Chapter 2

From consort oboe to 'eloquent' oboe, 1610-1680

A brief, and sufficiently accurate, description of the intellectual life of the

European races during the succeeding two centuries and a quarter up to our own
times is that they have been living upon the accumulated capital of ideas provided
for them by the genius of the seventeenth century.'

The modern notion of what the oboe is, and what it is expected to do, was born in
the seventeenth century. In fact, the seventeenth century can be seen as the most
experimental period in the history of the instrument. In the first decades of that
century, the standard treble double-reed instrument was still the shawm, and by its
last decades, it had been replaced by the definitive form of the hautboy. The changes
the shawm underwent in the process of being transformed into the hautboy were
quite basic, as the instrument was swept along on the tide of a profound shift in the
conception of what music was about. While the instrument's physical form changed,
an even more fundamental mutation took place in the idea of the instrument's
character and role. The hautboy's new function was that of a soloist and orchestral
collaborator, and this job description has remained valid up to the present day.
We think of the shawm as different from the oboe because it has a separare name,
but nothing in its physical design sets it apart from later forms of oboe. It easily meets
our definition of the oboe as the normal soprano double-reed instrument of its time,
used in sophisticated art music.' The terminology in France, where the new hautboy
was developed, made no distinction between the shawm and the hautboy; both were
called 'Hautbois'. Naturally there were differences of detail, just as there were
between subsequent forms of the oboe. And yet in another sense, the division is valid;
not for physical reasons, but for the differences in the way the two instruments were
used. The shawm was boisterous, festive, and impressive, an 'Haut-bois' or 'loud-
woodwind ', and it was heard in consorts of different sizes. The kind of music it
played emphasized equality between the voices within the group, and most of the
shawm's music was not conceived specifically for it (the same piece might be played
alternatively by consorts of different types of instruments, like recorders, cornetts or
strings). By contrast, the hautboy was created to play solos, and its own particular
character was often a part of the 'message' of the piece it was playing. The hautboy's
first solo medium, the obbligato in solo vocal arias, was quite instrument-specific. This
is why the hautboy that appeared in the seventeenth century is the direct ancestor of
the various forms of oboe that have been in vogue up until the present. Despite
28 The Oboe

changes of physical form, the oboe's musical role has remained more or less constant
since then.
One of the few contemporary descriptions of the development of the new models
of winds comes from the hand of Michel de La Barre, an important French court
composer and woodwind player from the generation that immediately followed that
event; La Barre knew personally many of the musicians who had developed and 'test-
flown' the new models. He wrote:

[Lully's] promotion meant the downfall of ali the old instruments [the musette, the
haubois, the bagpipe, the cornett, the cromorne, and the sackbut'J, except the
haubois, thanks to the Filidors and Hautteterres, who spoiled so much wood and
[?played so much music] that they finally succeeded in rendering it usable in
ensembles. From that time on, musettes were left to shepherds, and violins,
recorders, theorbos, and viols took their place, for the traversa did not arrive until
later. 4

It was La Barre's opinion that the breakthrough to 'perfection' in music had been
achieved by 'Le Camus, Boesset, D'Ambruys, and Lambert' [, who] were the first to
write airs that expressed their texts, and above ali the famous Lully'. . . . By
'expressing texts', La Barre is probably referring to the new aesthetic of 'speaking
music' that appeared in the seventeenth century. The new hautboy <lid indeed appear
at just the same period as the works of these composers. 6 La Barre evidently saw these
developments as related.
It was no accident that vocal obbligatos were the hautboy's first solo medium,
exploring the instrument's expressive potential. This was what the hautboy <lid best,
and the reason it had been created: to convey the emotional force of words, and to
move its listeners. The hautboy was modelled on the new singer of monodic music,
a singer who performed le nuove musiche, developed by composers like Caccini and
Monteverdi with great success in the generation that preceded the shawm's
transformation. Monody rejected the older four- and five-part style, replacing it with -
a polarized bass with a solo vocal line, and the mtrnic was used - even abused - for
the sake of the text. In a different way, the French composers of chamber airs of the
next generations, whose approach directly influenced Lully, also reflected this new
idea of expressing personal emotions in dramatic ways. 1 The new 'speaking'
instrument, the hautboy, was (as Mattheson put it) an eloquentoboe,' in a period when
speech was the operative metaphor for music making. Shawms had been better at
something else: the prototypical consort instruments, shawms could lay down a broad
expanse of sound rather than a single filigree line. From this point of view, it made
sense that, by the end of the century, the hautboy was being called an 'improved'
shawm. Talbot wrote in c.1692-5: 'The present Hautbois not 40 years old & an
improvement of the great French hautbois [= the grand Haut-bois, or shawm of
Mersenne's time] which is like our Weights [= shawm].'
In addition to 'speaking' texts, the hautboy had another important function as a
member of the new instrumental complex that carne to be known as the 'orchestra'.
The orchestra can be said to have come into existence when consorts of strings and
From consort oboe to 'eloquen( oboe, 1610-1680 29

winds, which had normally played separately from each other, were merged into a
larger ensemble. This involved accommodating shawms and violins to each other -
redesigning the former and tuning down the latter. As a wind parallel to the violin,
the modified shawm had to be able to balance the other instruments, have an
extended range of two octaves that matched the important notes of the violin, play
easily in C and D major, and produce the standard accidentals in various keys. While
the traditional shawm had been able to do ali these things when necessary, certain
basic modifications could facilitate things.
Besides rejecting the pirouette at the top and adding a bit of ornamental turnery,
the makers who developed this new hautboy gave it a shorter bel!, changed the
position of the tone-holes, narrowed the side-walls, and altered the reed.' They also
divided the instrument by adding a joint between the hands, and twinned hole 4 (and
experimented with twinning hole 6 as well, as on the recorder). It has often been
suggested that the hautboy's bore was narrower than that of the shawm; this is a
question that needs further exploration, as at least sorne surviving instruments of the
period show quite similar bore diameters. 10 This new instrument, the protomorphic
hautboy, combined elements of the shawm with features that would eventually
become part of the definitive hautboy. So far, the only evidence we have of the
physical form of the protomorphic hautboy (and for that matter its very existence) are
severa! Gobelins tapestries based on designs by Charles Le Brun, painter to Louis XIV
and director of the royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. The clearest
representations are the borders of two tapestries designed by Le Brun in 1664, 'L' Air'
from a series called Les Elmens, and 'Le Printemps ou Versailles' from the series Les
saisons." 'L' Air', appropriately, depicts many kinds of wind instruments of the time,
and includes nine hautboys of the new design.
Apparently, Lully started using this protomorphic hautboy in the l65os. At that
point he was still conducting his own orchestra, the Petite Bande, and had not yet
consolidated his power at court. He did not take control of the Grande Bande (also
known as the Vingt-Q!Jatre Violons) and begin producing his ballets and comdie-
ballets until 1664- In the meantime, he mounted a number of balletsusing the forces
at his command, and it is thought that he introduced the new protomorphic
hautboy in one of these productions staged in 1657. The work was called L'Amour
malade." The libretto gives the names of the woodwind players who played in the
last entre as Fran~ois- Descoteaux, Joseph or Antaine Pifche, Jean or Michel
Destouches, and Jean [1] Hotteterre and his sons Jean [2], and Martn (called
'Obterre le pere, Obterre fils aisn, Obterre le cadet' - we shall return to these three
musicians in a moment).
When Lully began working with the Vingt-Q!latre Violons in 1664, he was able
to mount larger productions that amalgamated the King's two orchestras. It was in
this same year that another new phase in the hautboy's mutation began. Since singers
took the spotlight, instruments were needed that sounded at the low pitch that
singers preferred, and on which their voice categories depended (the high natural
tenors known as 'hautecontres' - not the modero so-called 'countertenors' - were
especially vulnerable to higher pitches). The Grande Bande was already at this low
pitch, but Lully's smaller group had been playing at the old Renaissance standard a
30 The Oboe

minar third higher. To lower their pitch the strings had either to be replaced or set.
up differently, and the protomorphic hautboys needed major modification.
At this point in the mid-166os, as far as we can tell, Lully stopped using hautboys
completely,- and this during an extremely active period; between 1664 and 1670 he
produced fourteen large works, not one of which seems to have involved the hautboy
(though sorne of them called for 'fltes' that would have employed the same
musicians). Lully did not ask for hautboys again until 1670, with the performance of
Moliere's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme at Chambord Palace. It seems that from 1664, wind
players were preoccupied with developing the new low-pitched hautbois, and
probably learning to play it. It was also in 1664 that jean Hotteterre 'pre'" was
appointed to the Douze Grands Hautbois at court. The association of the Hotteterre
family with the development of the new hautboy is probably due mainly to this
musician, who was the senior craftsman of the family at the time. Jean Hotteterre
(c.1605-90/92) had set up his own instrument workshop in about 1635 and was a
member of the court ensemble known as the Hautbois et musettes de Poitou from
1651. By the 167os he was well known. Borjon (1672:38) wrote that he was 'unique
as a maker of all kinds of wooden, ivory, and ebony instruments, such as musettes,
flutes, flageolets, hautboys, and cromornes. 14 He is also known for making such
instruments perfectly in tune. ... His sons are in no way inferi_or to him in the
practice of this art.' Hotteterre's elder son jean (2) meta sudden and unexpected end
when he was murdered by a fellow hautboist in 1668." The younger son, Martin
(born c.1640), is known to have been living and working with his father in 1658, and
later became a notable player, as well as the father of the Hotteterre best-known
today, jacques 'le Romain'.
By 1668, l' Abb de Pure was writing that 'Les Haut-bois ... , played as they are
nowadays at the Court and in Paris, leave little to be desired'." The first illustration
we have of the new hautboy, the familiar model that was to remain in more or less
stable form for the next half-century, is Blanchet's engraving used as a frontispiece to
Borjon's Trait de la musette (ill. n). Borjon's book was published two years after the
performance of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, which may have been the first official
appearance of the new hautboy. It was evidently during this period of experiment
that the remaining hautboy characteristics appeared, including more elaborate
turnery, reduced tone-hale size, the rejection of the fontanelle (or barre!) surrounding
the Great-key, the addition of a Small-key for E flat, and the move to a lower pitch.
In 1672 Lully became head of the Acadmie Royale de Musique, or Opra, so the
definitive hautboy seems to have arrived in time for the first of Lully's large-scale
operas, Les Fetes de l'Amour et de Bacchus, put on in that year. Lully regularly called for
hautboys in subsequent productions. After 1670, when he had the definitive hautboy,
Lully began to write hautboy ritournelles or 'trios' that emerged from the larger sound
of the fu]] orchestra. This texture became popular with later composers. When these
ritournelles specified hautbois, they could have been for two treble hautboys and either
bassoon or 'cromorne' (see below). Whether the parts were doubled was left
ambiguous. 17
Instrumentation was rarely precise, being determined by the situation, such as the
acouStics of the performing space, available instruments, and so on. Often the term
From consort oboe to Feloquent' oboe, 1610-1680 31

n. [Thomas] Blanchet: plate opposite title page of Borjon's Tntit de la musette (by 1672).

symphon\e was all a composer would specify (symphonie meant an instrumental

ensemble of indeterminate size). Just which music was originally played on hautboys
is thus unknown. Although the names of on-stage musicians (often including
hautboys) appear in printed librettos of performances, the only complete list of
orchestral players that survives for a Lully performance is that of Le Triomphe de
l'Amour (1681).'" This was no small production; there were 21 woodwind.players, of
whom ro were hautboys. The strings numbered 47, and the orchestra had a total
strength of about 77. judging from the proportions of other performances, the
32 The Oboe

topmost part would probably have been played by 13-14 violins, and if the same part
was also played by ali the hautboys (as sorne modern writers have suggested), the
hautboys would have seriously overbalanced the violins." That would conflict with
the comment by Roger North at the end of the seventeenth century on the sound of
a Lullian orchestra: 'Here were. many instruments, all waiters upon the violn, which
was predominant, and lowdness a great ingredient, together with a strong snatching
way of playing, to make the musi!'k brisk and good."0 It seems more likely that the.
'hautboys', like the 'violins', were divided over the five parts, giving the basic string .
sound the unique 'bite' and 'spice' that comes from combining in unison the hautboy
sound with that of strings.
The oboe, the type-instrument we see clearly now with hindsight, was a novelty
in Lully's time, and its identity was still vague, so the term 'hautbois' was very
inclusive. In the same way that 'violan' was used to mean any of the instruments of
the violin family, 'hautbois' could mean 'bassoon' (which was often a 'basse de
hautbois'). 'Hautbois', in fact, could denote any double-reed instrument (like the
cromorne and the bagpipe chanters to be described in a moment), and even in sorne
cases (bizarre as it seems now) wind instruments in general, including the flutes and
the musette de cour. 21 'Hautbois' seems to have been a sort of generic designator for
a woodwind, evoking the pastoral poetic attribute (nature in its untroubled, idyllic
state); the same place marked 'hautbois' in the score might be marked 'flltes' or
'musette' in the libretto.
The generic 'hautbois' family included severa! other similar instruments. At
least two forms of shawm survived into the eighteenth century: the 'Baroque
schalmey' (often misleadingly called the 'deutsche schalmey' nowadays) and the
'hautbois d'glise' (also known as the 'Musettenbas' and 'trompette d'glise').
Discussion and speculation on the former can be found in Thompson (1999 and.
2002), Bouterse (1999), and Haynes (2000). Far the latter, recent studies include
Finkelman (2001) and Girard (2001; especially 'Les conclusions', pp. 128-9). In
chapter 4 we shall discuss folk oboes (the aubOi, the aboes and the graile) that
resemble early oboe types possibly in use at the time, and flourishing until the
twentieth century. Three other contemporary instruments closely related to the
hautboy were the cromorne and the detached bagpipe chanters (the hautbois de
Poitou and the chalumeau simple).
The cromorne was not the krnmmhorn. lt was similar to the hautboy and carne in
different sizes. It had a crook and possibly a pirouette, extension keys far hales 1, 3,
4 and 6, and a distinctive shape as a result of the wooden rings on which the keys
were mounted (see the long instrument lying on the ground in ill. 11). Sources suggest
that, until lower hautboys and the bassoon were developed, the cromorne in various
sizes was the original partner of the treble hautboy in double-reed ensembles."
The hautbois de Poitou was the instrument that resulted when players of the bagpipe
known as the musette de Poitou removed the chanter and played it without the bag. This
instrument was described in 1635 by Mersenne; he showed three sizes. The hautbois de
Poitou had a windcap that tapered inward toward its base, a single Great-key, and a
fontanelle that covered the key. It was bored conically like the shawm and hautboy.
When the cap was not used, it strongly resembled a small hautboy.
. From consort oboe to 'eloquent' oboe, r6ro-r68o 33

Players also detached the chanter (known in French as the chalumeau) from another
kind of bagpipe, the bellows-blown musette de cour, and played it alone. Borjon
showed this detached chanter on page 22 ofhis musette book, calling ita 'Chalumeau
simple'. The musette chanter is easy to distinguish from the hautbois de Poitou, beca use
it had no fontanelle, it had a key for the left thumb that entered the cap, its cap had
a distinctive 'dumbbell' turning consisting of two bulbs joined by a column, and its
bore was cylindrical rather than conical. 23
The decade of the l68os was exceptional in producing many fine hautboy players,
including John Loeillet (born 1680), Robert Valentine (c.1680), Jacob Denner (1681),
Anne Philidor (1681), Pierre Philidor (1681), Caspar Gleditsch (1684), Jacob Loeillet
(1685), Michael Bohm (c.I685), and Christian Richter (1689). These players will be
discussed in the next chapter. There is an age-old belief that oboe playing is bad for
the health, and it is true that a number of prominent players in history died
prematurely, including Anne Philidor (at 47), John Loeillet (50), Pierre Philidor (50),
Jacob Denner (54), Richter (55), and Valentine (q5). But in the same period, at least
three players are known to have reached their eighties: Galliard (81), Andr Philidor
(c.83), and Penati (c.90).
As for the instrument itself, most of the components that made up the hautboy
were plant products: the body was made of wood, the reed of cane (actually a species
of grass called Arundo donax, still used for reeds today), and the bindings were of flax
or hemp thread. Like other woodwinds, hautboys were normally made of boxwood,
Buxus sempervirens, other materials included (in descending order of frequency) ebony,
ivory, and fruitwoods (plum, pear and cherry). The keys and reed staple {the tube on
which the cane was tied) were usually made of brass (and on fancier instruments, of
silver). The Great-key produced c1 and cil2, the Small-key gave the E flat. About a
. third of the surviving instruments have only these two keys, but the others have a
duplicated Small-key that would have allowed right- or left-handed playing. There
were sometimes ornamental mountings called 'tips' at the ends of joints, made of
ivory or silver. It is surprising how many of the products used in making hautboys
and reeds are golden in colour: the cane, the brass, beeswax for the thread and for
tuning, and boxwood (even if it was usually stained darker).
Almos! ali antique hautboys have twinned third holes, since closing hole 3 halfway
was the only feasible way to play G sharp/ A flat in the lower register. More often
than not, the fourth hole was also twinned so it could be used to get G flat (and
sometimes F sharp). One of the unusual features of the new hautboy was the small
size of its tone-holes. This affected the tone, making it softer and darker, thus lending
to make the instrument blend with other instruments rather than standing out. Small
tone-holes had another advantage: they made the notes relatively unstable between
registers. This meant that register shifts could be produced on the hautboy over the
range of over two octaves solely by the action of the breath and lips, without
'speakers' like the thumb-hole on the recorder, or an octave key. Smaller tone-holes
also helped to produce accidentals with cross-fingerings, giving a clearer, more
specific pitch. "'
Cross-fingerings (also called forked-fingerings) can be regarded as a defining
feature of hautboys, and indeed of Baroque woodwinds in general. On any
34 The Oboe

woodwind instrument, there is a natural six-hole scale that usually gives D or G

major. To obtain the in-between notes that are not part of this scale, there are three
different options: l) opening boles halfWay (half-holing); 2) opening clase-standing
keys overdedicated boles for these notes; 3) using cross-fingerings." Half-holing
lowered a fingered note a semitone by half-closing the next lowest hole. The note A,
for example, produced by closing boles l and 2, was lowered to Ab by playing A and
half-closing hole 3. Half-holing was most effective on boles of relatively large
diameter, which meant that it worked poorly on instruments with small tone boles
like the hautboy. Cross-fingering, on the other hand, worked well on the hautboy.
Cross-fingering involved lowering a simple fingering by closing one or more boles
immediately below the first open hole. The B produced by closing the first hole could
be lowered to a Bb, for instance, by closing boles l and 3, leaving hole 2 open.
In developing the hautboy from the shawm, makers had to choose between these
three methods of producing notes that were not part of the natural scale. They ended
up with a little of ea ch. The half-hole was used for gjl/ ak To produce the bottom cr
that was sounded through a tone-hole beyond the reach of the fingers, an articulated
open-standing key (that carne to be known as the 'Great-key') was borrowed from the
shawm. As for the Eb, the corresponding note on the treble shawm had been obtained
by half-closing hole 6; that had worked well because of the shawm's long bell and
large tone-boles. But when the new short-belled hautboy was developed, another
solution had to be found. At first, the sixth hole was twinned (as on most modern
recorders), so eb1 was obtained with a half-hole. But twinning hole 6 was not the
ideal solution. Hole 6 on most Baroque woodwinds is already higher up the bore
than it should be because it is otherwise too low for the fingers. But being higher,
it has to be smaller than boles 4 and 5, which makes it stuffier than the other
notes. Twinning made it worse. Since it couldn't be produced with a cross-
fingering, the eb was eventually entrusted to a key like those on the musette, called
the Small-key; the same solution was later applied to the traversa and sometimes
the bassoon. 25
Close-standing keys would have produced the rest of the notes that were not part
of the hautboy's natural scale (fI, bb1, c2, fa, ab/ gjl2, bb2 and q), as they eventually
did far nineteenth- and twentieth-century oboes. But the musicians and makers who
developed the new hautboy opted instead for the third choice, cross-fingering, which
had been used on the shawm. It is interesting that cross-fingering was selected instead
of more keys. If, as we have speculated above, the principal designer of the new
instrument was Jean Hotteterre, we know he was active in making improvements to
the musette," an instrument that had as many as thirteen dese-standing keys by the
l67os (see ill. 37). Adopting keys was therefore a viable option for Hotteterre. It
seems, then, that at the time the effects of an hautboy using cross-fingerings was
preferred to one that could produce the same notes using keys. The two methods have
a noticeably different sound; dedicated boles under keys produce a more open and
direct sound than cross-fingerings.
That is why half-holing and cross-fingering are defining traits of the types of oboe
that existed befare the Romantic period. One of the earliest pictures of the hautboy
is ariother Gobelins tapestry (1684, ill. 12) that shows a player using a fictitious
12. Gobelins tapestry: 'Danse des Nymphes, de Ja gauche'; fiftb piece in tbe series Sujets de la fable,

1684-1795 (model by 1684), q x 4 m.

fingering (12 5) obviously inspired by a cross-fingering. Cross-fingerings had long

been reguired in shawm music, but the smaller tone boles of the hautboy made them
more effective. 27 As more and more tonalities carne into use, cross-fingerings were
regularly called far. On the hautboy, there was more difference in timbre between
natural and cross-fingered notes than on the shawm because the tone-boles were
smaller and because the hautboy lacked the shawm's long bell and the acoustic
advantages it afforded. 28
Cross-fingerings were an integral feature of the hautboy's technigue as well as its
sound guality. They demanded complex finger combinations, and produced notes
more compatible with meantone tuning than egua! temperament. They added colour,
variety and character to different tonalities, because cross-fingerings, which sounded
different from natural fingerings, fell on different degrees of each scale." Cross-
fingerings thrive in a meantone environment. The tuning model that was in general
use when the hautboy was developed was guarter-comma meantone. In this tuning
(also known as 'true meantone' because it makes no compromise with pure thirds, as
do the later 'modified meantones'), sharps are lower than their eguivalent flats by
about 41 cents, approaching a guarter of a tone (a guarter-tone is 50 cents). A
characteristic of meantones is that flats get generally higher and sharps lower in the
arder they appear in a key signature. Thus the note E flat is sharper than B flat, A flat
sharper still, and so on. Likewise, C sharp is lower than F sharp, G sharp lower than
C sharp, and so on. The following chart shows how notes in meantone vary in cents
from egua! temperament (assuming that A is the tuning note):
36 The Oboe

e +10
C!i-14 Db+27
D +3
' D!i-21 Eb+20
E-4
F +13
F!i-rr Gb+30
G +7
G!i-17 Ab+23
Ao
A!i-25 Bb+17
B-7
e +10
Although fingering charts far the hautboy frequently distinguished flats from their
corresponding sharps (especially Gj2/ Abz), separare fingerings were not available or
convenient far ali these notes (such as Dj/Eb1 or Ej/F1). To produce flats.and sharps
as far from each other as 41 cents, embouchures must have been extremely flexible. 30
Of course, the cross-fingerings on the hautboy (F and Bb) tended to be high, and the
leading notes (B, Di, Fi, G#, C#, E and A) were low or could easily be played low. The
too-narrow tuning of the notes produced through the fifth tone-hole, F-Fi, fit the
meantone model, where these two notes are 24 cents closer to each other than in
equal temperament. Thus the natural tuning of the hautboy corresponded fairly well
to meantone.
For most of the eighteenth century, sources suggest that the standard tunlng of
orchestral instruments was compatible with the keyboard tuning known as 'sixth-
comma meantone'. 11 As in any meantone, sharps in this 'modified' form remained
lower than their equivalent flats, but now the difference was only a comma, or about
21/22 cents, considerably less than in 'true meantone'. The notes in sixth-comma
meantone vary from equal temperament like this:

e +5
C!i-8 Db+14
D +1
D!i-rr Eb+10
E-2
F +7
F!i-6 Gb+16
G +3
G!i-10 Ab+12
Ao
A!i-13 Bb+9
B-4
e +5
As can be seen, the enharmonic notes are separated by a comma: C is 22 cents lower
than Db, Di 21 cents lower than Eb, and so on.
13. Nicolas Henri Tardieu (soon after 25 Oct. 1722). Detail from fifth tableau in the series 'Le
Sacre de Lo uis XV'.

The fingerings of woodwinds (and thus their basic tuning) did not change
between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so it is unlikely that makers and
players consciously distinguished quarter-comma and sixth-comma meantone;
probably they simply adjusted as necessary to get satisfying intervals within the broad
concept of 'meantone'. For instruments without a fixed tuning {that is, most non-
keyboard instruments), 'temperament' is in fact an overly specific concept; intonation
is influenced by technical situations, subjective perceptions, even differences in
dynamics. No violinist or hautboist is capable of playing consistently in a keyboard
temperament, even if they wanted to. 32 Since both quarter-comma and sixth-comma
meantone had the same general tendencies, either would have served as an
approximate tuning model.
Ali the first-generation hautboy players must have been connected in one way or
another with the French court, where the new hautboy was developed. Even in other
countries, the first contacts with the instrument in the l67os and Sos were through
travelling Frenchmen. The court wind players were employed by the Grande curie
(or Royal Equerry), which consisted of a number of different ensembles that included
woodwinds. The king's most active hautboy ensemble was the Fifres et Tambours.
This group was responsible far the daily ceremonies at court," and they are the group
portrayed in the well-known etchings of Louis XV's coronation in 1722 (ill. lJ). Part
of the repertoire of the Fifres et Tambours is preserved in the Philidor Manuscript
(Partition de plusieurs marches, Paris, Rs. f.671). This collection, copied under the
supervision of Andr Philidor around 1705, is one of the largest sources of original
hautboy band music that survives. 34
It was another ensemble, the Douze Grands Hautbois, that probably had the
highest status among the hautboys at court. This band had only three set '<luties per
year, but appeared far other exceptional events." The players were thus seldom
present at court, unless they played in other royal ensembles. Although only twelve
38 The Oboe

players held titles at any given time, there was considerable turnover; sorne two dozen
players held positions in the period between 1640 and 1670, and sixteen others were
appointed befare the turn of the century. Another important court ensemble were the
Mousquetaires, also called the Plaisirs du Roi. This band originally participated in
battle campaigns until a royal decree in 1683 farbade the use of hautboys in military
engagements. The Mousquetaires evidently had a favoured position; they had
adopted the (protomorphic) hautboy extremely early (by 1663), and Lully himself
wrote severa! marches far them." Hautboy players may have been attached to the
Chambre by the 168os," playing orchestral music, since in the Baroque period
'chamber music' did not normally mean smaller ensembles, as it does now, but rather
instrumental music of any kind. The Chambre, far instance, included both the Petits
Violons and the Grande Bande.
During this period of gestation at the Fre~h court, nothing is known of hautboy
developments in other parts of Euro pe that might have been parallel. It is conceivable
that the entire process of farmulating the hautboy out of the shawm, which happened
in the space of a generation, took place in Paris. In any case, events at the French
court were quickly known abroad, and (as discussed in chapter 3) the intense interest
in Louis XIV's court brought the instrument to the attention of other European
countries almost immediately.
The hautboy quickly became an indispensable component of the music-making of
the period. Whereas other instruments specialized in certain kinds of music, the
hautboy faund itself being used in virtually every genre; Eisel wrote in 1738 (96-7),
'it is used in the battlefield, in opera, in social gatherings, as well as in churches'. It
was played in solos, in tutti with strings in orchestras, in chamber music, and in
military ensembles and hautboy bands. Almost any maker who made woodwinds in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had a line of hautboys, and the instrument
was being made befare the traversa and bassoon and long after the recorder. As
discussed above, the hautboy was regarded as the type-instrument far the woodwinds,
just as the violin was far the strings.
Early in its career, several sources documented one of the hautboy's remarkable
attributes: its lively, animated, 'sprightly' quality. Menestrier, far instance, wrote in
1681 (123) that 'if trumpets enliven the cavalry, and even the horses, experience proves
that hautboys make soldiers march more happily, and that in playing at festivities and
even in combat they give the effect of going off to a wedding'. Banister (who is
credited with the publication of The Sprightly Companion far hautboy in 1695) quotes
'a great Lover of Musick' to the effect that

Mus1cK will give our hardest Labours Ease;

The Hautboy charms in War, the Flute in Peace.
Where Lave or Honour calls, these Sounds inspire;
Tbis charms with Love, That Courage sets on fire. 38

The hautboy was also seen as the personification of peace, and set symbolically in
contrast to the trumpet, the instrument of glory and battle. Colasse, in bis Ballet des
Saisons (1695), used hautboys when the chorus sang
From consort oboe to ~eloquent' oboe, r6ro-r68o 39

Chantons, chantons la victoire . .. au milieu des horreurs d'une guerre cruelle nous
jouissons des douceurs de la paix.

Let us sing of victory ... in the midst of the horrors of a cruel war, we can enjoy
the sweetness of peace.

In Rameau's Fetes d'Hb lllJ (1739), Iphise sings

clatante trompette annoncez notre gloire,

Dazzling trumpet, announce our glory,

'followed by

Rpondez-nous tendres hautbois.

Reply, you tender hautboys.

And in the prologue to Lully's Thse (1675)," Mars sings

Q!!e les Hautbois, et les Musettes l' emportent sur les Trompettes, et sur les
Tambours. Q!)e rien ne trouble icy Venus et les Amours.

Let the hautboys and musettes prevail over the trumpets and drums. Let nothing
here trouble Venus and the Amours.

Hautboys were also used to call to mind the pastoral sentiments, often in the idyllic
form of an innocent shepherd's life. Flutes and hautboys shared this rustic association,
but flutes more often had the attribute of lave, while hautboys represented peace.
The hautboy was thus an instrument of contrasts; it was coupled with the extremes
of pastoral peace as well as the animation and shock of war; with gentle tenderness,
delicacy and charm, but also a lively and sprightly affect. Its divergent characters were
summed up by John Banister in 1695 with these words:

Far besides its Inimitable charming Sweetness of Sound (when well play'd upan)
it is also Majestical and Stately, and not much Inferiour to the Trumpet."