of a piece originally
for viola. A recently discovered Capriccio by Verdi for bass clef instrument and
orchestra, datable to the early 1830s, was probably intended for bassoon. In
the second category are works written as display pieces by performers
(usually for their own use), for example Gebauer, Jacobi and Almenraeder.
According to the fashion of the time, these often took the form of pot-pourris
and variations. Among the many concertante symphonies, the one ascribed to
Mozart (for oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon) and that by Haydn (for oboe,
bassoon, violin and cello) are notable. Works for two bassoons and orchestra
by Dieter, Johnsen, Schacht and Vanhal survive; one by Danzi is lost.

Sonatas with piano were comparatively rare at this period. The substantial
sonata by Liste (1807) may be considered the most important for any
woodwind instrument prior to Weber. Others were composed by Reicha,
Krufft, Amon, Moscheles and Theuss; there are some smaller pieces by
Spohr, Christian Rummel and Jacobi. Almenraeder’s solo pieces, with their
unique exploitation of the highest register up to g', mark the end of an era in
which solo music for wind was fashionable. In France, the virtuoso Jancourt
assembled for his repertory a large number of transcriptions as well as his
own compositions. Notable examples of ‘morceaux de concours’ were written
by Pierné, Bourdeau and Büsser.

Concerning its role within the orchestra, the bassoon was criticized by 19th-
century writers as being ‘a weak-sounding instrument that gets lost among
loud forces’ (Fétis, Revue musicale, viii, 1834, pp.148 and 326). Fétis
recommended that ‘in a well-equipped wind orchestra, there should never be
less than eight bassoons’; he even recorded an occasion where he used as
many as 30. Berlioz too noted the bassoon’s lack of volume and remarked
that ‘its timbre, totally lacking in éclat and nobility, has a propensity for the
grotesque which must be borne in mind when giving it prominence’. However,
he also said that ‘the character of its high notes has about it something
painful, complaining, almost wretched, which can sometimes be surprisingly
effective in a high register melody or an accompanimental pattern’ (Grand
traité d’instrumentation, 1843).

Among the vast output of the 20th century, the following works are
noteworthy: concertos and other concert works by Elgar, Wolf-Ferrari, Villa-
Lobos, Jolivet, Françaix, Jacob and Maconchy; recent British works by John
Addison, Judith Bingham, Stephen Dodgson, Robin Holloway, John Joubert
and Peter Maxwell Davies, and in North America by Elliott Schwartz, Gunther

25
Schuller, John T. Williams and E.T. Zwilich; a concerto by the Russian
composer S.A. Gubaydulina (along with two other significant works for
bassoon); concertante works by Strauss (clarinet and bassoon) and
Hindemith (trumpet and bassoon); sonatas and other works by Tadeusz
Baird, Roger Boutry, Eugène Bozza, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dutilleux,
Hindemith, Hurlstone, Longo, Nussio, Saint-Saëns, Skalkottas – his Sonata
Concertante (1943) is the outstanding sonata of the century – and Tansman
(a sonata by Poulenc, 1957, remained unfinished at his death and is lost);
unaccompanied solo pieces by Apostel, Arnold, Bruno Bartolozzi, Jørgen
Bentzon, Berio, Boulez, Jacob, Stockhausen and Isang Yun; bassoon
ensembles by Bozza, Victor Bruns, Alois Hába, Jacob, Prokofiev, William
Schuman and Peter Schickele; and bassoon and string works by Kalevi Aho,
Bax, Françaix and Jacob. The increased prominence given to the bassoon in
many 20th-century orchestral scores is exemplified by the opening of The
Rite of Spring, a solo in the upper register. During the century various new
techniques were demanded of the instrument, among them double- and triple-
tonguing, flutter-tonguing, multiphonics, pitch bending, quarter tones, and
vocalizing while playing. Many of these are exploited in Bartolozzi’s
Concertazioni for bassoon, strings and percussion and Stockhausen’s Adieu
for wind quintet (see Penazzi, 1982, and Ouzounoff, 1986). More recent is its
use with contact microphones and live electronics.

8. Performers and teachers.

The earliest performers known by name are the composers Bertoli, Selma y
Salaverde and Böddecker, whose florid writing indicates the existence of a
high level of dulcian technique in the 17th century. Vivaldi’s concertos suggest
that standards in Italy were particularly high; the playing of Paolo Girolamo
Besozzi (1704–78) of Parma was praised by several writers, and the earliest
German virtuoso of note, Felix Rheiner (1732–82) of Munich, of whom two
interesting portraits survive (see fig.8), was sent to Turin to study with him. His
pupil Franz Anton Pfeiffer (1752–87) was praised, among other things, for his
double-tonguing; his use of ‘three-part harmony’ in a solo cadenza was
doubtless a multiphonic effect. Georg Wenzel Ritter (1748–1808), ‘the finest
bassoon player I ever heard’ (Kelly, 1826), of Berlin started his career in the
Mannheim orchestra, making Mozart’s acquaintance there; while in Paris in
1778 he published a pioneering set of bassoon quartets. The bassoon part in
the Sinfonia concertante Mozart said he wrote in Paris was for him. Among
Ritter’s pupils were Carl Baermann (1782–1842), who succeeded him in the
Berlin orchestra and became well known as a soloist, and Georg Friedrich
Brandt (1773–1836) of Munich, for whom Weber wrote his concerto and
Hungarian Rondo. Other German virtuosos included Carl Almenraeder, the
Bohemian Wenzel Neukirchner (1805–89) of Stuttgart, who like Almenraeder
wrote a tutor and solos as well as attempting practical improvements to his
instrument, and Carl Jacobi (1791–1852) of Coburg, who published a number
of interesting bravura pieces. Julius Weissenborn (1837–88) of Leipzig and
Ludwig Milde (1849–1913) of Prague left teaching material which is still widely
used today.

26
In France the best-known players have traditionally taught and written tutors
as well. The treatise of Pierre Cugnier (b 1740) appeared in La Borde’s Essai
of 1780; Cugnier wrote that the bassoon ‘might imitate the sound of the
recorder, were it possible for that instrument to play as low. But its tone must
never be denuded of that kind of “bite” (mordant) proper to it which lends it the
necessary timbre; otherwise it will resemble that of the serpent, which would
be disagreeable’. The tutors of Etienne Ozi (1754–1813), who was appointed
to the Conservatoire in 1795, have already been discussed (see §6 above).
Tutors were also written by his successors Berr, Willent-Bordogny, Jancourt,
Cokken and Bourdeau (see §6 above, esp. Table 1); Eugène Jancourt (1815–
1901) had a notable career as a soloist as well, and wrote and arranged an
extensive repertory of solo pieces; this corpus of 116 works forms a valuable
contribution to the repertory. His tutor includes information on tone vibrato,
which was not to be confused with embellishment. Jancourt wrote that ‘this is
not an ornament dictated by taste, but the result of deep feeling expressed on
the instrument’ and that it was obtained ‘by shaking the right hand over the
finger-holes’. Writing over 100 years later, the English bassoonist Archie
Camden expressed his opinion that ‘the wide, throbbing kind of vibrato – wow-
wow, wow-wow – is in bad taste … whether it is vocal or instrumental, and
can easily make a bassoon sound like a badly played saxophone’.

In England, early players of note included Kennedy, for whom Galliard in 1733
wrote a set of sonatas; Miller, who was to Burney ‘the best Bassoon I can
remember’; and James Holmes (d 1820), who played in the première of
Haydn’s Concertante. John Parry (ii) (1830) wrote of Holmes that his ‘tone
resembled the most perfect human voice’ and that his ‘execution was as
accurate as rapid’. In the 19th century the renowned James Mackintosh
(1767–1844) was followed by the Paris-trained Belgian Friedrich Baumann
(1801–56), who was brought over by the conductor Jullien. William Wotton
(1832–1912) and his brother Thomas (1852–1918) were succeeded as the
leading players by another notable pair, E.F. James (1861–1921), for whom
Elgar (himself an amateur bassoonist) wrote his Romance of 1909, and his
brother Wilfred (1872–1941). Writing in 1836, George Hogarth noted that
‘English performers, in general, use stronger reeds than foreigners, with a
corresponding difference in the quality of their tone’ (Musical World, iii/38,
1836, p.180). He differentiated between a ‘strong, thick reed’ which ‘produces
a great volume of tone; but the pressure of the lips which it requires prevents
the attainment of smoothness and flexibility’ and a ‘weak reed’ which ‘is easily
blown into; but the tone is feeble, and defective in roundness’. Hanslick (Welt
Ausstellung: Paris 1867) also observed that the English (along with the
French and Belgians) preferred very wide reeds, which in his opinion
promoted ‘strength of tone at the cost of beauty’. The establishment of the
German bassoon in England owes much to Archie Camden (1888–1979),
who as a soloist helped popularize the instrument and trained a whole
generation of players. Other influential teachers have included Karl Öhlberger
(Austria), Karel Pivonka (Czech Republic), Maurice Allard (France), Albert
Hennige (Germany), Mordechai Rechtman (Israel), Enzo Muccetti (Italy),
Gwydion Brooke (UK), Simon Kovar and Sol Schoenbach (USA), and Roman
Terëkhin (Russia).

27
Notable performers and teachers of our time include: Milan Turkovic (Austria),
Gilbert Audin, Pascal Gallois (France), Sergio Azzolini, Dag Jensen and Klaus
Thunemann (Germany), Masahito Tanaka (Japan), Valery Popov (Russia),
and Norman Herzberg and Stephen Maxym (USA). ‘Period’ performers
include Danny Bond, Michael McCraw, Milan Turkovic and Marc Vallon. Jazz
bassoonists include Paul Hanson and Michael Rabinowitz.

9. The double bassoon.

The modern double or contrabassoon (fig.12) is basically similar in

construction to the bassoon. The normal compass extends from B '' to c'.
Modern instruments, mostly of the ‘compact’ model, stand about 122 cm tall
with a bore length of 5·5 m. Earlier models have a tall down-turning metal bell,
for which a short bassoon-shaped wooden ‘C’ bell may be substituted when
the lowest notes are not required. There are also models descending to A'' (or
even A '') which require an even taller extension bell. The reed, somewhat
larger than that of the bassoon, can vary more than the latter in its
dimensions; while some players use inflated bassoon reed dimensions, others
alter the ratio of blade to shaft (as required by the model of instrument). The
crook fits into a metal shank incorporating a tuning-slide and water-key. The
contrabassoon is a transposing instrument, notated one octave higher than it
sounds; in a few scores (Wagner, Debussy) its part is written at pitch. As with
the bassoon, the crook is crucial as regards response, intonation and tone.
The basic problem for the player is to produce a sound of good quality which
will nevertheless ‘tell’ in a tutti passage. While the upper register is weak, it is
in the lower register that the contrabassoon sounds at its best, lending a rich
organ-like sonority to the full wind section. Brahms specified its use in his
Requiem op.45, should no organ be available (letter to Hermann Levi, spring
1869). From the turn of the century, its orchestral role became more
independent (works by Ravel, Schoenberg, Berg, Stravinsky, Britten, etc.).
Works such as Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie op.9, no.1 and Berg’s
Kammerkonzert set new standards for the player. Modern scores often
demand the player to double between bassoon and contra, a manoeuvre
often requiring considerable dexterity. During the era of acoustic recording,
the instrument proved an indispensable reinforcement for the string bass.
Rarely, a pair is called for; Schoenberg in his Gurrelieder allowed the first
player to appear in the unusual role of inner voice. Its use in a solo context is
only a recent development. As early as 1922 Ervín Schulhoff scored his
Bassnachtigal for unaccompanied double bassoon, partly for extra-musical
reasons; more recently concert works have been written by Henk Badings,
Victor Bruns, Ruth Gipps, Roger Smalley and Gunther Schuller. There are
compositions for double bassoon and piano by Victor Bruns and Vítězslav
Novák.

If the folding of 8' register pommers in the interests of commodity made

sense, this was even more the case for 16' models. Larger members of the
bassoon family have existed from the earliest period of its history; Zacconi
(1592) referred to more than one size of dulcian and Praetorius (2/1619) listed
an entire consort whose deepest members were two ‘Doppelfagotte’, the
Quartfagott (G' to f, g) and Quintfagott (F' to e, g). The two larger dulcians in

28
the Vienna collection correspond to the former. Praetorius also referred to a
projected Fagotcontra by Hans Schreiber of Berlin which would be pitched
one octave below the Choristfagott size of dulcian. The consort of dulcians in
Augsburg (see fig.5) contains one such instrument, of Italian origin, dating
from the second half of the 16th century (see §2 above). The instrument is
constructed of five sections, the glued tenons strengthened with ornamental
bands. Of the four keys, the E and D thumb-keys are mounted one over the
other. A flush pepper-pot lid similar to that of the gedackt dulcian is inserted in
the bell (see Weber, 1991). Another early period Oktavbass instrument is at
Dresden (Museum für Kunsthandwerke, Schloss Pillnitz). The other
instruments known are two that are slightly later, now in the Schlossmuseum,
Sondershausen (one is dated 1681; both are ascribed to Johann Bohlmann)
which, aside from detachable bell are of one-piece construction. Four early
octave bassoon models survive. One in Leipzig is signed A. Eichentopf, dated
1714. Another in Sondershausen is unsigned but attributed by Heyde to the
same maker and tentatively dated to ante 1711 (Heyde, 1987). These are like
a large version of one of Denner’s bassoons and descend to B ''. An
interesting example in the Museum Carolino Augusteum, Salzburg, by the
Milanese maker Anciuti, is dated 1732. In England Talbot (c1695) mentioned
a ‘Pedal or Double Basson’ descending to F', which would appear to be a
jointed version of the ‘Quintfagott’ of Praetorius. The famous London maker
Thomas Stanesby (i) is reported to have made a double bassoon in 1727; a
fine specimen in Dublin by his son (dated 1739) descends to B '', is built like a
large bassoon of the period with four keys, and stands 253 cm high. A
contemporary advertisement refers to ‘Two Grand or Double Bassoons, made
by Mr Stanesby jun. the greatness of whose sound surpasses that of any
other Bass Instrument whatsoever’. The double bassoon is not referred to in
England for several decades after 1803, and it is unlikely that any other such
English instruments were made until the late 19th century.

In Germany the Quartfagott was more common than the true Kontrafagott
pitched one octave below the normal bassoon. Bach used the former in the
cantata Der Himmel lacht! die Erde Jubilieret BWV31 (1715), and in his St
John Passion a ‘continuo pro Bassono grosso’ part is mentioned. Some works
(e.g. the cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich BWV150) which contain
passages descending to written A' were transposed so as to enable old
Chorton instruments (bassoon, organ) to play with newer low-pitch
woodwinds. Kontrafagotte were included in German and Austrian military
bands towards the end of the 18th century and were used occasionally in the
orchestra when available. Mozart wrote a part for gran fagotto descending to
C' in his Maurerische Trauermusik K477/479a (however, his Serenade for 13
wind instruments K361/370a specifies contrabasso, i.e. string bass). By 1807
the Vienna court orchestra included a double bassoon, and Haydn and
Beethoven made use of it in their larger works.

During the 19th century, experiments were made by many different makers to
develop a satisfactory double bassoon, mainly to satisfy the need for a
powerful contrabass-register instrument in the military band. One type
developed was of metal, with a closed key for each note; the earliest maker
was Stehle of Vienna, who exhibited his ‘Harmonie-Bass’ there in 1839. It

29
measured 169 cm and its 15 keys were operated singly like those of the
ophicleide giving a range of two and a quarter octaves from E '' to g. Six of
these instruments survive, of which two are in Budapest, and one each in
Leipzig, Nuremberg, Paris and Toronto. Later models were more compact:
these included Červený’s ‘Tritonicon’ of 1856 and Moritz’s ‘Claviatur-
Contrafagott’, which was fitted with a keyboard like that of a piano-accordion.
A version by Mahillon from 1868 was called ‘contrebasse à anche’, and later
on similar instruments of this name (Eng. reed contrabass; Ger.
Rohrkontrabass; It. contrabbasso ad ancia) were produced for military bands
in France and Italy. The deepest of all was Červený’s ‘Subkontrafagott’ of
1867 which descended to B ''. Another solution was to widen the bore.
Haseneier’s wooden ‘Contrabassophon’ of 1847 had a bore which flared from
6 mm to over 10 cm and tone holes of exceptionally large diameter. It had 19
keys covering all holes and its range extended down to C'. Since the tube was
in four sections, the overall length of the instrument was only 140 cm; it was
considered a success and was copied by several makers. Some models, such
as that of Berthold in 1875, were made in papier-mâché to lessen the weight;
W.H. Stone brought one such to England, where it was copied by Morton.
However, the open and not easily controlled tone of all these instruments,
while acceptable in the military band, was not suitable for the orchestra. The
contrabass sarrusophone which later replaced them in France is still found
occasionally and appears in some scores by Ravel, Debussy and Delius.

However, it was the achievement of the Heckel factory to bring about the
development of the modern instrument. For the preceding years the double
bassoons outwardly resembled a large bassoon with a long looped metal
crook; their range descended to D' or C'. In 1875–6 J.A. Heckel redesigned
the instrument, retaining its narrow bore but disposing it into three separate
wooden tubes; it was held on the left of the player’s body and its range
descended to C' (it was patented in 1877 by Heckel’s foreman Friedrich
Stritter). In 1879 an improved model was made which was held and fingered
conventionally; Wagner praised its new-found ability to play smoothly, and
subsequently employed it in Parsifal. For the first time the instrument was
comparable to the bassoon in tone and general response. Later a down-
turned metal bell was added, extending the range to B '', and after 1900 to A''.
All subsequent instruments have been based on these Heckel models,
including a version by Buffet-Crampon with French-system keywork
introduced in 1906.

10. Other sizes.

The family of dulcians as described by Praetorius included three progressively

smaller sizes which he called Diskantfagott, Altfagott and Fagott Piccolo or
Singel Corthol. A set of four small dulcians, of Spanish provenance and listed
as bajoncilli, is now in Brussels. An early incidence of scoring for such an
instrument is by Flaccomio (Liber primus concentus, Venice, 1611), marked
‘con basoncico alias fagotto piccolo’. Ever since the appearance of the jointed
bassoon, smaller-sized instruments have continued to be built by every
bassoon maker of note; their survival in surprising numbers is perhaps

30
explained by their lack of serious use. They can be divided into two
categories. The more usual type of tenor bassoon pitched in F (a 5th higher
than normal) or occasionally in G or E , was also known as the ‘tenoroon’.
This name, presumably a contraction of ‘tenor bassoon’, appears to have
been originally applied to the alto oboe, and Stone in Grove1 misleadingly
confused the two instruments. The French name for this type, basson quinte,
should not be confused with the Quintfagott of Praetorius, the large dulcian
which descended to F'. The second type, pitched one octave higher than
normal, is named ‘octave bassoon’ or ‘fagottino’. A fine early specimen, 63·6
cm tall, by J.C. Denner, is in Boston.

The only known early works for small bassoon are a mid-18th-century wind
parthia by J.G.M. Frost, which includes parts for two fagotti-octavo and two
fagotti-quarto, and a cantata by F.W. Zachow, which includes bassonetti. In
France a small bassoon was reportedly used about 1833 at the Bordeaux
opera to replace the english horn; Larousse (1865), comparing the two
instruments, considered that the tone of the basson quinte had greater force
and penetration. Later it was used occasionally in the military band; Buffet-
Crampon exhibited three new models in 1889 and Morton made some in
London.

As a solo instrument, the small bassoon had long been used by such
recitalists as Eugène Jancourt and E.F. James. In 1992 Guntram Wolf
(Kronach) built the first tenor bassoon in modern times for the English player
Richard Moore, who subsequently commissioned Victor Bruns to write for it.
Another significant use has been as an instrument for young beginners:
Almenraeder recommended starting ten-year-olds this way – the age at which
Bärmann began his studies with Ritter. The same practice was reported in the
Foundling Hospital of London and more recently in the band of a Sicilian
orphanage. Since 1992 Wolf, followed by Moosmann and Howarth, has
developed successful models for the seven- to ten-year-old age group.

The name ‘Caledonica’ was given to a modified version of the octave bassoon
invented about 1825 by the Scottish bandmaster William Meikle; it had a
wider flaring bore and was played with a small clarinet mouthpiece. An
improved model was subsequently developed by the London maker George
Wood which he called the ‘alto fagotto’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Pedagogical. B General. C Early history (to 1800). D Construction and
makers. E Repertory and performers.
a: pedagogical.
b: general.
c: early history (to 1800)
d: construction and makers.
e: repertory and performers.

a: pedagogical.
LaBordeE, 323–43

31
Compleat Instructions for the Bassoon or Fagotto (London, c1770)
E. Ozi: Méthode nouvelle et raisonnée pour le basson (Paris, 1787/R)
E. Ozi: Nouvelle méthode de basson adoptée par le Conservatoire (Paris, 1803/R)
J. Fröhlich: Vollständige theoretisch-praktische Musikschule für alle beym
Orchester gebräuchliche wichtigere Instrumente (Bonn, 1810–11)
W. Neukirchner: Theoretisch practische Anleitung zum Fagottspiel (Leipzig,
1840)
C. Almenraeder: Fagottschule/Méthode complète de basson (Mainz, 1843)
E. Jancourt: Méthode théorique et pratique de basson (Paris, 1847/R)
J. Weissenborn: Praktische Fagott-Schule/Practical Bassoon-School (Leipzig,
1887, rev. 3/1929/R by C. Schaefer)
J. Satzenhofer: Neue praktische Fagott-Schule (Leipzig, 1900)
C. Stadio: Grand metodo per fagotto (Naples, 1908)
F. Oubradous: Enseignement complet du basson, i–iv (Paris, 1938–44)
M. Allard: Méthode de basson (Paris, 1975)
W. Seltmann and G.Angerhöfer: Das Fagott/The Bassoon, i–vi (Leipzig, 1976–
84)
C.A. Biggers: The Contra-Bassoon: a Guide to Performance (Bryn Mawr, PA,
1977)
S. Penazzi: Il fagotto: altre techniche/The Bassoon: other Techniques (Milan,
1982)
S.J. Jooste: The Technique of Bassoon Playing (Potchefstroom, 1984)
A. Ouzounoff: Actuellement le basson: traité pratique des nouvelles techniques
au basson (Paris, 1986)
P. Lescat and J. Saint-Arroman, eds.: Méthodes et traités: France 1600–1800,
iv: Basson (Courlay, 1999)

b: general.
MGG1 (W. Kolneder)
MGG2 (G. Angerhöfer and W. Krüger)
C. Baermann: ‘Ueber die Natur und Eigenthümlichkeit des Fagotts’, AMZ, xxii
(1820), 601–7
M. Kelly: Reminiscences (London, 1826, 2/1826/R with introduction by A.H. King);
ed. R. Fiske (London, 1975)
W. Heckel: Der Fagott (Biebrich, 1899, 2/1931)
L. Letellier and E. Flamant: ‘Le basson’, EMDC, II/iii (1927), 1556–96
A. Baines: Woodwind Instruments and their History (London, 1957, 3/1967/R)
L.G. Langwill: The Bassoon and Contrabassoon (London, 1965)
G.S. Fraenkel, ed.: Decorative Music Title Pages (New York, 1968)
C.J. Nederveen: Acoustical Aspects of Woodwind Instruments (Amsterdam, 1969,
2/1998)
J. Eppelsheim: ‘Das “Subkontrafagott”’, Fachtagung zur Erforschung der
Blasmusik I: Graz 1974, 233–72
W. Voigt: Untersuchungen zur Formantbildung in Klängen von Fagott und
Dulzianen (Regensburg, 1975) [with Eng. summary]
A.H. Benade: Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics (New York, 1976, 2/1990)
J. Kergomard and J. Heinrich: ‘Le basson’, Bulletin du Groupe d’acoustique
musicale, nos.82–3 (1976), 116
W. Jansen: The Bassoon: its History, Construction, Makers, Players and Music
(Buren, 1978–81)

32
J. Eppelsheim: ‘More Facts about the “Subkontrafagott”’, GSJ, xxxii (1979), 104–
14
G. Joppig: Oboe und Fagott: ihre Geschichte, ihre Nebeninstrumente und ihre
Musik (Berne and Stuttgart, 1981; Eng. trans., 1988)
W.H. Sallagar and M. Nagy, eds: Fagott Forever: eine Festgabe für Karl
Öhlberger (Wilhering, 1992)
W. Waterhouse: ‘Die historische Entwicklung des Fagottklangs’, Festschrift 10
Jahre Berliner Fagottquartett, ed. U. Liedtke and H. Bartholomäus
(Berlin,1996), 29–44

c: early history (to 1800)

BertolottiM
GerberL
MersenneHU
PraetoriusSM, ii
PraetoriusTI
T. Albonesi: Introductio in Chaldaicam linguam (Pavia, 1539)
L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592/R)
H. de Garsault: Notionaire (Paris, 1761)
E. Eslner: Untersuchung der instrumentalen Besetzungspraxis der weltlichen
Musik im 16. Jahrhundert (diss., U. of Basle, 1935)
F.W. Galpin: ‘The Romance of the Phagotum’, PMA, lxvii (1940–41), 57–72
A. Baines: ‘James Talbot's Manuscript, I: Wind Instruments’, GSJ, i (1948), 9–26
F. Lesure: ‘Le traité des instruments de musique de Pierre Trichet: les instruments
à vent’, AnnM, iii (1955), 283–387; pubd separately (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1957;
Eng. trans., 1973)
A. Reimann: Studien zur Geschichte des Fagotts (diss., U. of Freiburg, 1956)
E. Halfpenny: ‘The Evolution of the Bassoon in England, 1750–1800’, GSJ, x
(1957), 30–39
J. Eppelsheim: Das Orchester in den Werken Jean-Baptiste Lullys (Tutzing,
1961)
M. Staehelin: ‘Der sogenannte Musettenbass: Forschungen zur schweizerischen
Instrumenten- und Musikgeschichte des späten 18. und frühen 19.
Jahrhunderts’, Jb des Bernischen historischen Museums in Bern, xlix–l
(Bern,1969–70), 93–121
B. Klitz: ‘A Composition for dolzaina’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 113–18
K. Wagner: Die Fagott-Instrumente des 17. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Basle,
1976)
B. Kenyon de Pascual: ‘A Brief Survey of the Late Spanish Bajón’, GSJ, xxxvii
(1984), 72–9
R. Semmens: ‘The Bassoons in Marin Mersenne's Harmonie universelle (1636)’,
JAMIS, (1984), 22–31
L. Lockwood: ‘Adrian Willaert and Cardinal Ippolito I d'Este’, EMH, v (1985), 85–
112
A. Roberts: Studien zur Bauweise und zur Spieltechnik des Dulzian (diss., U. of
Köln, 1986)
T. Giannini: ‘A Letter from Louis Rousselet, 18th Century French Oboist at the
Royal Opera in England’, AMIS Newsletter, xvi/2 (1987), 10–11
J.-M. Heinrich: Contribution à l'étude de l'anche du basson (diss., U. of
Paris,1987)

33
H. Heyde: ‘Contrabassoons in the 17th and early 18th Century’, GSJ, xl (1987),
24–36
W. Köhler: Die Blasinstrumente aus der ‘Harmonie universelle’ des Marin
Mersenne (Celle, 1987)
B. Haynes: ‘Lully and the Rise of the Oboe as Seen in Works of Art’, EMc, xvi
(1988), 324–38
D. Lasocki: ‘The French Hautboy in England, 1673–1730’, EMc, xvi (1988), 339–
57
W. Waterhouse: ‘A Newly Discovered 17th-Century Bassoon by Haka’, EMc, xvi
(1988), 407–10
B. Kenyon de Pascual: ‘A Late Sixteenth-Century Portrayal of the Jointed
Dulcian’, GSJ, xliii (1990), 150–53
P. White: ‘Early Bassoon Fingering Charts’, GSJ, xliii (1990), 68–111
J. Kopp: ‘Notes on the Bassoon in Seventeenth-Century France’, JAMIS, xvii
(1991), 85–115
R. Weber: ‘Kontrabass-Dulciane, die Vorläufer des Kontrafagottes’, Oboe,
Klarinette, Fagott, vi (1991), 97–105
P. White: ‘Bajón Reeds’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.67 (1992), 10–30
T. Giannini: ‘Jacques Hotteterre le Romain and his Father, Martin’, EMc, xxi
(1993), 377–95
P. White: The Early Bassoon Reed in Relation to the Development of the
Bassoon from 1636 (diss., U. of Oxford, 1993)
B. Kenyon de Pascual: ‘The Dulcians (Bajón and Bajoncillo) in Spain: an updated
Review’, A Time of Questioning: Utrecht 1994, 25–52
P. White: ‘Early Reed Design’, A Time of Questioning: Utrecht 1994, 189–203
P. White: ‘The Bass Hautboy in the Seventeenth Century’, A Time of Questioning:
Utrecht 1994, 167–82
J.P. Campbell: ‘Musical Instruments in the Instrumentälischer Bettlermantl: a
Seventeenth-Century Musical Compendium’, GSJ, xlviii (1995), 156–67
B. Haynes: ‘New Light on Some French Relatives of the Hautboy in the 17th and
Early 18th Centuries’, Sine musica nulla vita: Festschrift Hermann Moeck, ed.
N. Delius (Celle, 1997), 257–70
J.B. Kopp: ‘The Emergence of the Late-Baroque Bassoon’, Double Reed, xxii/4
(1999), 73–87

d: construction and makers.

Waterhouse-LangwillI
C. Almenraeder: Abhandlung über die Verbesserung des Fagotts (Mainz, 1823)
G. Weber: ‘Wesentliche Verbesserungen des Fagottes’, Caecilia [Mainz], ii (1825),
123–40 [incl. illustration]
G. Weber: ‘C. Almenräders weitere Fagott-Verbesserung’, Caecilia [Mainz], ix
(1828), 128
C. Almenraeder: ‘Bemerkungen über Blasinstrumente mit Tonlöchern,
insbesondere die Doppellöcher am Fagott’, Caecilia [Mainz], xix (1837), 77–
87
G. Brindley: ‘The Logical Bassoon’, GSJ, xxi (1968), 152–61
M. Popkin and L.Glickman: Bassoon Reed Making (Evanston, IL,1969, 2/1987)
E. Nickel: Der Holzblasinstrumentenbau in der Freien Reichsstadt Nürnberg
(Munich,1971)
H. Heyde: ‘Carl Almenräders Verdienst um das Fagott’, BMw, xiv (1972), 225–30

34
J.L. Burton: Bassoon Bore Dimensions (diss., U. of Rochester, 1975)
K. Ventzke: ‘Boehm-System-Fagotte im 19. Jahrhundert’, Tibia, i/1 (1976), 13–18
W. Waterhouse: The Proud Bassoon, Edinburgh University Collection of Historic
Instruments, 17 Aug – 31 Aug 1983 (Edinburgh, 1983) [exhibition catalogue]
G. Joppig: ‘Zur Entwicklung des deutschen Fagotts’, Studia organologica:
Festschrift John Henry van der Meer, ed. F. Hellwig (Tutzing, 1987), 253–76
D. Lasocki and R.Prior: The Bassanos: Venetian Musicians and Instrument
Makers in England, 1531–1665 (Aldershot, 1995)
M. Lyndon-Jones: ‘Who was HIE.S/HIER.S/HIERO.S?’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.83
(1996), 10–18
E. Brown: ‘Another Look at the Bassoon’, Double Reed News, no.42 (1998), 8–10

e: repertory and performers.

E. Hess: ‘Ist das Fagottkonzert KV. Anhang 230a von Mozart?’, MJb 1957, 223–
32
W. Montgomery: The Life and Works of François Devienne, 1759–1803 (diss.,
Catholic U. of America, 1975)
H.E. Griswold: Etienne Ozi (1754–1813): Bassoonist, Teacher, and Composer
(diss., Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins U., 1979)
W.J. Hodges: A Biographical Dictionary of Bassoonists born berfore 1825 (diss.,
U. Iowa,1980)
B. Klitz: ‘The Bassoon in Chamber Music of the Seventeenth Century’, JAMIS, ix
(1983), 5–20
D.J. Rhodes: ‘Franz Anton Pfeiffer and the Bassoon’, GSJ, xxxvi (1983), 97–103
B. Bulling: Fagott Bibliographie (Wilhelmshaven, 1989)
J.P. Beebe: Music for Unaccompanied Solo Bassoon (Jefferson, NC, 1990)
H. Bartholomäus: Das Fagottensemble: kleines Handbuch zur Musikpraxis
(Berlin, 1992)
B. Koenigsbeck: Basson Bibliography/Bibliographie du basson/Fagott
Bibliographie (Monteux,1994)
C. Fertonani: La musica strumentale di Antonio Vivaldi (Firenze, 1998)

35