Instruments of the Orchestra — O: Oboe

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Instruments of the Orchestra — O: Oboe Ninth in the season: the oboe — the treble voice of the double reeds, the instrument that gives the orchestra its tuning note. Grove's Dictionary defines it in a paragraph and follows it from the museum specimens of Egypt to Barret's elaborate modern mechanism; Galpin musters the English shawms and waits in carving, manuscript, and town record; Engel traces the reed pipes of Egypt, Greece, and Rome; and Athenaeus preserves what the Greeks believed about their pipes, told here as the tradition it is. In this episode: what the instrument is, the shawm family it evolved from, and the plain statement that no inventor is recorded for it. Bruno narrates. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters: 00:00 Opening theme 00:35 Chapter 1 — Introduction: The Alphabet at O 04:47 Chapter 2 — The Oboe Itself 12:42 Chapter 3 — The Ancient Pipes: Egypt, Greece, and Rome 18:34 Chapter 4 — The Shawm in England 25:02 Chapter 5 — The Hautboy: A New Name for a Treble Shawm 29:44 Chapter 6 — The Chair: The Oboe in the Orchestra, and the Next Letter Instruments of the Orchestra walks the alphabet of the modern orchestra one letter at a time, each episode grounded in period documentary sources. This telling rests on Grove's Dictionary (article "Oboe", unsigned), F. W. Galpin's Old English Instruments of Music (1910), Carl Engel's Musical Instruments (1875), and Athenaeus in C. D. Yonge's translation (1854), in fresh paraphrase. Where the sources hedge — Grove's "evidence to the effect" for Hoffmann's keys of 1727, Galpin's "perhaps" for the improved treble shawm — the telling hedges with them. No inventor is documented for the oboe in these sources, and none is invented here: it is an evolved instrument of the shawm family. No completeness is claimed for this episode or for the season. Next in the season: P — the Pianoforte. Music: opening and closing themes from "Falling Leaves at the Ice Cliffs" (house music pool), gate-passed for this episode. A continuous instrumental bed from "Gangster Piano Symphony" (house music pool) plays quietly beneath the narration. Music drawn from the channel's existing house pool of owner-deposited instrumentals. Source: Grove's Dictionary, 1st ed. (1879–1890), article "Oboe" (byline verified at build) — Wikisource. F. W. Galpin, Old English Instruments of Music (1910) — Internet Archive oldenglishinstru00galp. Carl Engel, Musical Instruments (1875) — Project Gutenberg #54537. Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, translated by C. D. Yonge (1854) — Project Gutenberg #36921, #65023. KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.