Tonality and the baroque oboe

Abstract

On the fundamental importance of tonality to the baroque oboe, a case in point is described by Nikolaus Harnoncourt in his commentary on recording the complete Bach cantatas with original instruments.' It has long been known that, because in certain churches for which he composed the organ was pitched a tone or minor third higher than the woodwinds, Bach notated the parts for a few of his cantatas in two different keys: the organ and strings in one, the woodwinds (in order to compensate for their lower pitch) a tone or tone-and-a-half higher.2 When the cantatas came to be published by the Bach Gesellschaft at the end of the 19th century, the editors solved this discrepancy (quite logically from their point of view) by transposing the wind parts down to the key of the majority of the parts. This has unintentionally caused many headaches to players using modern instruments, and made the parts into true feats of virtuosity for players of the baroque oboe. Harnoncourt's more practical solution was to play the oboe parts in their original keys, and transpose the other parts, as transposition causes relatively fewer problems for string and keyboard instruments. With non-keyed woodwinds (as the baroque instruments essentially are), the tonality in which one plays is of prime importance, as it has a fundamental influence on both the technical fluency and tone quality of the performance. Not having a separate finger-hole for each semitone (as on modern woodwinds, which accounts for their complex mechanisms), these must be obtained by using 'crossfingerings', i.e. lowering an open-fingered note by closing holes further down the bore. These cross(or forked-) fingered notes always have a matted, veiled tone quality, noticeably different from the open-fingered ones. Apparently, this tonal chiaroscuro was prized in the 18th century; it can be compared to the different qualities the human voice produces when singing different vowels. It follows, of course, that woodwind performance in a tonality with many sharps or flats contains more of these darker sounds. In addition to the normal fingerings, the player also uses special fingerings for trills and other ornaments which affect the tone-colour he produces. The tessitura of the piece-its basic range-also influences the tone quality; the high register is somewhat sharper in quality than the lower, and involves generally more tension in breathing and embouchure as this is the only way to obtain overblown notes without an octave key. It therefore comes as no surprise to learn that composers such as Mozart had very definite concepts of the physical qualities of various tonalities, as does every player of early woodwinds. Now when we consider solo music for instruments in the 18th century, much of the best of it was written for the extremely popular flauto traverso, or the versatile jack-of-alltrades-the violin. While oboists also did considerable solo playing, most of it was in the context of the orchestra, where the instrument was originally intended to support the violins, a role which it never outgrew. Then, as now, there were probably fewer amateur oboists, and thus a smaller music-buying public for oboe solos. Much oboe music was proba ly borrowed and adapted from other instruments. Consequently it is not surprising that the vast majority of solo music which does specify the oboe does so as an alternative to e flute, violin, or the then-fashionable musette. Thus, of the existing original solo music for the oboe in the baroque and classical periods (outside Germany, where composers were usually quite specific about instrumentation), only a small fraction was written principally with the oboe in mind.3