Musicon / Musical education / Horns, Trumpets, Cornets
The French horn, as it is called in the orchestra, is the sweetest and mellowest of all the wind instruments. In Beethoven’s time it was but little else than the old hunting-horn, which, for the convenience of the mounted hunter, was arranged in spiral convolutions that it might be slipped ::More
Musicon / Musical education / The double-bassoon (contra bassoon)
A swelling martial fanfare may be made absurd by changing it from trumpets to a weak-voiced wood-wind. It is only the string quartet that speaks all the musical languages of passion and emotion. The double-bassoon is so large an instrument that it has to be bent on itself to bring it under the ::More
Musicon / Musical education / Bassoon – The grave voice of the oboe
The grave voice of the oboe is heard from the bassoon, where, without becoming assertive, it gains a quality entirely unknown to the oboe and English horn. It is this quality that makes the bassoon the humorist par excellence of the orchestra. It is a reedy bass, very apt to recall to those who ::More
Musicon / Musical education / The oboe
The oboe is naturally associated with music of a pastoral character. It is pre-eminently a melody instrument, and though its voice comes forth shrinkingly, its uniqueness of tone makes it easily heard. It is a most lovable instrument. “Candor, artless grace, soft joy, or the grief of a ::More
Musicon / Musical education / The Double-Bass
The patriarchal double-bass is known to all, and also its mission of providing the foundation for the harmonic structure of orchestral music. It sounds an octave lower than the music written for it, being what is called a transposing instrument of sixteen-foot tone. Solos are seldom written for ::More
