This week I was fortunate enough to stumble on a YouTube video by composer Zach Heyde. In this video he analyses the orchestration of Elgar’s Enigma Theme, also touching on the harmony where it is relevant in the voicing of the orchestration.
It’s a fabulous video with many insights, especially regarding the colours that Elgar achieves through Woodwind and String doublings and “non-doublings”. For example, the use of Clarinet, on the melody, a 3rd above the supporting string line. Absolutely stunning. Enigma gives me chills and often moves me to tears in performance.
Heyde, in discussing the woodwinds, defines his own understanding of the woodwind instruments as a split between single and double reed instruments. Strictly speaking, this is not right as the Flutes are a non-reed instrument. However, I think it’s perfectly legitimate, even helpful sometimes, for composers to have different and idiosyncratic interpretations of things (I have had and continue to have my own!). Especially, if it leads to solid creative output! Therefore, I don’t want to brand it a mistake, as it might be helpful for others to think in this way. (That being said, a way I discuss the woodwinds in this article can actually lead you to think of the woodwinds in groups similar to how Heyde does.) Instead, I want to use it as an opportunity to introduce you to 5 ways of understanding (or categorising) the woodwinds.
The commentary I provide here is largely informed by Samuel Adler’s “The Study of Orchestration” (2002). One of my favourite chapters, number 6, is on the Woodwind choir and he categorises the woodwinds as I do here, discussing their various classifications at pg. 165 – 170.
If you’d like to be updated when we release new articles and videos, sign up for the Any Old Music Mailing List.
The oddball bunch
The fact we can understand the woodwinds in 5 ways is itself informative of them as a group. They’re heterogenous. Or, in other words, the instruments are quite different from one another, offering a number of theoretical ways to group or separate them. These, to more or less degrees, contribute to their differing sounds, performance techniques and capabilities.
The five ways in which we can understand the woodwind group are as follows:
- Family
- Reed
- Shape
- Overblown interval
- Transposing (or non-transposing)
Let’s discuss.
1. The woodwind families
I know what you are thinking: “aren’t the woodwinds a family?” And in the broader context of the orchestra, they can be defined as such. However, if one were to define the strings as a family within the orchestra, they would be a family of brothers and sisters. Close relations. Similarly, if one would also brand the brass as a family, you may define them as cousins. The woodwinds as a family, probably need to conduct some paternity tests.
As I said before the woodwinds are the least homogenous and the most heterogenous. Hence my enormously funny joke regarding paternity tests. The woodwinds are least a like, in part because each instrument is itself a different set of families:
- Flutes (piccolo, standard, alto and bass);
- Oboes (oboe, oboe D’amour, cor anglais, bassoon and contrabassoon);
- Clarinets (range of transposing forms, alto, bass and contrabass);
- Saxophones (sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass)
In contrast to this, the strings are by far the most homogenous group of the orchestra and could, ignoring the dubious viol like qualities of the Double Bass, be defined as one big, happy family: the violin family.
On the other hand, the Brass are similar to the Woodwinds in that each instrument is a family of its own. However, as we move on to the next point regarding reeds (or their lack of) we will see why the woodwinds take on quite different characteristics and, as a result, sounds.
The woodwinds are a family in the orchestra, but separate families too, which contributes to and encapsulates their many differences. The following sections will go some length to defining the differences.
If you’d like to be updated when we release new articles and videos, sign up for the Any Old Music Mailing List.
2. The woodwind Reeds
As I said in the introduction to this article: Heyde personally categorises the woodwinds in two parts. These two parts are between single and double reed instruments. However, strictly speaking the instruments have three ways of producing a sound between them:
- No-reed: Flutes (and Recorders)
- Single-reed: Clarinet family and Saxophone family
- Double-Reed: Oboe family (including Bassoons! see above The Woodwind Families)
The reeds greatly vary the sound qualities of each instrument as they fundamentally alter how the air enters the instrument and how it is manipulated to form a sound at the very beginning of the process. However, I won’t go into the mechanics and science of these different devices for creating sound, but below I have linked videos that neatly explain them (better than I could hope to here!).
Extra viewing/reeding (punny.)
I would also recommend the Philharmonia Orchestras website, which includes articles and videos on many of the woodwind instruments we are discussing in this article.
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment also have a video on the Oboe d’amour.
3. The Woodwind Pipe Shapes
The way in which we can understand the woodwinds in two parts, similar to how Heyde does in his video, is through the shapes of each instruments pipes. Doing so breaks the woodwind group into two sections. One group is of cylindrical tubed instruments and one of conical tubed instruments. The instruments can be grouped as follows:
- Cylindrical shaped instruments: Flutes and Clarinets.
- Conical shaped instruments: Oboes (including Bassoons) and Saxophones
Cylindrical vs conical
The distinction as I understand it from a brass playing perspective is how the instrument is shaped between its two ends: the point where you play into the instrument (excluding mouthpiece) and the point where the sound leaves the instrument (excluding bell).
In a conical instrument, for instance, the instrument’s pipe (or bore, as it is often referred to) is getting wider through its entirety.
In a cylindrical instrument, on the other hand, the pipe is a constant diameter for most or all of the instrument’s length.
Therefore, while two instruments might have a diameter of 1cm at their played end, a cylindrical bored instrument will still have a 1cm diameter at its sounding end (excluding bell) whereas a conically bored instrument will have a bore greater than 1cm at its sounding end.
What does this mean for the sound?
Like reed differences, bore shape greatly alters sound. For example, the difference between soprano saxophone and clarinet. Both are single reed instruments, and have a straight body. However, soprano saxophone is conical and the clarinet is cylindrical.
Many people define conical instruments as being brighter. However, I think this is completely wrong. My adjectives for a conical instrument would be mellow and, perhaps, sweet.
A cylindrical bore instruments have a precision to their sound.
If I could visualise a sound, the conical sound would be soft threads piled and crossed in a cloudy squiggle. A cylindrical sound would be those same threads laid down horizontally in a column/row.
I appreciate this is quite subjective and perhaps you disagree with me. Be sure to comment or message your thoughts on cylinder and conical timbres.
4. The Woodwind Overblown harmonics
Another way to think about and classify the woodwind instruments, is by the notes they create when they are played forcefully.
The clarinet family, for instance, is unique in that when overblown it will produce a note a 12th above the naturally produced note.
The other instruments of the wider woodwind group, on the other hand, over blow at the octave.
If you’d like to be updated when we release new articles and videos, sign up for the Any Old Music Mailing List.
5. The Woodwind Transpositions
The final way in which to understand the Woodwind group is by those instruments that transpose and those instruments that do not:
The Flute, Oboe and Bassoon are non-transposing instruments.
On the other hand, the following instruments are transposing, meaning they sound at a pitch different to what is written on their part:
- Alto Flute (in G)
- Cor Anglais (F)
- Clarinet (D, Eb, Bb, A)
- Alto Clarinet (Eb)
- Bass Clarinet (Bb)
- Contrabass Clarinet (Bb)
- Soprano Sax (Bb)
- Alto Sax (Eb)
- Tenor Sax (Bb)
- Baritone Sax (Eb)
- Bass Sax (Bb)
Excluded from the above list and placed in an awkward state of being transposing and in C, as they sound an octave higher or lower are:
- Piccolo (8va)
- Bass Flute (8vb)
- Contrabassoon (8vb)
I would say the consideration of transposition is less about distinguishing instruments across the woodwind group, but rather a distinction within the families we discussed in section 1. Instead, its best thought about internally and how the transpositions effect nuances of timbre (and performance practicality) between the instruments of a family. For example, the Alto Flute is distinct to a Flute. But you would still say the Alto Flute is much more like a Flute in look and sound than a Clarinet.
Final Thoughts
There are so many ways to think about orchestral Woodwind instruments, and it is their distinctions that are both one of their beauties and one of their drawbacks. The woodwinds, as a group of individual instruments, offer a tremendous palette of colours, more than the brass and more than the strings. However, this can make blending and balancing them more challenging.
In my own practice, as a composer, I often think about the woodwinds in the first three ways I have discussed in this article. As a group of families, I might do this when searching for a homogenous sound (assuming I have the forces to do it!). As distinct types of reed, I would likely think this way when after or trying to avoid the distinctive, nasal, double-reed sound of the oboe family (which includes the bassoon, remember!). As a group of conical or cylinder bored instruments, in this respect, I would think similarly to Heyde does in his video. In someways linked to the reed types, doubling at the unison or octave, between the various options generates a plethora of vivid and shaded colours and effects. Therefore, in doubling across families I think in terms of reed and pipe construction, and what sound that will create.
In terms of overblown harmonics, I’ve never thought about this in practice. On the other hand, transpositions I often do when considering things like register or the practicality of playing a part.
If you’d like to be updated when we release new articles and videos, sign up for the Any Old Music Mailing List.