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The Oboe. By Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes. pp. xiv + 418. Yale Musical Instrument Series. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004, £19.95. ISBN 0-600-10053-1.)

Identifieur interne : 001568 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 001567; suivant : 001569

The Oboe. By Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes. pp. xiv + 418. Yale Musical Instrument Series. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004, £19.95. ISBN 0-600-10053-1.)

Auteurs : Matthew Peaceman

Source :

Music and Letters [ 0027-4224 ] ; 2006-05.

RBID : ISTEX:DFF6C25FD97672134B1F0539CD2906A236BB0AD0

English descriptors

Teeft :
- Bruce haynes, Burgess, Conservatoire, Conservatoire oboe, Early music movement, Eloquent oboe, English horn, French oboe, Geoffrey burgess, Hautboy, Haynes, Historical oboes, Instrument makers, Interesting discussion, More sharps, Music history, Nineteenth century, Oboe, Several decades, Small number, Technical aspects, Technical demands, Wiener oboe.

Url:

https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/HXZ-0RNGBBFM-7/fulltext.pdf

DOI: 10.1093/ml/gci191

Links to Exploration step

ISTEX:DFF6C25FD97672134B1F0539CD2906A236BB0AD0

Le document en format XML

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        <article-title><italic>The Oboe</italic>
. By Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes. pp. xiv + 418. Yale Musical Instrument Series. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004, £19.95. ISBN 0-600-10053-1.)</article-title>

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  <body>

    <p>After several decades of waiting, we finally have a new history of the oboe. For most, this may seem of little importance, but for the oboist, the composer, and the interested layperson, this addition to the literature will be most welcome. Philip Bate’s <italic>The Oboe: An Outline of its History, Development, and Construction</italic>
 (1956) last appeared in a third edition in 1975 and has since gone out of print. Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes, two of the most notable scholar–performers in the field of historical oboes, have risen to the challenge and produced a monumental and highly laudable new history.</p>

    <p>The book follows the instrument’s development from its earliest prehistory up to the present. Burgess and Haynes, taking advantage of the large amount of research done during the past thirty years, state their intention to take Bate’s respected work much further than Bate himself was able to do. They not only consider the technical aspects of the instrument in its various stages of development in Western culture, but also examine many of its predecessors within their respective musical, stylistic, and social contexts. They include detailed tables and explanations of terms, many of which they felt the need to coin, particularly with regard to various aspects of historical oboes. They have created guidelines for identifying the instruments in classes of pitch, key, key-work, and musical era. There are many illustrations portraying a wide range of instruments and their performers through the ages, as well as excerpts from treatises and plentiful music examples. The writing style is easily accessible, and it is usually clear which of the two authors is ‘speaking’ at any given moment.</p>

    <p>The preface is written as a quasi-staged chat between the authors, which, if not entirely natural-sounding, immediately establishes a personal tone for the book. They discuss when and where they first met, their individual involvement in the study of oboes, and where their paths crossed. They speak of trends that have come and gone during the past several decades in the world of the oboe and people who have played important roles during these years. The decision to co-author <italic>The Oboe</italic>
 was wise, for the amount of material is overwhelming and the work is surely better allotted to more than one pair of hands. Since Bruce Haynes has already written the definitive history of the Baroque oboe or hautboy (<italic>The Eloquent Oboe: A History of the Hautboy 1640–1760</italic>
 (Oxford, 2001); reviewed in <italic>Music & Letters</italic>
, 84 (2003), 280–3)), it is only natural that he should play a major part in the present endeavour and be responsible for this portion of the book. Geoffrey Burgess’s own work on the hautboy, as well as his interest in the further development of the instrument and its music, has enabled happy cooperation between the two authors.</p>

    <p>The authors use the introduction to define the terms with which they intend to discuss the book’s content. They designate the name ‘hautboy’, one of several spellings of the term for the oboe in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, as referring to those oboes of the Baroque and Classical periods with minimal key-work and requiring cross- and half-hole fingerings. Giving the instrument of that era a name in its own right within the generic framework of ‘oboe’ highlights the fact that, just as the genre ‘shawm’ also fits into this framework, the hautboy represents a specific type of oboe, separating it from earlier and later types.</p>

    <p>The main body of the book falls into nine chapters that delineate the development of double-reed instruments. In chapter 1, ‘The Prehistory of the Oboe’, Burgess explores the facts, myths, and falsifications about the origins of the Western oboe. The next two chapters, by Haynes, trace what is perhaps the most significant development of high double-reed instruments and their use in Europe. Haynes examines the relatively sudden disappearance of the shawm as a consort instrument and the subsequent arrival of the French hautbois on the musical scene in the mid-seventeenth century at the court of Louis XIV. This development, attributed to Lully, is corroborated by eyewitness accounts (p. 28). The aesthetic demands of the new music being created at the time necessitated instruments capable of nuanced expression with the ‘spoken’ quality called for in the style. The new hautboy provided these and hence displaced the shawm. It is apparently not a coincidence that the first examples of the use of the oboe in a solo context were in the role of obbligato accompaniment together with voice and continuo. Furthermore, the merger of string and wind instruments in the orchestra at this time also required a process of adaptation to which the hautboy was better suited in comparison with its predecessor. The hautboy proved to be a versatile addition and useful in all of the newer musical genres, which led to its quick acceptance. Here Haynes examines the musical, social, and political aspects that accommodated its dissemination throughout Europe. Discussions on technical aspects of hautboy playing, relevant questions of intonation, tonguing, and fingerings, the players, composers, and a history subdivided by decade all combine to give a well-rounded picture of the hautboy from its earliest context to the height of its maturity. A separate discussion of J. S. Bach’s use of his favourite wind instrument is included. Especially for the reader who has not read <italic>The Eloquent Oboe</italic>
, this book provides an excellent point of entry into the world of the hautboy and its associated performance practices.</p>

    <p>In chapter 4, the authors together discuss the transition from the two-keyed to the mechanically more complex multi-keyed oboes, and the rationale behind it. They offer much information involving the aesthetic evolvement of tuning systems in composition as an argument for the addition of keys. The claim that the addition of key-work on the oboe was a move away from flexibility in intonation strikes me as less convincing: it is equally possible to play mean-tone tunings on a modern Conservatoire oboe as on the hautboy if a performer wishes to and has attained the necessary aural and technical sensitivity. More convincing are the arguments involving the increasing technical demands in composition as we move into the nineteenth century. The further one strayed from C major, the more necessary it was to be capable of playing smoothly and easily in keys with more sharps and flats. As music became more chromatic, of course a shift in tuning and technique also had to occur. Mean-tone tuning had to give way to the more pragmatic equal temperament as a point of departure. This is true at least in terms of keyboard instruments if not necessarily in terms of winds and strings. Key-work on the oboe was added to enable greater technical facility in works with tonal centres using more sharps and flats.</p>

    <p>The authors ably document this development, presenting an overview not only of the instruments with added keys and their proponents but also of the arguments of those performers, teachers, and instrument makers who were opposed to the development. This gives the reader some insight into the way that aesthetic as well as technical shifts occurred. A case is made for the idea that these shifts also involved a reduction in the necessity of a flexible embouchure that the authors allege to be more typical of oboe playing today. Again, this is not entirely convincing. If in fact a move towards inflexibility in the manner of approach to oboe playing during this period is detectable, then I suggest that it could have had more to do with factors other than those involving reed, bore, and mechanical developments. The fall of the aristocracy, the associated greater availability of education, including in art music, and the rise of the industrial Zeitgeist enthusiastic about the perceived advantages of standardization, to name but a few, would all have played a role. The rise of the conservatory in France also reflected these developments. Standards in technique and style were now being defined by a limited number of individual professors whose strengths, weaknesses, and aesthetic values became a part of those standards. In their turn, a larger number of pupils carried their conservatory-acquired skills all over Europe. Perhaps this, more than any other factor, would lead to any perceived loss of flexibility.</p>

    <p>There follows an interesting discussion on the stylistic evolution that accompanied technical and compositional developments. The authors document the move away from the eighteenth-century aesthetic of the ‘spoken’ phrase and towards longer phrases that took place over several decades. The fact that some writers, from Burney onwards, decried the ‘old-fashioned’ practice of using smaller gestures in phrasing would appear to indicate that this practice did not die out. The authors also include a fascinating discussion on the continued use of the traditional hautboy in the context of European folk music, together with insights about the existence in parallel of ‘art’ and ‘traditional’ music.</p>

    <p>In chapter 5, by Burgess, the book begins to cover a period that for several reasons has been somewhat neglected hitherto. Because of a lack of adequate research there has long existed an assumption ‘that there was virtually no nineteenth-century music written for oboe outside the orchestra’ (p. 125). Burgess fills the lacunae in the instrument’s history by charting the developments in instrument-making that ultimately led to the dominant Conservatoire oboe. He places these developments in context through discussion of relationships between various important social and cultural aspects such as industrialism and nationalism as well as specifically oboe-related aspects such as those of reeds, musical domain (solo, chamber, and orchestral roles), virtuosity, pedagogy, and personalities.</p>

    <p>The first part of the next chapter is concerned with the key systems and bores that eventually began to dominate in the high double-reed realm. Earlier studies have tended to consider only the French Conservatoire oboe, Triébert’s ‘Système 6’ which was adopted by the Paris Conservatoire as its official oboe in 1880, and later effectively vanquished all but a few other systems. Burgess gives a more nuanced view of the development. He shows that in reality the Conservatoire system did not really begin to dominate, even in France, until well into the twentieth century. He shows how the instruments being made in Germany and Bohemia at the end of the nineteenth century continued to require the use of some long (harmonic) and cross-fingerings, incorporating only a few of the French mechanical innovations. The German oboe was still widely used all over Europe and as far as Scandinavia and Russia. Collaboration between Christian Schiemann (1824–1913) and the Heckel Company at Biebrich culminated in new German oboe designs. A shift of interest to the French Conservatoire system in Germany can be attributed to some extent to Fritz Flemming (1873–1947), the first to play a French oboe in a German orchestra. Burgess astutely observes the irony that Richard Strauss, ‘this great orchestrator in the post-Wagnerian German tradition and director of the Vienna Staatsoper[,] should have preferred the French oboe to German and Viennese models’ (p. 175). Strauss’s opinion carried considerable weight and probably played a role in the eventual decline and fall of the German oboe tradition in his country.</p>

    <p>There follows an extensive discussion of the exceptional Viennese or Wiener oboe. Burgess shows that, contrary to general belief, this is not an older-style instrument than its French Conservatoire counterpart. Rather, it is a hybrid, combining Austrian and German elements that developed in parallel to other instruments of the time. The primary concerns in the creation of this instrument, apart from pitch, and those elsewhere, were the increased technical demands being made upon oboists by composers such as Brahms, whose activity in Vienna coincided with the first use of the Wiener oboe. A discussion of the principal players and instrument makers (old and new), and the Viennese desire to maintain its heritage and idiosyncratic sound and style, round off this part of the chapter. What is exceptional about the Wiener oboe is that it has not succumbed to the international hegemony of the Conservatoire oboe. Nevertheless, it is a modern instrument. As Burgess observes, this in no way implies that style and timbre in Vienna has ceased to evolve since the end of the nineteenth century. He next examines parallel developments in Italy and England, and looks at the extended oboe family, discussing the cor anglais (English horn), heckelphone and bass oboe, higher oboes and musettes, and the rebirth of the oboe d’amore.</p>

    <p>According to Burgess, the end of the nineteenth century was marked by a decline in the number of oboe virtuosi. The shortage of players resulted in a loss of status and a corresponding lack of compositions specifically for the instrument. The oboe’s domain remained mostly orchestral. Burgess then turns to the oboists involved in the reinstatement of the instrument to a more prominent position in the musical world. He begins with Georges Gillet (1854–1920), the French school, and the Conservatoire-system oboe. Gillet, though little known outside France, had considerable influence on following generations. He is followed by Leon Goossens (1897–1988) in England, and the French-born Marcel Tabuteau (1887–1966) in the USA. Burgess then returns to the concept of the Conservatoire oboe as a unifying device that nevertheless could not obliterate the diversity of national styles and concepts of sound. Finally he considers the public perception of the instrument and discusses new and important repertory that helped to restore the oboe to its place as a solo instrument. This chapter covers too many disparate topics and would have worked better if divided into several smaller chapters. But it is still engagingly written.</p>

    <p>Chapter 7 follows with a wonderful discussion of the role of the oboe and English horn in expressing the literary and musical aesthetics of Romantic and later music. This is a fascinating subject that returns the reader to the realm of the art involved in composing for and playing double reed instruments. Though the technical nature of the oboe always played a substantial part in influencing what was written for it, its sound was always what inspired composers to use it in ways that became idiomatic. Burgess puts it this way: ‘Although the production and consumption of art was situated in the Romantic age’s new urban spaces, its artistic realm was broader, encompassing the virgin pastures within Europe, the idealized spaces of the antique past, and the exotic climes brought to Europe’s awareness through colonization’ (p. 214). He states further: ‘The oboe was the quintessential pastoral instrument; it contributed to the Romantics’ image of antiquity by arousing nostalgia for an idealized past; and it was conventionally associated with the exotic’ (pp. 214–15). Included in his discussion are the subjects of timbre, the use of the oboe and English horn to depict melancholia and the oriental, and the expression of emotion, with a correlative look at gender. Burgess examines the orchestral use of the instrument often to express abstractly what were considered to be feminine sentiments. He then jumps, somewhat suddenly, to the concrete discussion of the emancipation of women over the past seventy-five years, more and more often taking the oboe out of the hands of the men to whom this expression had been entrusted.</p>

    <p>In chapters 8 and 9 the authors examine oboe playing since the Second World War. They divide this period into two streams—a traditional one, and one that led from the avant-garde to postmodernism. In the former, Burgess first examines the apparent discrepancy between the instrument, the Conservatoire oboe, designed principally for the music and prevalent musical aesthetics at the end of the nineteenth century, and the new repertory being created for it. There have been very few if any fundamental changes in its construction over the past hundred years, and yet the demands being made by new musical styles are seemingly bent on breaking almost completely with this musical tradition. Only a comparatively small number of companies create and refine a small number of instrument types, and all are apparently moving in a single, global direction in terms of tonal aesthetics. Leaving ‘extended techniques’ for the following chapter, Burgess offers insights about breathing, embouchure, the range of the oboe, reeds, and articulation. He gives a necessary, longer, and more detailed examination of the often controversial subject of vibrato that should help clear up several prevalent misconceptions.</p>

    <p>In chapter 9 the two authors make a very interesting and convincing case for two ‘exploratory channels’ that describe movements to ‘escape from the musical establishment’ (p. 267). These are the avant-garde and the revival of period instruments. ‘Ideologically, the avant-garde sought to extricate “Classical” music from the artistic values of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie and take it in new directions. Similarly, from its outset the Early Music movement was invested in providing an alternative music culture that both eschewed the formality of Classical concerts and challenged the canonic status of the mainstream repertoire’ (loc. cit.). Apart from the paradoxical institutionalization of both streams, the authors discuss the various ways that these movements have affected oboe playing today. They provide a relatively detailed overview of extended techniques, including extended range, microtonality and pitch slides, alternative fingerings, various forms of vibrato, articulations, reed requirements, multiphonics, use of several instruments, electronics, and aleatory effects. A discussion of Heinz Holliger (1939– ), arguably the most important oboist of our times, and his contribution as both composer and oboist to the avant-garde includes a short discussion of Luciano Berio and his innovative and defining composition <italic>Sequenza VII</italic>
, written for and in collaboration with Holliger.</p>

    <p>Following this is a short section in which Haynes considers many of the aspects of hautboy playing that have found a place in or share similar roles in avant-garde music. More important, though, are his somewhat philosophical musings about where the Early Music movement has been, where it is now, and where it is going. A short foray into the area of the ‘spoken’ phrasing aspects to be found in the avant-garde as well as a look at the relatively limited use of the oboe in jazz, pop, and fusion, complete this interesting discussion. Here the authors leave the reader with many questions about the direction(s) that music in general and the oboe in particular are taking and are likely to take in the future. They look at the attempts to define various style names, which were often quickly discarded as inadequate.</p>

    <p>The content of this book is sometimes extremely complex and may offer more than most readers can digest—exacerbated by the use of endnotes (thirty-seven pages of them) rather than footnotes; and there are a handful of editorial oversights such as a mislabelled illustration and some typographical errors. Three short appendices offer historical reed dimensions, a collation of historical fingering charts, and key-work of nineteenth-century oboes. The truly impressive twenty-six-page bibliography is almost worth the price of the book; and the discography covers pretty much the history of the recording of the oboe and can also serve as a statistical guide to the popularity and significance of specific works.</p>

    <p>Major advantages accrue when a music history is written by musicologists who are also masters of the performance and performing styles of their subject as well as being experienced in various more peripheral aspects such as instrument making. <italic>The Oboe</italic>
 is a fine example of this coming together of history, theory, and practice. Not only should it belong in every university, conservatory, and public library but also in every oboist’s personal library.</p>

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The Oboe. By Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes. pp. xiv + 418. Yale Musical Instrument Series. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004, £19.95. ISBN 0-600-10053-1.)

The Oboe. By Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes. pp. xiv + 418. Yale Musical Instrument Series. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004, £19.95. ISBN 0-600-10053-1.)

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