A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music, Second Edition

5. Woodwinds

5 � Woodwinds herbert myers Of all the centuries in the recorded history of Western music, the seventeenth witnessed the most thoroughgoing and decisive changes in the nature of woodwind instruments. While the sixteenth century had produced some remarkable developments , resulting in the rich and varied instrumentarium of the late Renaissance, these can be viewed as essentially evolutionary in spirit; they consisted of expansions of existing families and the invention of complementary types intended to serve with them and round out the palette of instrumental colors. The developments of the mid- to late seventeenth century were, by comparison, nothing short of revolutionary , consisting of complete remodelings of a limited number of Renaissance winds— flute, recorder, shawm, and curtal—to produce radically new types that ultimately eclipsed their progenitors (not to mention their few remaining rivals, such as the cornett). The affinity between these new forms (Baroque flute, oboe, and bassoon, in particular, the recorder representing something of a special case) and our own seems clear; we recognize them more as youthful versions than as ancestors of our modern designs despite the tremendous technological gulf between them. Unfortunately from our own point of view, those responsible for the remodelings left virtually no written record of the process. It has been left to more recent scholars to piece together the story, relying on extant instruments, iconography, and recollections of eighteenth-century writers, along with a few scattered seventeenthcentury documents. It is fairly clear, of course, what changes were made; it is harder to determine when, where, by whom, and (perhaps most important of all) why. France, under the musical domination of Jean-Baptiste Lully, has long been hailed as the cradle of the new designs; more recent scholarship, however, has begun to recognize the contributions of makers from other countries. In addition, several scholars have begun to question the traditional dating of the innovations, suggesting for some a period closer to the death of Lully (1687) than to the middle of his career. (For instance , the long-accepted date of 1657 for the debut of the oboe—in Lully’s Ballet de l’amour malade—has recently been shown to have been based upon some mistrans- 72 Wind, String, and Percussion Instruments lations and groundless assumptions.1 On the other hand, the developments leading to the bassoon may have started considerably earlier and involved builders from Italy, Spain, and Holland as well as France.2 ) Work in this area continues; while it is unlikely that a large body of documentation—written or iconographic—lies in wait, yet to be discovered, the evidence of musical sources (particularly manuscript scores and parts) has yet to be exploited to the full in solving some remaining puzzles. Despite the subsequent importance of the remodeled woodwinds, we should not regard what came before as a mere prelude. This kind of bias would be especially inappropriate here, in a book concerned with the seventeenth century as a whole. However, the earlier forms of woodwind have been covered in considerable depth in a previous volume in this series (see relevant articles in A Performer’s Guide to Renaissance Music, Jeffery Kite-Powell, ed., second ed., 2007); moreover, most of the authors contributing to that volume have allowed their definition of “Renaissance” to encompass at least part of the seventeenth century. Rather than repeating basic information, this survey will attempt to present a summary. In recounting historical developments in instrument design, it will pay particular attention to some of the causes: changes in musical aesthetics and practice. These have often been ignored by scholars researching instrument history, who have tended instead to concentrate on morphology—how many joints, how many keys, what style of ornamental turnery. In fact, an instrument is defined at least as much by its use as its shape; form follows function. Of particular importance to both use and design is the question of pitch; to Johann Joachim Quantz writing in the eighteenth century, for instance, the remodeled woodwinds owed their very existence to their adoption of low (French) pitch.3 All the winds are affected by the choice of pitch standard, of course, but for flutes and recorders there is an additional pitch-related question: when and where did their traditional Renaissance employment at four-foot pitch give way to use at eight-foot pitch? At what point did alto and tenor instruments become accepted as sopranos? This is not an easy question to answer, as we shall see. Late-Renaissance Winds The Sources We owe much...