In all these old finger hole instruments the scale begins with the
first hole, a note in the bagpipe with which the drones agree, and not
the entire tube. From the bass and double quint pommers came
ultimately the bassoon and contra-bassoon, and from the alto pommer,
an obsolete instrument for which Bach wrote, called the oboe di
caccia, or hunting oboe, an appellation unexplained, unless it had
originally a horn-like tone, and was, as it has been suggested to me
by Mr. Blaikley, used by those who could not make a real hunting horn
sound. It was bent to a knee shape to facilitate performance. It was
not exactly the cor Anglais or English horn, a modern instrument of
the same pitch which is bent like it, and of similar compass, a fifth
below the usual oboe. The tenoroon, with which the oboe di caccia has
been compared, was a high bassoon really on octave and a fifth below.
It has been sometimes overlooked that there are two octaves in pitch
between the oboe and bassoon, which has led to some confusion in
recognizing these instruments. There was an intermediate instrument a
third lower than the oboe, used by Bach, called the oboe d'amore,
which was probably used with the cornemuse or bagpipe, and another, a
third higher than the oboe, called musette (not the small bagpipe of
that name).
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