wind instrument

wind instrument
/wind/
a musical instrument sounded by the breath or other air current, as the trumpet, trombone, clarinet, or flute.
[1575-85]

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music
Introduction

      any musical instrument that uses air as the primary vibrating medium for the production of sound.

General considerations

Classification
      Prominent in the music of all cultures since prehistoric times, wind instruments exhibit great diversity in structure and sonority. A system of classification of these instruments must reflect and categorize the relationships and the differences between the many varieties. The conventional division of the symphony orchestra into sections has simplified the grouping of wind instruments into woodwinds (woodwind) and brasses (brass instrument), but this is an inaccurate classification that generally does not apply outside Western culture. The fact that some modern woodwinds, such as flutes (flute) and saxophones, are made of metal, while several ancestors of present-day brasses, such as the cornett and serpent, were typically made of wood, illustrates the unsuitability of a classification according to material.

      The standard method of instrument classification was introduced in 1914 by Curt Sachs (Sachs, Curt) and Erich von Hornbostel (Hornbostel, Erich Moritz von). It is based on the acoustical principles of an instrument's sound, regardless of its stylistic or cultural context. In this system, all wind instruments—that is, all instruments in which air itself is the primary vibrating medium for the production of sound—are called aerophones (aerophone), whether or not the air is enclosed in a tube.

      Sachs-Hornbostel further classifies aerophones as free aerophones, edge instruments, reedpipes, and trumpet-type instruments according to their manner of tone production. Free aerophones, which include a variety of indigenous and folk instruments as well as such technologically sophisticated devices as reed stops in organs (see keyboard instrument), are distinguished from the other categories because the vibrating air is not contained by a tube. The bull-roarer is the best example. A spatulate stone, bone, or board, sometimes carved in the shape of a fish, is tied through a small hole to a string, which in turn is attached to a stick; when the instrument is whirled around, it produces a sound by its disturbance of the air.

      The reeds (reed instrument) of the mouth organ, accordion, reed organ, and the reed stops of the pipe organ, known as free reeds, are all considered free aerophones as well: the reed vibrates above or through a slot, setting the air into pulsations. The resulting pitch is determined by the thickness and length of the vibrating reed.

 In edge instruments (or flutes (flute)), an airstream directed against a sharp edge sets an adjoining air column within a tube into regular pulsations, producing sound. Flutes are divided into so-called true flutes and whistle flutes (also called duct flutes or recorders). Like all aerophones, flutes may be simple or complex, depending on their construction, the transverse flute being simple and panpipes, organs, and other multiple-tube instruments being more complex.

      In true flutes, a ribbon-shaped column of air is produced between the player's lips and directed against the edge of an aperture. The player blows against either the sharp rim at the upper, open end of the tube (end-blown) or the rim of a hole in the side of the tube (side-blown). The Japanese (arts, East Asian) shakuhachi is an end-blown flute, consisting of a wide bamboo tube with a notch at the top, four front finger holes, and one rear thumbhole. The modern transverse flute and piccolo are side-blown. In a further subcategory, globular flutes, the body of the flute pipe is vessel-shaped, not tubular. Such flutes, of various materials, are found in North and South America, Africa, China, and Oceania.

 The player of a whistle flute (fipple flute), by contrast, blows through a mouthpiece. The air passes through a duct, or windway, between a plug in the mouthpiece and the flute wall; the duct directs the air against the sharp edge of another hole farther down the body of the instrument. Because the airstream is shaped and directed by the duct rather than by the player's lips, whistle flutes are simpler to play than true flutes. The recorder, the ocarina, and the open flue stops of the organ are all whistle flutes.

      In the third category of aerophones, reedpipes, the column of air is activated by the vibrations between the two parts of a double reed or those between a single reed and the mouthpiece. In the Sachs-Hornbostel system, all double reeds are generically classified as oboes and the single reeds as clarinets (clarinet). Accordingly, the bassoon is an oboe, and the saxophone is a clarinet.

      The fourth category, trumpet-type aerophones, includes instruments in which the vibration of the player's compressed lips sets the air column in motion. Depending on the shape of the bore, trumpet-type aerophones are either trumpets (trumpet), whose bore is cylindrical, or horns (horn), whose bore is conical, although in practice they are sometimes difficult to distinguish. (Some writers prefer to call horns those instruments known or believed to have developed from instruments made from animal horns or tusks, terming the remaining lip-vibrated instruments trumpets.) Trumpet-type aerophones are further classified in two ways: (1) according to the position of the mouth hole—they are end-blown if it is located at the upper orifice of the tube and side-blown if pierced somewhere in the side—and (2) by the presence or absence of a mouthpiece. Finally, trumpet-type aerophones are classified according to construction designed to permit the playing of chromatic pitches. They are natural if not so constructed, such as the conch shell and the hoop-shaped baroque trumpet, and chromatic if built with finger holes, slides, or valves.

      A possible fifth category, sometimes suggested as an addition to the Sachs-Hornbostel list, would be the human voice, which approximates the criteria for a double reed aerophone.

      With the Sachs-Hornbostel classification well in mind, the common terminology can be used with the understanding that the term woodwinds refers to flutes and reed instruments and the term brasses to lip-vibrated aerophones.

The production of sound (musical sound)
      Tubes used to produce a musical sound may be cylindrical, conical, or some combination of the two. They may also be straight or curved. Regardless of the material used, their interior surface must be smooth for best results. The relation of tube length to diameter varies widely but must remain within certain practical limits in order to produce musical pitches. The air contained within the tube is set into vibration by the breath, or in some cases a bellows, acting upon a sound-generating device. The pressure exerted against the molecules of air in the tube causes the particles to move forward along the tube until they bump into others, setting them in motion while the first bounce back. This process creates regular pulsations producing sound waves. Throughout the sounding length of the tube, the entire wave moves at the speed of sound. The air itself moves only slowly, and the phenomenon has been compared to the starting of a freight train, in which the first burst of energy from the engine jerks the car behind, which in turn passes the impulse of the car behind it, and so on throughout the length of the train. The impact of the cars also produces a reverse pressure as it moves along. Similarly, at the sounding length of the tube, the waves are reflected back upon themselves, creating a counterpressure that forms nodes and antinodes. The node results from interference between the forward and the reverse forces creating a static point; the antinode is the point of freest vibration in the sound wave. Antinodes always occur at the open ends of a tube, and it must be remembered that the end where the sound generates is also an open end, except in the clarinet types. In its simplest form, a node (N) is created at the exact middle between the two antinodes (A) at each end of the vibrating length.

      The note (tone) produced by this basic wave form is called the fundamental. If the pressure of the generating vibration is increased sufficiently, the sound waves divide in half, producing an antinode in the exact middle with consequent nodes between the three antinodes, producing a pattern consisting of A-N-A-N-A instead of A-N-A.

      Similarly, with further increase in the generating force, the column may be further divided into thirds, fourths, fifths, and so on. The process is known as overblowing. Pitches (pitch) resulting from these divisions are called overtones (overtone), and their frequency increases in proportion to the division of the air column—that is, 1:2, 1:3, 1:4, etc. If the fundamental is C at a frequency of 128 vibrations per second, the second partial will be an octave higher, c at 256 vibrations per second, the third will be g at 384, and the fourth will be c′ at 512. The successive pitches created by the vibration of the air column as a whole (the fundamental) and its various divisions (the series of harmonic overtones) create the harmonic series, theoretically obtainable in toto on any tube with the appropriate increase in the force of the generating vibration and theoretically extending to infinity. In addition to the successive individual pitches created by overblowing, a column (or any division of a column) of air simultaneously vibrates in its parts. Consequently, the pitches of the harmonic series are usually present in some strength with the primary pitch heard as the fundamental. For this reason, the pitches of the harmonic series are known as partials and are numbered in the order in which they appear. The following example shows the harmonic series for the fundamental pitch C. (Asterisked notes are noticeably out of tune with the tempered chromatic scale, which contains 12 equal semitones.)

      The relative strength of the various partials, which is controlled largely by the shape of the tube and the type of generator, is responsible for the timbre or colour of the pitch. It is this feature that allows the ear to distinguish between the quality of various tones.

      It is notable that each successive interval of the harmonic series grows smaller, the number of partials doubles in each octave, and diatonic pitches (i.e., whole and half steps) of the major scale become available in the fourth octave. The series is particularly significant among the natural trumpet-type aerophones (i.e., those lacking valves, finger holes, keys, or slides), for the pitches that could be played are limited to a range of 1 to about 16 notes from this series without some device to alter the fundamental. The tubes of all trumpet-type aerophones are long in relation to their width and are differentiated according to whether the fundamental can be sounded. Instruments wide enough to sound the fundamental are called whole-tube instruments, and those too narrow to do so are half-tube. The latter include those that can be overblown into the third and fourth octave, producing approximately 16 partials.

      A pipe stopped at one end will have the static point of its air column there, consequently producing a node (N) at the closed end and an antinode (A) at the other.

      Because of the closed end, the column cannot be divided in half or into any even-numbered multiples, for such divisions would require an antinode at the closed end. Thus, all even-numbered partials are unavailable in the sound spectrum, and the instrument overblows only to the odd-numbered partials. The following is an illustration of overblowing at the third partial:

      The clarinet family and stopped flue pipes in the organ are the most commonly known instruments of this type.

      Pulsating air within a tube in turn initiates pulses in the free air, creating sound waves roughly similar in a single dimension to the waves created on still water if a stone is dropped into it. Because free aerophones must create such eddies in the air directly, the capabilities of these instruments are extremely limited. Even organ reeds, which belong to this class, are capable of sophisticated music merely because of their number. Each reed produces only the pitch to which it is tuned, and the pipe, if present, does not determine pitch but serves only as a resonator for the reed.

trumpet-type aerophones (aerophone)
      As regards sound generation, trumpets and horns differ from other aerophones in their use of the so-called “lip reed,” which is formed when the player's partially closed lips vibrate as they press against the rim of a mouthpiece or mouth hole (although the behaviour of the lips, strictly speaking, is not exactly comparable to the operation of a reed). When the lips vibrate, the resulting tremor in the flow of the breath is transmitted to the air in the tube, which resonates at the frequency that most closely matches that of the lips. The experienced player adjusts his embouchure to produce the desired frequency.

      The mouthpiece, an important accessory to sound production in trumpet-type aerophones, is an adaptor used to widen the starting diameter of a bore otherwise too small to allow the lips to vibrate effectively. It has three internal elements—the cup; the throat, an opening at the base of the cup; and the backbore, which leads to the main tubing—the shape and relationship of which strongly influence an instrument's tone and technical capacity. Mouthpieces on Western orchestral trumpets have a hemispheric cup with shallow walls that meet the throat at a sharp angle; these effect a bright tone. Mouthpieces used with cornets and trombones are deeper, with rounded-off throats, and those for French horns are virtually funnel-shaped; these all produce a more mellow tone.

      An instrument's bore also influences its tone, as reflected in the subtypes trumpet and horn in the Sachs-Hornbostel classification. Trumpets normally have narrow cylindrical bores that expand in the final third of the tube's length and terminate in a small bell, which helps to radiate the sound and to bring the harmonics into tune. This bore configuration, in conjunction with a mouthpiece with a shallow cup, favours the production of high partials. Horns, on the other hand, have expanding bores through all or part of the tube's length and normally end in a large bell. Aided by a deep-cupped or funnel-shaped mouthpiece, they favour low partials and function most efficiently in a low range.

      Ways of filling in the missing tones of the harmonic series on trumpet-type aerophones were known in the West as early as the 10th century, when finger holes, which shorten the sounding length of the tube, were cut into instruments made from animal horns. The cornett, which was made from two halves of a hollowed-out block of wood that had been glued together and bound with leather, was similarly fitted with finger holes and was widely used in Europe from the end of the 15th through the 17th century. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, makers covered the holes of trumpets and horns with keys to enable them to play a complete chromatic scale; the keyed horn was invented in Bohemia about 1770, and keys were thereafter added to the trumpet and bugle.

      Another solution to providing the missing tones was to increase the sounding length of the tube, thereby making the partials of different harmonic series available separately and producing a chromatic scale. As early as the 14th century, the term sacabuche (Spanish: “drawpipe,” or “pull push”) was used to refer to a lip-vibrated instrument, presumably with a single telescoping slide. Fifteenth-century Flemish paintings depict what appear to be slide trumpets, in which the player slid the entire instrument up and down along the long shank of the mouthpiece with one hand, steadying the mouth pipe with the other.

      Given this awkward beginning, it is easy to imagine bending the slide back upon itself, a less cumbersome alternative that appears to have been adopted in the mid-15th century. On so-called double slide instruments, such as the Renaissance sackbut and its successor, the modern trombone, two parallel inner tubes of the slide mechanism are attached at their upper ends to the body of the instrument by a cross stay. The mouthpiece is fit into the top of one tube, and the bell section fits on the other. The U-shaped slide moves along the two stationary tubes, lowering the fundamental by a half step with each lower slide position and making available the notes of seven harmonic series.

      Crooks (crook), detachable lengths of tubing, also were used to increase the sounding length and lower the pitch of trumpets, trombones, and horns. They are of two types: “terminal” crooks, which attach to the mouthpiece receiver, and “medial” crooks, which are inserted in a wider portion of an instrument's tubing. First mentioned in the mid-16th century, both types of crooks are clearly depicted in Michael Praetorius (Praetorius, Michael)'s Syntagma musicum (1619). Praetorius's illustration of trombones, for example, features crooks inserted between the slide and bell sections. Terminal crooks were common on trumpets from the 17th through the 19th century. They were also used, singly and in combination, on the horn until the mid-18th century, when sliding medial crooks were added to the tubing inside the hoop of the German horn known as the Inventionshorn.

      In the early 18th century, horn players in Bohemia discovered that the gaps in the instrument's harmonic series could be filled by using the hand to partially stop the bell. When the hand was cupped to form an extension of the air column, the pitch of the note being played was lowered one-half step. Hand stopping, which became known throughout Europe in the 1750s thanks to the Bohemian hornist Anton Hampel, was later applied to the trumpet.

      About 1815, either Heinrich Stölzel or Friedrich Blühmel, both of Berlin, invented the valved (valve) horn. When the valve was opened by depressing a key, it deflected the airstream into extra tubing, changing the effective length of the tube and lowering its pitch. The two valves of the original valved horns were used in combination: the first lowered the pitch one step and the second a half step; together they lowered the pitch one and a half steps. Later, a third valve, which lowered the pitch yet another step and a half, became a standard feature of such instruments. Used singly and in combination, these valves made the instrument completely chromatic above the second partial. The illustration below shows the harmonic series made available by the depression of different valves and combinations of valves; notes shown in black are slightly out of tune with the tempered scale.

      Perhaps because the natural horn had more notes available than did 19th-century natural trumpets and also because the valve system, particularly on the early horns, affected the purity of tone, valved horns were accepted slowly. At first, valves were considered a convenient substitute for crooks—in effect, a means to modulate (change key) quickly—but band musicians were quick to develop virtuoso techniques of rapid chromatic playing.

      Despite their convenience, valves are inherently defective in that they open a fixed amount of tubing. If the first valve on an instrument in C is depressed, lowering the pitch a whole step, the fundamental pitch of the instrument is changed from C to B♭. Using the second valve and its corresponding length of tubing (intended for a C instrument) to lower the instrument, now in B♭, a half step requires slightly more tubing than needed to lower a C instrument a half step. In many cases, the player can correct such discrepancies by adjusting his embouchure, decreasing slightly the speed of lip vibration to flatten the pitch without destroying its tone quality. The greater the amount of tubing, however, the worse the discrepancies in tuning. Most trumpets now have compensating slides that operate either manually or automatically to add length to the tubing on the first and third valves. For some large instruments, such as tubas, this device is impractical, and extra valves are added.

Flutes (flute) and reeds
      Sound is generated by different methods in the aerophones designated as flutes and reeds in the Sachs-Hornbostel system. In flutes, the airstream is directed against a sharp edge; in reeds (reed instrument), the air column in the tube is caused to vibrate between two parts of a beating double reed or between a beating single reed and a mouthpiece.

      Essential to sound production in reedpipes is the reed itself. Those used on most Western instruments are typically made from the stems of the large semitropical grass Arundo donax (giant reed), commonly referred to as cane, grown on the Mediterranean coasts of France, Spain, and Italy. (Substitutes for cane—wood, whalebone, silver, and plastic—also have been tried.) Seasoned over a period of years, cane reeds may be purchased finished or be made by the player himself.

      The double reed for an oboe or bassoon is made from a strip of cane about twice the length of the finished reed. The inner surface is gouged thin, shaped to be narrower at the ends, and notched in the middle. The reed is then soaked in water and folded in half at the notch. The free ends are bound with thread and, for oboes and English horns, mounted on a short tapered metal tube called a staple. A bassoon reed is bound with thread and wire over a steel mandrel, which is later removed to leave a hollow rounded stem. To finish the reed, the halves are separated at the notch and the tips scraped to a feather edge on the outside. The form and degree of “scrape” applied to the tip of the reed has a profound influence on its behaviour and may vary a great deal from player to player. In playing, the double reed of the oboe and bassoon is held by the tension of the lips drawn in over the teeth. The opening between the two blades of the reed alternately opens and closes with the pressure of the breath to generate the pulsations in the tube.

      The single reed for the clarinet is made from a slip cut from the stem of Arundo donax. After being trimmed, the reed is flattened on the inner side, while the end of the rounded outer side is scraped down to a feather edge. The thick end of the reed is attached, flat side down, to the mouthpiece by a metal ligature or length of twine. In playing, the thin end of the reed vibrates, alternately closing and opening the space between the reed and the mouthpiece. The vibration carries through the wedged-shaped tone chamber in the mouthpiece and into the air column in the tube.

      The body of some folk instruments is itself a length of reed, made into an instrument by cutting and raising a rectangular tongue from the tube below a natural knot. The tongue is sometimes kept from closing down completely by inserting a hair at the base of the cut.

      Because the tubes of flutes and reed instruments (in contrast to those of trumpet-type aerophones) are short in relation to their diameter, they are generally capable of sounding the fundamental and respond best to pitches low in the harmonic series. To play in the upper register, the player must overblow, breaking the air column into parts, each of which vibrates at a frequency that is in direct proportion to the fundamental. Oboes, bassoons, and saxophones—all open tubes with conical bores—overblow at the octave; clarinets, whose cylindrical bore acts as a closed pipe, overblow at the 12th.

      In overblowing, the player tightens his lips on the reed. Increasing lip pressure is not always sufficient by itself, however, and a variety of techniques and mechanisms have been developed to assist the player in making the notes of the upper register emerge clearly and instantaneously. For example, on flutes and bassoons, the first finger hole is positioned so that, when it is opened on certain high pitches, low partials are prevented from forming; opening a special key on the clarinet, saxophone, and modern oboe serves the same purpose. Overblowing is not a universal practice: the double and single reeds of some non-Western and early European reedpipes are inserted directly into the oral cavity or covered by a reed cap and hence, being uncontrolled by the lips, do not overblow.

      Because of the acoustic characteristics of flutes and reeds, only a few pitches are available on instruments lacking finger holes. Thus, instruments with finger holes are known in most cultures, as are fingering systems. Typical of such systems in the West is the six-hole system, so named because the six finger holes of the Baroque transverse flute and oboe—there were no thumbholes—were controlled by the first, second, and third fingers of both hands. (The left hand normally took the higher position on the pipe, but this did not become standard until the mid-18th century.) Both instruments were pitched in D and sounded d (the D below middle C) when all six finger holes were covered. Lifting the fingers one by one, beginning with the lowest, shortened the sounding length of the instruments and produced e, f♯, g, a, b, and c♯—the remaining notes of the D-major scale; the octave (d′) was overblown.

      On six-hole transverse flutes and oboes, chromatic pitches were obtained by closing one or more holes below an open one, a technique known as cross-fingering. For example, to produce f rather than f♯, the player uncovered the fifth hole with the second finger of his right hand while keeping the sixth hole (and the first through fourth holes) covered. (Because this arrangement of the fingers looked vaguely like the tines of a fork, some musicians call it a fork fingering.) With the six-hole configuration, however, no cross-fingering could produce e♭/d♯, because there was no hole to cover below the fundamental, d. Consequently, a seventh hole was bored between the sixth and the end of the transverse flute and oboe; it was covered by a closed key controlled by the fourth finger of the right hand. (A closed key covers the hole when at rest.)

      In the late 18th century, additional keys were introduced to ease various difficulties of fingering and intonation. At first, open and closed keys were fitted to instruments through slots cut in rings or knobs of wood left after the body of the instrument was turned on a lathe; the key was secured in the slot with a metal pin. In the first quarter of the 19th century, as the number of keys increased, this type of mounting became increasingly inconvenient for builders. Brass saddles, which included the key mount, came to replace wooden knobs, first on bassoons and later on other woodwinds. Both these methods of affixing keys were eventually superseded by the use of metal pillars screwed directly into the wood, to which were attached the key and axle. In addition, 19th-century reformers such as Theobald Boehm (Boehm, Theobald) made other, more radical changes in instrument construction (discussed below under The history of Western wind instruments: The Romantic period (wind instrument)). Changes of the type Boehm championed, along with the constantly expanding key system, brought with them a transformation in tone quality, as the valves did to the brasses. Although some connoisseurs consider these changes regrettable, they have made possible technical dexterity in all keys.

Social aspects of wind instruments
      To understand the importance of wind instruments throughout the world, one must first appreciate the great diversity of social contexts in which they are used. Which types are played, who plays them, and why? This discussion will examine the function and symbolism of wind instruments in various world cultures. Next, some relations between cultures as revealed by the dissemination of wind instruments will be surveyed. Finally, the decorative aspects of wind instruments will be treated. The instruments discussed below as illustrations have been chosen to provide the widest possible sampling of a vast selection.

In indigenous cultures of the world
      For indigenous peoples, music often serves purposes other than entertainment or aesthetic enjoyment. Certain wind instruments are closely associated with the supernatural (supernaturalism), and their sounds connote powerful magic. Australian Aborigines (Australian Aborigine), for instance, identify the sound of a bull-roarer with the voices of supernatural beings; for the Plains Indians (Plains Indian), the same sound signifies an awesome natural phenomenon, such as thunder. As a vestige of traditional culture in The Netherlands, every winter a wooden horn (midwinterhoorn) is lifted from the well where it is stored and then sounded to drive away evil spirits and encourage the return of spring. Wind instruments are often among a group's most important ritual objects, and in some cultures they are specially venerated. The Kamairua Indians of the Amazon rainforest keep their giant flutes—a metre or more long (3 to 4 feet)—wherein spirits are believed to dwell, in a special shrine where they are worshiped. The flutes and drums of New Guinea are similarly housed and worshiped.

      Wind instruments in indigenous cultures also serve nonreligious functions. In New Guinea, bamboo trumpets were once played to frighten an enemy during battle and to alert a village that the victorious warriors were coming home with the corpses of the foes. Conch-shell (conch) trumpets are used for signaling in the Pacific coastal regions of Colombia and in the Ecuadoran highlands. Trumpets also may be associated with the office of king or chief, as in western Africa, where their use is strictly controlled by tribal law.

      A variety of wind instruments in tribal cultures are used for personal amusement, and some are known to accompany vocal performance and dance. For example, the didjeridu of the Australian Aborigines, which is found across the northern coastal areas from west to east, supplies introductions, interludes, and conclusions, as well as accompaniments for the singing of songmen and their clapping sticks; it also provides intricate aural counterparts to the foot movements of dancers. The player's technique, which involves circular breathing, blowing, and singing into the instrument, is very elaborate.

      It is common for musical instruments to have symbolic significance. The form of an instrument or its decoration may relate to tribal myths, as do American Northwest Coast whistles carved in the shapes of birds and African ivory horns stained with human blood. Wind instruments in particular often have sexual connotations. Among the Tucano Indians of Colombia, the number of tubes on a set of panpipes (panpipe) depends on the age of the male performer and the development of his sexual organ. Boys between five and nine years of age play instruments with only three pipes, while men's panpipes have eight or nine. Wind instruments are also made to resemble the male and female sexual organs. The phallic shape of flutes, which are played exclusively by men in many cultures, is self-evident. Instruments reserved for women are often round or curved and may bear associations with the moon or water. (Oceans respond to tides, tides to the Moon; the Moon marks the female menstrual cycle.) No symbolism is universal, however, and an instrument's sexual connotations may conflict: for example, a conch shell, which by its shape and derivation from a water animal is female, is generally made into a trumpet, usually considered a male instrument.

      Not only the shapes but also the sounds of indigenous instruments are often rich in symbolism. The sound of the flute, for example, is widely associated with love magic. Among the Northeast and Plains Indians of North America, young men played the flute to serenade young women ; in New Guinea, flutes and flute music are connected with rites of sexual (sexual behaviour, human) initiation. In some cultures, instrument symbolism is highly developed. For the Tucano Indians of Colombia, instrument sounds constitute a symbolic taxonomy comprising three levels: whistling, vibration, and percussion. The whistling of a flute connotes sexual invitation, while vibration, represented by such instruments as the indigenous clarinet and the bull-roarer, symbolizes a warning or threat. Percussive sounds produced by drums and various rattles symbolize the uniting of male and female.

In Asia
      In many cultures of Asia, wind instruments are used in a variety of social contexts, not least in religious ritual. In Taiwan the transverse flute ( di) and free-reed mouth organ ( sheng) are played in celebrating Confucius's birthday. Some of the Chinese-inspired imperial ritual music in Japan (arts, East Asian) likewise employs the flute and mouth organ, along with the oboe ( hichiriki). In Tibet the low-pitched chanting of Buddhist monks is accompanied by a variety of instruments, the most spectacular of which is the long copper rag-dung. These straight, conically bored natural horns vary in length from some 1.5 to 6 metres (5 to 20 feet) and are sometimes made in sections that can be telescoped to enhance portability; they provide drones for chanting. The only melodic instrument in Tibetan religious orchestras is the double reed rgya-gling, which is used to play preludes and interludes to the chants.

 Wind instruments are used in many different ways in Asian classical and folk music (see below The music of wind instruments (wind instrument)); thus, the distinctions between art and folk instruments are not always clear-cut. In China, for instance, transverse flutes may be played in modern folk ensembles as well as in ritual and local theatre orchestras. This diversity of use has affected manufacture: although flutes are still made in irregular temperaments for traditional music, many are now constructed in equal temperament for use in the concert hall. Folk instruments also have been brought into classical music traditions elsewhere. The shehnai of northern India, a conical oboe with a metal bell and six to eight finger holes, was traditionally associated with outdoor performance and largely with folk music; it is now played on the concert stage and in temple compounds. The nagaswaram serves the same functions in southern India.

In western Europe
      European society has long valued wind instruments, from their earliest use in rituals down to the present day. In the Carolingian era, signal horns became closely associated with the military and nobility. The oliphant, an end-blown horn made from an elephant tusk, is prominently mentioned in the medieval epic Song of Roland. Later, European armies used shawms and straight metal trumpets ( buisines) to sound military calls and to rally troops in battle, following the practice of Islamic military bands. Wind instruments may also have been incorporated into medieval liturgical services, although much of the early evidence supporting this is found in religious art and may refer less to ritual practice than to symbolic or allegorical meanings of the instruments depicted.

      Wind bands consisting of shawms, trumpets, and trombones were associated in the Renaissance with the nobility, who sought to demonstrate wealth and power in the musical events they sponsored; court documents and pictorial sources testify to the wide use of winds in processions and other ceremonies. Collecting instruments also may have been considered a mark of wealth and prestige, since some nobles assembled enormous collections, in which winds figure prominently. The household inventory of Georg Raymund Fugger (Fugger Family) of Augsburg (now in Germany), for example, lists about 400 instruments, including 111 flutes. In England, 272 of the 381 instruments in Henry VIII's collection were winds.

      During the same period, groups of professional wind-instrument players were formed in municipalities across Europe. Stadtpfeifer, as these musicians were known in Germany, played for ceremonies, for weddings, and sometimes with singers in performances of elaborately scored sacred polyphony (i.e., music with multiple melodic lines). In France during the reign of Louis XIV, the Grande Écurie (an ensemble that provided music for royal occasions) cultivated wind instruments and contained within their group the finest players and wind-instrument makers. At a different level, amateur musicians included the famous English diarist Samuel Pepys (Pepys, Samuel), whose love of the recorder was matched only by his devotion to his viol and lute. As public concerts began, contemporaneously with Pepys, the middle classes became further involved in music making. Among the amateurs of note was Frederick II the Great (Frederick II) of Prussia, who hired the German musician and composer Johann Joachim Quantz (Quantz, Johann Joachim) to teach him the flute. Folk music has continued to maintain its share of wind instruments.

      With the passing of patronage from royal establishments to the public, art music found a broader base for support, while amateur music continued to thrive at its own level. In the 21st century the quantity of instruments is the greatest ever, and technical development has reached new heights, while never before have so many become competent performers.

Dissemination
      When an instrument is introduced to a different geographic area, the new instrument that develops there generally retains some connection to its predecessor: a similar name or function, a shared physical characteristic, or an association with a particular social class. Instrument dissemination, then, reflects the relationships between cultures. The dissemination of the zūrnā, an oboe found throughout the Arab world, in Turkey, and in parts of Europe and Asia, is a useful illustration.

      The zūrnā first became known in Islamic areas, where it emerged from a synthesis of earlier types from Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia. In its basic four-piece form, with flared body, reed, staple, and pirouette (a disk or cylinder that partly covers the reed), it spread rapidly to lands conquered by the Arabs. It also was known by the 12th century in western Europe (shawm) and later in the Balkan region (zurla). With the spread of Islam, the zūrnā was introduced from the Middle East and Persia to India, Southeast Asia, and China. The Persian surnāy (or surnā), for instance, became the shehnai of northern India and the suona of China. The latter contrasts with the indigenous Han Chinese oboe ( guan), which has a short cylindrical tube that does not overblow at the octave.

      The zūrnā was first used as a signaling instrument in military bands, but the Arabs later employed it for a variety of functions: to greet important persons, to mark the beginnings of pilgrimages, and to accompany other ceremonies. Some of these functions were spread along with the instrument. Thus, the zūrnā was heard at funerals in the Arab world, as well as in Armenia and Sri Lanka. Other extramusical associations suggest different cultural connections: the sarunai of Malaysia, for example, was used mainly for shadow puppet plays, as the zūrnā had been employed in the Turkish shadow theatre. Today the zūrnā survives as a folk instrument in Islamic areas and other regions, including Greece, Cyprus, and Armenia. It is used mainly in festive village music and is played in small ensembles by members of the lowest social classes.

Craftsmanship
      The high value placed upon musical instruments within a culture is generally reflected in their craftsmanship. In addition to the skill and quality of materials the maker incorporates into the construction itself, artistry comes into play as the maker decorates an instrument with symbolic designs or with elaborate carvings or inlays.

      The form of a wind instrument may itself be decorative (decorative art). The symmetry of the suona, a Chinese oboe whose conical shaft terminates in a bell section of brass, is evocative. The tube of the instrument is gracefully indented for each finger hole, leaving the impression of a series of diminishing concentric circles, which are capped by the small brass pirouette and a short reed. The related Arab surnāy may be decorated with inlay. In Europe in the Middle Ages, the oliphant was highly prized not only for the ivory from which it was made but also for its sometimes elaborate carvings.

      Similar, if less striking, attention to design is encountered in European woodwinds. The bulges that typify the profile of the Baroque oboe and recorder are at once utilitarian (they reinforce the joints of the instruments) and artistic. The addition of ivory rings at the joints added to their beauty. Among the more fantastic and ingenious specimens of woodwinds are certain flutes and clarinets of the late 18th and 19th centuries made as functional walking sticks.

      Undecorated brass instruments with their pleasing curves demand little additional garnishment, yet even these graceful instruments were frequently embellished with engraving on the rim of the bell or on the bell itself, particularly by the famous Nürnberg makers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Seams and joints in the brass tubing were often reinforced by ornate but functional metal tubes and rings (sleeves and pommels). The most elaborate and fantastic decorations, possibly inspired by the Chinese, emerged in the Renaissance, when unusual brass instruments were commissioned for ostentatious dramatic performances intended for royalty and their guests. Trumpets were made in the shape of dragons, the bell of these (and other) instruments being transformed into the dragon's head. At times a tongue was even inserted to vibrate when the instrument was blown, and fishlike scales were painted on the outside. Such extravagances appeared sporadically in the following centuries, especially in late 19th-century Italy. Elaborate key mechanisms have inhibited decoration in woodwinds in the 20th and 21st centuries, and makers of brasses have generally been satisfied with the beauty of the functional design of their instruments.

The history of Western wind instruments
      In the study of musical instruments the name Curt Sachs (Sachs, Curt) looms so large that, despite the studies made since his death in 1959, no one has yet achieved his eminence in the field of musical instruments. The origins of musical instruments extend to prehistoric times, and frequently only fantastic legends survive; yet, by combining information from anthropology, history, and linguistics, Sachs made discoveries, developed theories, and drew conclusions that have stimulated much research in and given purpose to the entire field. Much of the following material leans on his research and perception, with slight modification to reflect later discoveries.

Early history
      The sources of information are often nebulous. Among the few instruments that have survived from the prehistoric period are bone end-blown flutes with notched mouthpieces and finger holes that show technical skills and acoustical knowledge. Cave paintings and rock carvings show an impressive variety of instruments. Though some contemporary regional cultures claim to have instruments that have not changed for centuries, the artifacts of folk and art cultures all over the world seldom remain static.

      There are many conjectures concerning the origin of wind instruments, and, since they are found widely scattered over the face of the Earth, it is quite likely that the process of vibrating the lips against a hole in a branch, a bone, a shell, an animal horn, or a tusk may have been discovered independently in many early cultures. Their origin may, in fact, have transcended even the first lip buzzing. Many cultures employ these same mediums as masks with which to disguise the voice in magical or religious rites; their use as musical instruments appears to have been an afterthought. Such megaphones are still used today in as widely dissimilar cultures as those of Switzerland and the Brazilian Indians. The conch shell, the most frequent of marine shells used to produce sound, probably began its service to music as a voice distorter, later to become an effective trumpet.

      Bamboo, cane, and the limbs or trunks of trees form other materials for trumpets. The Australian didjeridu, for instance, can be made from either cane or, more frequently, a eucalyptus branch, often hollowed out by termites. From the New Kingdom of Egypt (art and architecture, Egyptian) in the tomb of Tutankhamen (14th century BC) was found the earliest specimen of a silver trumpet. Later the salpinx, also a straight trumpet, was known in Greece. A beautiful specimen made of 13 fitted sections of ivory with a bronze bell is ascribed to the 5th century BC. The Roman (ancient Rome) equivalent, the tuba, was bronze and reached Rome from the Etruscans.

      Another Roman trumpet was the lituus, a J-shaped instrument whose immediate origin was also Etruscan. Its inspiration, visible in its earliest examples, was a simple hollow cane with a cow horn for a bell. Similar instruments are also found in China, where the zhajiao adds a shallow and flat mouthpiece to the same basic design. Another long trumpet of Rome was the cornu, which was curved to a G-shape for portability and braced crosswise for carrying over the shoulder.

      As ancient as the trumpet is the natural horn, which was derived from an animal horn or a tusk. With the multifarious species of horned animals, the African countries achieved a rich variety of shapes, sizes, and pitches. The earliest and the most progressive horns were end-blown, but many side-blown horns remain in use, particularly in Africa.

 The shofar deserves special mention, for it has served the Jewish religion since the beginning of historic times and is now retained for Rosh Hashana (New Year's) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) in most congregations. The instrument is merely a goat's or ram's horn, flattened and bent in a steaming process. The various ritual blasts use the second and third partial only, and its mighty sound was considered efficacious in reaching the ear of Yahweh.

      The Roman version of the animal horn was the buccina, which was originally an ox's horn, sometimes supplied with a mouthpiece. Although ostensibly the buccina was a shepherd's instrument, it had a bronze counterpart that was suitably decorated for use in the Roman army.

      More impressive, however, were the lurer (lur) (singular lur), the early bronze horns of the Scandinavians. Conical and shaped in pairs, like the curves of mammoth tusks, they have a funnel-shaped mouthpiece and end in a flat studded disk. Although their origin was once thought to have been as early as 3000 BC, 1600 to 1000 BC now appears more likely. The line of development would appear to have passed from metal-studded animal horns to the impressive bronze pieces, many of which have been excavated in Denmark. The effective mouthpiece allowed production of tones to the 11th or 12th partial, but it appears unlikely that these unusual instruments had much influence on later European horns.

Flutes (flute)
      Flutes were ubiquitous in antiquity. In early depictions they are sometimes confused with reedpipes (reed instrument). Their earliest forms have already been mentioned. In early historical periods they were known in Sumer and Egypt (art and architecture, Egyptian), and in the latter country specimens have been found in tombs, excellently preserved through the centuries by the arid climate. The Egyptian flute is vertical, about 90 cm (3 feet) long and 1.3 cm (0.5 inch) wide, and is easily end-blown because of its narrow embouchure. Near the lower end there are two to six finger holes. The instruments still exist and are known by the Persian name nāy.

      Throughout the ancient world of pastoral societies, vertical flutes were apparently popular for shepherds. These developed into rafts of graduated closed-end tubes known as panpipes. They are as common in eastern Europe as they are in South America. A set of metal panpipes was found in the artifacts of the Hopewell people in the U.S. state of Ohio. In Southeast Asia panpipes are found that bundle the tubes in a tight circle so that they can be turned around; in more of the world's versions of panpipes, the head or hand is moved back and forth.

      The idea of the hydraulus (hydraulis), a water organ, may have stemmed from the multitubed panpipe. Its main development appears to have been around Alexandria from the 3rd century BC. Air under hydraulic pressure activated the pipes as controlled by an elementary keyboard. The tone was reported to be loud and penetrating. Despite the invention of pneumatic power, the hydraulus lasted at least through the 5th century AD.

Reedpipes
      Egypt also made clarinets, instruments composed of two canes with three sides of a rectangle cut obliquely in the upper end of the two single reeds. The term idioglottic is used to describe a reed cut from the tube itself. From four to six equidistant finger holes are cut in each cane, and blowing with the entire reed engulfed in the mouth cavity produces a pungent, tremulous sound. The slight deviation of pitch between the two tubes creates the acoustic beats (beat) that cause the tremolo. (The device was rediscovered and copied in organ pipes late in the 15th century in Germany.) Sachs noted a double clarinet on a relief dated 2700 BC in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The same instrument is known today as zummārah (zamr) wherever Islamic civilization flourished, and closely related instruments—the arghūl of the Middle East, which has one long drone pipe and one short fingered pipe, and the launeddas of Sardinia, which consists of three pipes—also preserve the same shrill, reedy sound that must have been characteristic many centuries ago.

      The New Kingdom (1567–1085 BC) yields the Egyptian oboe, known only as mat, the generic name of pipes. Like the flute, the oboes were made of narrow cane but were about 60 cm (2 feet) long; and, like the clarinet, they were blown in pairs, the left playing a drone while the right fingered a melody. Such instruments with their rich, penetrating sound have been known through the ages under various names and shapes. Their effect has long been considered intoxicating. The Greek version of the double reed was the aulos. The two divergent narrow pipes activated by a large reed would create a loud, pungent sound highly prized by the Greeks. Probably no wind instrument has received as much praise over such an extended period of time, yet rarely has it been used in performance since the ancient era.

Developments in the Middle Ages
      Western society in the Middle Ages went through crises that created decisive changes in music and musical instruments. Except for the tibia, which was the Roman equivalent of the aulos, Rome showed little interest in Greek instruments, preferring the more powerful brasses that could be heard in such spectacular events as those given at the Colosseum. So Greek music dissolved, and its instruments dispersed to the countryside. The invasions of migratory tribes began in AD 150, culminating in the fall of Rome in AD 476 and continuing long past that date. With Greek and Roman culture in decline, the migratory peoples might have established their own music, but they brought few musical instruments. The Christians, who controlled the Roman Empire after the conversion of the emperor Constantine (AD 312), had little love for the musical instruments associated with earlier persecutions. Folk instruments, of course, remained, and such documents as the Utrecht Psalter (c. 830; Utrecht, Library of the State University) contain drawings showing instruments, but there is little to indicate a flourishing musical culture. The great centres of learning in general as well as the cultivation of music and the playing of instruments remained in the Middle East.

      The most significant movement affecting the history of medieval musical instruments was the spread of Islam (Islamic arts) in the 7th and the first half of the 8th centuries, by which time it had arrived at its maximum expansion—west across Africa as far as southern Spain, south down the coast of eastern Africa to Madagascar, and east through Persia, northern India, and Indochina to Indonesia and the southernmost Philippine Islands. The Christians began pushing back the Muslims in the 9th and 10th centuries in Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia. In addition to this most obvious contact, the trade routes brought continuous Muslim products into the European cities engaged in Eastern commerce, especially Venice, Genoa, and Pisa; and, from the late 11th to the early 13th century, the Crusades took Christians to Muslim homelands, where they further absorbed Middle Eastern ideas and customs. Finally, a slower, less dramatic route existed across the Balkans and to the north, by which musical instruments drifted from the Middle East or Byzantium into the countries of northern Europe and on west to Iceland.

      In the 13th-century Spanish manuscript of the Cantigas de Santa María, illuminations depict Muslims in their own costumes playing their instruments next to Christians, who are playing closely related specimens. If the West had not begun to develop its own tradition, Western music today might not have differed significantly from that of the Middle East. Instead, the West modified the instruments and developed them in special ways. The Eastern melody and drone, combined with rhythm, were retained through the period and, indeed, to this day in much of Western folk music. The development of polyphony forced changes in many musical instruments. With voice parts covering much the same general range, each instrument had to possess a distinctive colour and a power of penetration to delineate its musical part.

      Among the earlier instruments, the animal horn remained, often decorated and even provided with holes to allow the production of melody but leaving little evidence that it contributed to cultured music. The trumpet in the mid-14th century was bent back upon itself in the shape of a very flat S, making it easier to hold and carry. The peculiar idiom of the trumpet limited it mostly to fanfares and signals, however; it was only occasionally joined with other wind instruments.

      As with the trumpet, other important woodwind instruments of the Middle Ages did not appear until the Gothic (Gothic art) period. The vertical flute, single and double, came from the Middle East and remains today in the Balkans. A single short pipe, always associated with the drum (tabor), still persists in the Basque regions of Spain and France. Too narrow to sound the fundamental, the pipe needs only two finger holes and a thumbhole to complete its scale, and it can thus be played with the left hand alone, freeing the right hand to beat the tabor and leaving the legs free to dance. The transverse flute moved from the Byzantine Empire to Germany in the late Middle Ages. Although associated with the fiddle during the minnesinger period of the 12th and 13th centuries, it became linked with the drum and military music in the form of the fife.

      A folk clarinet, often double, used a cow horn for a bell and occasionally a second cow horn to provide a wind chamber around the reed. Known as the hornpipe in England, the instrument is called by various names from Wales along the Mediterranean to India. It may also appear with the reeds enclosed in a calabash (magudi or pungi of India) or in sheep's bladder (bladder pipe).

 The bagpipe was known to Rome (Latin utriculus) by the 1st century AD. The bag was formed originally from the entire hide of a sheep or goat, with the chanter, the pipe with finger holes, fitted into a wooden stock at the neck. When drones are present, they emerge from stocks in the forelegs. A blowpipe is necessary to fill the bag with air, and an arm over the bag provides pressure to activate the pipes. The chanter has seven holes in front and a thumbhole behind.

      The pneumatic organ appeared around the 2nd century AD as a portative (portative organ) variety—that is, an organ small enough to be carried. These organs consisted of one or more ranks of flue pipes controlled by a keyboard. To aid portability, the usual two octaves had only the essential chromatic notes. From the Gothic period, portatives were frequently found both in pictures of processions and in seated ensembles. Depictions show the player operating a bellows with his left hand while manipulating the keys with the second and third fingers of his right hand. Various references show the presence of organs of many sizes throughout the Middle Ages. By the 10th century the nonportable positive organ had begun its distinguished career as the earliest form of church organ.

The Renaissance
      The major accomplishment of music in the Renaissance was the emancipation of instrumental from vocal music. As polyphony developed, the two- and three-part music of the 13th century expanded to a norm of four parts in the art music of the 15th century and to five or six parts by the middle of the 16th. Early in this vertical expansion the voice parts were differentiated in range, forming a texture extending to approximately three to three and a half octaves. Apart from the organ, no winds possessed a diatonic range of that size. Furthermore, as the voice parts spread, the penetrating and contrasting quality so advantageous for the crossing parts in medieval music became less desirable. The music of the time then demanded the building of instruments in different sizes for the various parts in order to secure a smooth blend throughout the texture. Such ensembles were called consorts (consort). Wind instruments flourished. At no time in the history of music was the choice of available timbres greater, and within the 16th century as many instruments as possible were built in families. The common sizes, built a fifth apart, were called the treble, tenor, and bass, usually with corresponding pitches in winds of a, d, and G. Flutes and recorders were an octave higher. A descant and a great bass were introduced for music that exceeded the combined range of the standard instruments. Woodwinds, in general, were made in one piece in a plain design, and Venice appears to have been an early centre of wind-instrument manufacture.

      The new concept of blending tone quality was applied to the flutes and recorders. Both were made with a relatively large cylindrical bore, which emphasized the low partials. As a result, the upper range was limited, but the effective octave and a half that remained was sufficient for Renaissance music. Since the transverse flute adapted less well to various sizes, it was more often used with other instruments.

      Double reeds were particularly numerous during the Renaissance, and in many species the reeds were capped. The best known of these was the crumhorn (German Krummhorn), an instrument of narrow cylindrical bore whose unusual J shape complemented its pungent, buzzy tone. The cap made it impossible for a player to exert lip pressure on the large reed within, so the instrument could not be overblown. Its seven finger holes, one thumbhole, and one upper key gave a range of only nine notes. Nevertheless, the crumhorn consort made an excellent ensemble, and some fine early sets of instruments still survive as testimony.

      Other soft-toned capped double reeds, known largely from written descriptions and pictorial sources, are the Italian cornamusa, probably little more than a crumhorn without the nonfunctional curved area, and the dolzaina, appearing much the same as the cornamusa. (The name cornamusa was more often used for a bagpipe.) A loud capped reed was the schryari, made in the three principal sizes. The outer shape was inverse conical, but, since no specimens remain, the contour of the bore is unknown.

 Shawms (shawm) were a particularly important family of loud double reeds, with related instruments spread across all Asia. Their wide conical bore, large double reed, and seven front finger holes provided them with a loud, reedy tone. The player could rest his lips on a wooden pirouette into which the reed was inserted and activate the reed without contact in the wind chamber formed in his mouth. Nevertheless, the reed could be controlled if desired, and the instrument was overblown partly through the second octave. Shawms were made in progressive sizes from the small descant in a′ to the great bass in G or F, the latter attaining a length of about 2.5 metres (8 to 9 feet). The power of the shawms enabled them to consort with trombones and to carry well in the outdoor tower music of central European cities.

      The more gentle curtal (German Dulzian; Italian fagotto; French basson) was a noncapped double reed with its conical bore doubled back within the same block and ending in a small bell. It was activated by a long, carefully trimmed double reed connected with the instrument proper by a short tube called the bocal. Six front finger holes, two thumbholes, and two keys gave it a range of two octaves and a second. It was first mentioned in 1540, and its bass (sometimes called the double curtal in England and the Choristfagott in Germany) soon became the most important size, particularly at the beginning of the Baroque period, when it was needed for a bass whenever higher winds were scored. German church composers of the 17th century normally used the Choristfagott as a bass for violins and violas as well. The double reeds with doubled back cylindrical bores were an interesting development. The sordone (French courtaut) was such an instrument, its narrow bore terminating in a side vent near the bocal. Most extraordinary was the rackett, whose narrow bore went through a cylinder of ivory or wood as many as nine times to make a double-bass instrument from a cylinder length of a few inches. The instrument plays an octave below notation and forms the lowest of the Renaissance winds. The Renaissance reeds (reed instrument) that were not adaptable to outdoor music vanished early in the 17th century, except for the curtal. The shawm survived somewhat longer in the West and remained important in the East.

 Another important woodwind was the cornetto (cornett) (an Italian name Anglicized as cornett; also known under its German name, Zink), the descendant of the medieval cow's horn with finger holes. The treble cornett in g was made from two pieces of wood, hollowed out and glued together to create a mildly conical tube, usually octagonal and most often curved in the shape of its prototype. A covering of leather, protecting the surface and sealing any leaks, was frequently decorated at the upper end. The cornett was made in larger sizes, but only the descant was widely used.

      The trumpet maintained its usefulness as a ceremonial instrument and developed in the direction more fully described in the next section. The trombone blended nicely in consort with cornetts as the treble instrument or in the loud consort in the company of shawms.

The Baroque and Classical periods
 Dramatic events in music around 1600 in Italy profoundly affected the music of Europe during the Baroque era. Several groups of literary men and musicians formed societies to revive the artistic principles of ancient Greece. They experimented with a type of drama that would use music as an adjunct to poetry. The musical result was the negation of polyphony, the reduction of melody to a position subservient to the text, and the creation of a bass line with improvised accompanying harmony to support the drama in the singing voice, altogether a direct repudiation of the ideals of the Renaissance. This was early opera. A 17th-century Italian composer, Claudio Monteverdi (Monteverdi, Claudio), referred to the style as seconda prattica and within his lifetime developed it into a much finer medium than the experimental style he inherited.

      The new style greatly affected instrumental practice. Those instruments that could not produce expressive sounds and that could not imitate the passions as represented by the skilled singers were relegated to the middle or lower register of the ensemble, where they could serve either as an inconspicuous background or as a contrasting support for the predominantly expressive melody. If the Renaissance was the era of woodwinds, the Baroque was the era of strings, and the violin family assumed a dominant position throughout both Baroque and Classical periods. Nevertheless, wind instruments were not overlooked, and before the end of the period they were altered in order to compete with the strings. In the meantime, the winds were useful for dance music and municipal music (i.e., for town ceremonies). Particularly in Germany, the loud winds of the Renaissance continued to be used. They maintained their 16th-century functions of being played regularly from towers, and they were always available for music in churches and palaces.

      By the early 1730s, however, when Johann Sebastian Bach (Bach, Johann Sebastian) and George Frideric Handel (Handel, George Frideric) were producing many of their great works, reaction had set in against the presumed pretentiousness of the elaborate Baroque style, and a premium was placed on simplicity and clarity. The importance of the bass line diminished, and the counterpoint, reborn in the 18th-century style, was again abandoned. By mid-century the sentimental style of an ornamented simple melody over an uncomplicated texture of basic tonal harmony had taken over, and it was on this foundation that Joseph Haydn (Haydn, Joseph) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus) based their mature Classical style. Wind instruments of Renaissance type were then preserved only in rural areas or as folk instruments, and the new winds, developed in the 18th century, challenged but never quite captured the supremacy of the strings.

      The Baroque opera demanded the depiction of the grand and majestic, so, obviously, the trumpet was important. The instrument was now compactly folded once to reduce 210 cm (7 feet) of tube to only a little over 60 cm (2 feet) of length. The normal keys of the period were D or C, a terminal crook lowering the D instrument when C was desired. The leading trumpeter played in the high or clarino range, which included the pitches of the fourth octave, where the tone was particularly magnificent and where the available diatonic notes permitted the playing of melodies, trills, and various ornaments. Other trumpets played successively lower pitches. The trombone (German Posaune; English sackbut; French saquebute; Spanish sacabuche) was used in opera and church orchestras. By the Baroque period it was being made in three sizes—f alto, B♭ tenor, and F bass—sizes that remained in use in Germany through much of the 19th century. The treble cornett gained a new use in the Baroque. Since its range equaled that normally used by the violins in the 17th century, it could substitute for them or contrast with them and also be effective in contrast with the soprano voice. Consequently, it was useful in Monteverdi's opera Orfeo (first performed 1607) and in many German church cantatas, as well as in instrumental ensembles. Difficult to play, it was extremely treacherous, and to be played with sufficient control it needed not only a good musician but also one with luck. The names of the Renaissance wind instruments are familiar to many music lovers, since the Baroque organ adapted so many stops imitating the colour of these instruments. The beating reed adapted in the Renaissance regal was brought into the organ proper and formed a variety of useful colours.

      Woodwind instruments were far too valuable for their individual tone colours to remain subservient to the ubiquitous violins, and in Paris the musician and instrument builder Jean Hotteterre (Hotteterre, Jacques), his family and associates all skilled wood turners, redesigned first the oboe and later the recorder, transverse flute, and bassoon—all in the last half of the 17th century. With the advent of these instruments, Renaissance woodwinds gradually vanished. The new instruments were turned in short sections, peculiarly with a broken profile—that is, an unevenly expanding or contracting bore between sections—a feature not long retained.

The oboe
      The oboe (French hautbois) was first to compete with the violin. The upper register, difficult and incomplete in the shawms, had to be developed. Hotteterre narrowed the bore of the treble shawm, reduced the size of the finger holes, and considerably narrowed the reed, which was attached to a staple and inserted directly into the top section as in the musette. With the pirouette abandoned, the more delicate reed could be carefully controlled by the player and pinched between the lips to produce fast enough vibrations for overblowing. Hotteterre also lowered the customary d′ pitch in descant to c′ by fitting a “butterfly” key at the end—i.e., in two-winged shape to accommodate the little finger of either hand. The oboe was immediately successful; in fact, it became the most favoured woodwind in the 18th century. Its tone was rich and expressive, and its better players could imitate all subtleties and expressive characteristics of highly trained operatic sopranos. A tenor form and a rare bass were not cultivated in art music. After the Renaissance, families of instruments were not generally made, and expressive playing was largely in demand in the soprano range. The English horn, or alto oboe, was adopted about 1720 but made no great impact. The instrument was curved as a horn in its early form and covered with leather. Bach called it oboe da caccia and used it occasionally for its dark, smooth tone colour.

      The bassoon underwent far less radical changes in the hands of Hotteterre than the oboe. The former curtal was simply built in four sections and lengthened to produce B♭′. The date of the bassoon's introduction into the orchestra is uncertain, since the double-reed instrument in the bass range was frequently taken for granted, but a French composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully (Lully, Jean-Baptiste), scored specifically for it in 1674. The standard bassoon for most of the 18th century had four keys, but six were common by the end of the century. The range was a remarkable three octaves, although the top b♭′ was available on few bassoons. As with the curtal, whose sound was mellow and obtrusive, the bassoon was praised for its tone and compared to the human voice, the ultimate in contemporaneous praise. Such comments testified to its success in playing expressively, and a considerable solo literature, rare among low-pitched instruments, bears further witness to its flexible melodic capabilities. Its service as a wind bass was indispensable. Some small bassoons, tenoroons and fagottini, were built in the century but remained obscure. More important was the contrabassoon, whose sporadic appearance in scores probably reflected on its rarity more than its usefulness.

The flute
      The Renaissance recorder blended well in consort but was weak in its upper register and needed modification to meet the demand for an expressive melodic style. The very nature of the instrument, with its lack of lip control, prevented much dynamic control, but the Baroque changes nevertheless went far toward producing an expressive instrument. It is to be remembered that throughout the Baroque period the Italian term flauto referred to the recorder; the cross flute was normally called transverso or flauto traverso and was so indicated on scores. Although many ambiguous cases exist, the recorder was the type of flute called for in much of Baroque music. The redesigned recorder was built in three sections with an inverse conical bore in the middle and foot. Although the full consort sizes and many others were made, the treble recorder (with a bottom written note of f′—i.e., the present-day alto recorder) was the principal instrument used for solos and orchestral performance.

      The transverse flute was also built in three sections with an inverse conical bore, and this flute as well as the recorder spoke better in the upper register. The E♭ key, as mentioned earlier, was soon added to make the instrument completely chromatic throughout its range (d′ to b♭‴). Intonation on the flute was nevertheless difficult. The necessary cross-fingerings caused a somewhat muffled quality. Consequently, the flute sounded best and its technique was most facile in the key of D major. Only rarely did Baroque composers of flute music venture far from the keys in one, two, or three sharps (i.e., G, D, or A major). To alleviate some of these problems and to adapt to the varying pitches at that time, after 1720 the middle section was often divided. Then the flute could be provided with from three to six different lengths for the upper of these sections (corps de rechange). In spite of these difficulties, the one-keyed flute had a lovely tone, softer than the modern flute. Keys were soon added to solve difficulties of intonation and tuning. By 1760 some London makers were adding keys for f′, g♯′, and b♭′, eliminating the usual cross-fingerings in the first octave. By the end of the 18th century, the flute had been lengthened and the keys added for c′ and c♯′, thus matching the range of the oboe. The tone quality of the instrument changed little, and its versatility improved.

      The military fife, which retained the one-piece construction of the Renaissance, remained useful for its limited repertoire, and the piccolo in B♭ or C was only occasionally used.

      One of the most significant contributions to Western art music in the 18th century was the addition of the clarinet. The various cane instruments with a single reed and stemming from antiquity still remained in the area around the Mediterranean as folk instruments. Furthermore, the bagpipe had adapted the single-reed pipe as its chanter. The chalumeau, one of these single-reed folk instruments, occasionally emerged into art music when the two oboists of the orchestra would use chalumeaux to imitate the sound of trumpets. Johann Christoph Denner (Denner, Johann Christoph), the renowned 16th-century wind instrument maker from Nürnberg, saw the possibilities of the instrument. He made them of boxwood, gave them an attached reed, and doubled their length, achieving a chalumeau register, as it is still called, from f to b♭′. Using the back key as a speaker, the instrument overblows at the 12th, making a clarino register from c′ to f‴. Soon keys for b′, c♯″, and e♭″ were added, completing the classical clarinet. These extra keys also produced e, f♯, and a♭ in the so-called chalumeau register, providing a total usable range of three octaves and one note. The clarinet had then emerged. Again, those describing the instrument compared its virtues to the human voice, and the instrument was adopted wherever players were available. Compared with the instruments of today, the cylindrical bore was narrow and the reed smaller to fit the long, narrow mouthpiece. Furthermore, the mouthpiece was inserted so that the reed, attached with cord, was on the upper side of the instrument.

      Early clarinets were made largely in C or B♭, sometimes with an A section to use on the B♭ instrument. Small F clarinets were available for use in bands, but, as with the other woodwinds of the time, a pair of treble clarinets were sufficient for the orchestra.

      A more important auxiliary instrument than, say, the tenor oboe was the basset horn, which provided an extension of the bore to take the chalumeau range down to c. The untimely demise of the basset horn in the 19th century has been regretted by many, for modern experimentation has shown it to be vastly superior to the alto clarinet in E♭ commonly used in bands.

      Another major contribution in the 18th century was the emergence of the French horn as an orchestral instrument. Early in the century the tone of the horn was appropriate for its use in signaling during the hunt. By mid-century the mouthpiece had been altered and the hand inserted in the bell to provide the warm, mellow quality in midrange that Classical composers found so useful. Consequently, much experimentation to increase its usefulness ensued, resulting in the crooks and in hand stopping. Even with its severe limitations, the horn of the Classical period became an essential colour.

      After the mid-18th century, high melodic parts in the trumpet appeared less necessary to an aesthetic that spurned the majestic for a simpler style. Trumpets were built in many keys, but for the most part trumpets in F replaced those in D and C, and the notes of the fourth octave, which were most difficult on the shorter instrument, were abandoned. In short, the complete clarino style disappeared along with those players of the privileged guild who had learned to master that treacherous range. The F trumpet remained standard in Europe through the 19th century.

The Romantic period (Romanticism)
      In the 19th century the pendulum swung from the restraint of the Classical to the expressiveness of the Romantic. The aesthetic demanded an emphasis on the personal, on the dramatic, and on the passionate. Music responded with modulation to remote keys and required instruments in increased range, more facile technique, and wider dynamic contrast. Obviously, instruments had to be adjusted. Families of instruments again became important, and new tone colours were introduced.

      The entire period has sometimes appropriately been called the age of mechanization. Around the first quarter of the century, the period of Ludwig van Beethoven's (Beethoven, Ludwig van) major orchestral works, more keys were added to existing woodwinds, and evidence from one passage in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (1824) implies that the fourth horn player already had one valve on his instrument. Almost immediately afterward more drastic changes were necessary in order to fulfill the demands of the composers.

      The central figure in the changes in woodwinds was a Munich flutist and instrument builder, Theobald Boehm (Boehm, Theobald). Profiting from the experiments of many others, Boehm devised the long axle to allow control of holes from some distance and then proceeded to redesign the flute on acoustic principles. Boehm made the holes in his flute as large as possible and changed all closed keys to open keys to allow full venting. He then placed all holes in an acoustically correct position, providing for comfort in fingering by using ring keys on the long axle to close holes that players could not reach easily. At this stage the Boehm conical flute of 1832 appeared. By 1847 Boehm had become convinced that only a cylindrical bore would solve certain problems in intonation, and by using covered finger holes he could make them even larger. The Boehm experiments changed the character of the flute considerably, producing more volume and a more brilliant tone; with his improvements, along with the subsequent minor changes, the flute became one of the most versatile instruments of the orchestra, performing superbly in all keys.

      Similar changes were made about the mid-century in other woodwinds, the Boehm system (1843) adaptations to the clarinet finally conquering other key arrangements except in Germany. Charles Triébert and his son modified the oboe, finally adding some features from the Boehm flute to produce the “conservatory system.” Certain improvements were made in the bassoon in 1825 by Carl Almanräder, a chamber musician of Biebrich. Since the improvements were accompanied by deficiencies in tone, the French preferred to develop the classic bassoon. Although the Heckel family (Johann Adam Heckel and Wilhelm, his son and successor), also of Biebrich, eventually corrected the faults, the difference between the French and the German bassoon still remains, the former having a reedier, more individual tone, the latter with its comparative richness blending better. First the Americans and finally the British accepted the German instrument.

      The Classical orchestra reached a certain perfection in balance between strings, woodwinds, and brass, which was distorted at the beginning of the 19th century by the addition of two horns and three trombones. From there on, the orchestra grew, and families of instruments again became important for additional colour and for balance. In his Principles of Orchestration (1913; written 1896–1908), the Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay) developed the theory that the four basic woodwinds had a vast range of expression. At each end of the entire range were areas useful for their individual colour, and the instruments of smaller and larger sizes intensified those colour effects. This theory formed the basis of his orchestration and had profound effects on the art music of the early 20th century, even to the popular dance bands of the 1930s in the United States.

      The piccolo was accepted early, carrying upward and intensifying the brilliance of the top octave of the flute. It remained for the 20th century to exploit the low tones of the piccolo. By the end of the 19th century, the alto flute, a weak instrument dynamically, had joined the orchestra, but it was exploited most effectively by the French composers of the early 20th century—for example, Claude Debussy (Debussy, Claude). The oboe developed no satisfactory descant, but the English horn, first used notably in Hector Berlioz (Berlioz, Hector)'s Roman Carnival Overture (1844), became increasingly useful for its peculiar dark and melancholy expression. A small clarinet in D (E♭ in wind bands) proved suitable for bright, strident effects, while the bass clarinet added a mysterious piquancy as an extension of the dark and colourful chalumeau register. The contrabassoon gained importance as the most effective wind double bass and the lowest instrument of the orchestra.

      Little needs to be added about the trumpet and French horn. By mid-century, valves had been established for horns and trumpets, but, even through the early works of the 20th-century German composer Richard Strauss, (Strauss, Richard) these were considered largely as a means for instant transposition of the instrument. At the same time, however, the full chromatic possibilities were exploited by such composers as César Franck (Franck, César) and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich).

      Since 1590 a wooden cup-mouthpieced instrument, the serpent, had been built to support voices in French choirs, but by the mid-18th century it was serving as a double bass for the woodwind choir. The serpent and its derivatives, the Russian bassoon and the bass horn, were eventually replaced by the contrabassoon. The ophicleide, the bass of the keyed bugle, was prominent in the second quarter of the 19th century as a brass double bass.

      The invention of the bass tuba by a German instrument builder named Johann Gottfried Moritz in 1835 provided a more reliable and more even brass bass. Tuned in F or E♭, it had a range that was, respectively, B♭′–e♭′ and C–f′. Later a BB♭ (double B-flat) contrabass became available. The tuba was distinguished by a wide conical bore and a deep cup mouthpiece, both of which favoured the fundamental and lower partial of the overtone series (see above The production of sound (wind instrument)). It was built in many sizes to provide a rich and mellow brass choir for the wind band, of which the cornet of similar proportions was the lead melodic instrument, in contrast to the more penetrating trumpet of the orchestra. The flügelhorn, slightly more conical than the cornet, is also an appropriate treble for the tuba family. The tubing of the various instruments could be and was bent into many different shapes. Some even had bells pointing backward in order to send the sound toward marching soldiers in a parade. When the bass instrument was bent into an over-the-shoulder model, it was called a helicon. Later, the American bandmaster John Philip Sousa (Sousa, John Philip) established his own variation of the helicon, and it became known as the sousaphone.

      Also noteworthy are the Wagner tubas, specially built for Richard Wagner (Wagner, Richard)'s four-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen. Narrower in bore than the baritone horn, they are supplied with a funnel-shaped mouthpiece in order to form a tone intermediate between the French horn and the tuba. Built in tenor and bass ranges, the instruments fulfill their purpose admirably.

      The 19th century gave rise to families of reed instruments. The Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax (Sax, Antoine-Joseph) patented the saxophone in 1846, combining a wide conical bore with a large single reed and producing an instrument that overblows at the octave and covers a written range of b♭ to f‴. Sax's patent covered instruments in 14 different sizes, and others were added later. Intended for the military band, the saxophone has found only occasional use in the orchestra. It has been used most familiarly in the United States in jazz ensembles since the 1930s.

 The Chinese sheng, which had reached Europe in the late 18th century, inspired the invention of three distinct musical instruments in the West: the mouth organ, the accordion, and the reed (reed instrument) organ. It is a mouth organ consisting of free-reed pipes vibrating under wind pressure from a globular wind chamber blown into by the player. The pitch is determined by the reed itself, which activates vibrations in the surrounding air.

      The Western mouth organ (harmonica), invented about 1825, has two reeds of the same pitch, one of which vibrates as the player exhales and the other as he inhales. The slotted edge that the player puts in his mouth directs air to and from the reeds. Tones are eliminated by covering the slots, so that a skillful player can produce a single pleasant tone at a time. Although a few players have developed a skilled technique, the instrument is normally completely diatonic and is largely confined to folk and popular music.

      The accordion was invented in 1822 by Friedrich Buschmann of Germany (or by Cyrill Demian of Vienna in 1829) and operated on the same principle except that a bellows substitutes for the breath and buttons or keys open channels to free reeds. Melody is controlled by the right hand and the bass and accompanying chords by the left. Although originally a diatonic instrument, by mid-century it had become chromatic. Accordions (accordion) with keyboard for the right hand have also become popular. During the 20th century, modifications expanded the range and versatility of the instrument and adapted it to electronic applications.

      The reed organ (regal) dates from about 1810. It was a free-reed instrument with a foot-operated bellows providing wind pressure to vibrate reeds whose access was controlled by a keyboard. The instrument was provided with an assortment of Greek-derived trade names, of which the harmonium appears to be most prominent for those organs operating on the principle of pressure bellows. An instrument operating on sucker bellows was later developed and became especially popular in the United States; in fact, all such suction instruments are commonly known as American organs (melodeon). In the 19th century the reed organ, mellow in tone and inexpensive, became an important instrument in homes and small churches. (The harmonium became standard accompaniment for many South Asian vocal recitals.)

The 20th and 21st centuries
      The 20th century began with few radically new ideas in instruments. Many people were still debating the merits of Wagner and Johannes Brahms, while Richard Strauss, the Impressionists, and the Russian nationalists were continuing the exploitations of the tone colour and technical capacities of the expanded orchestra. Challenged by these works, instrument makers continued to make minor alterations to solve fingering problems or to produce even tone. For a time the standards of increased size and greater technical capacity were most important, but eventually such works as Arnold Schoenberg (Schoenberg, Arnold)'s Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and Anton von Webern (Webern, Anton)'s Five Pieces for Orchestra (1911–13) disturbed the overripe late Romanticism, and the emphasis on bigness evaporated. The entire aesthetic became disunified. In general, after the first quarter of the century, ensembles became smaller, and an anti-Romantic, if not a purely Classical trend, was discernible. In instruments two diverse directions became apparent: (1) a return to the historically accurate sounds for the music of the repertoire and (2) the application of electrical power to do everything from duplicating known tone colours with artificial amplification to the creation of entirely new instruments.

      With the early music revival came the reproduction of early brasses and woodwinds. In roughly 1925 an English musician and instrument builder named Arnold Dolmetsch (Dolmetsch, Arnold) began making Baroque recorders, which had been in eclipse for more than 100 years and which again became one of the most widely played wind instruments. Later in the century, reproductions of other historical instruments became available, including crumhorns, shawms, Rauschpfife, Renaissance flutes and recorders, Baroque transverse flutes, Baroque oboes, and Baroque trombones. The Baroque trumpet was again made, although few trumpeters returned to the valveless long D trumpet of the period; with a discreet use of narrow bores, shallow mouthpieces, and valves, they obtained trumpets that give the range and character of the clarino trumpet.

      Since the 1970s there has been considerable interest in adapting electronic technology to wind instruments. Synthesizer (music synthesizer) control devices that treat the sound of the wind instrument as input to be manipulated electronically have been used successfully, as have synthesizers with breath-operated control. Digital technology permits the “sampling” and manipulation of wind instrument acoustics (see electronic instrument).

Robert Austin Warner James M. Borders

The music of wind instruments in western Europe

Through the Renaissance
      The diversity of wind instruments and their musical use in post-antiquity is reflected in medieval literature and art. From this evidence it can be inferred that wind instruments were grouped according to volume of tone—that is, as either loud or soft (haut or bas). Loud winds—trumpets, shawms, and bagpipes—accompanied outdoor processions and dancing; trumpets also were brought into church to play the sustained lower parts of primarily vocal motets and masses. Soft wind instruments, such as the recorder, transverse flute, cornett, and portative organ, were mostly played indoors and, together with bowed and plucked strings, likely performed instrumental arrangements of songs and motets.

      During the Renaissance, wind instruments were grouped into unmixed consorts whose homogeneous sound derived from the texture of contemporaneous vocal ensembles. (A typical wind consort of the early 16th century comprised three sizes of the same instrument type, usually an alto, two tenors, and a bass; a century later, some winds were made in as many as eight sizes, which, however, were grouped into two different ensembles, one at four-foot and the other at eight-foot pitch.) In addition to polyphonic dance music, these consorts performed arrangements of secular songs such as those published in 1533 by Pierre Attaignant, which bear designations as appropriate for either transverse flutes or recorders. The preference for unmixed consorts was so strong by the late 16th century that, even at large musical events involving many musicians, different groups played whole pieces or portions of them in alternation rather than at the same time.

The Baroque period
      At certain centres, particularly Venice, it was the practice in the late 16th century to combine and contrast an instrumental consort (mainly winds) with voices in a type of religious composition called the sacred concerto (vocal-instrumental concerto). In the Sacrae symphoniae (1597 and 1615) of Giovanni Gabrieli (Gabrieli, Giovanni), for example, an ensemble of three cornetts, two trombones, and tenor violin accompanies solo voices, alternates with and accompanies one or two choirs, or performs alone. Gabrieli adopted a similar approach in his instrumental music. His Sonata pian' e forte (1597), the first musical composition for which instrumentation is specified, employs two ensembles of equal size—three trombones and cornett; and three trombones and a viola da braccio—sometimes playing together, sometimes separately.

      Large ensembles of singers and instrumentalists also were divided into forces of different size. In some sacred concerti of the early Baroque, a large group of supplementary instrumentalists, who doubled the choral parts, was contrasted with instrumental soloists, or concertino (violinists or virtuoso cornettists), who played in dialogue with the vocal soloists. This disposition of instruments, in conjunction with the antiphony perfected by Gabrieli, gave rise to the concerto grosso. Some concerti grossi, notably those of Arcangelo Corelli (Corelli, Arcangelo), employ a solo group made up of two soprano-range instruments and bass, a combination known as “trio sonata” texture that had wide currency in the Baroque era. (While Corelli's trio sonatas were written for strings, a bassoon might virtually double the bass line, and the repertoire as a whole contains works written for wind instruments in one or both of the upper parts.) By the late Baroque, concerti grossi had in effect become concerti for solo instruments. J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5 (pre-1721), which involve extended virtuoso passages for winds, are outstanding examples of this transition.

      Before the mid-16th century, instrumentation depended less on tone quality or the composer's preference than on what instruments were available. Winds and strings were largely interchangeable. After that time, however, some wind instruments began to establish their autonomy. In the Florentine intermedii (staged musico-dramatic presentations generally based on pastoral or mythological themes), particular winds were associated with particular characters or situations, such as trombones with the netherworld. Many associations established in the intermedii were later retained in 17th-century opera, oratorio, and ballet. As members of the violin family displaced winds as the preferred instruments of Baroque ensembles (both inside and outside the theatre), the theatrical uses of winds became more pronounced and composers increasingly sensitive to their extramusical associations. Also characteristic of Baroque opera and oratorio was the obbligato use of winds in a manner stylistically analogous to writing for solo voice.

The Classical period
      The Classical technique of winds doubling strings emerged in scoring for opera orchestras in the mid-17th century and continued to be important through the next century in the compositions of Haydn and Mozart. (Most 18th-century orchestras included at least four winds, usually two oboes and two horns; by the 1770s, Mozart was writing for double flutes, oboes, and bassoons, a brass section of pairs of horns and trumpets, plus timpani and four-part strings.) In effect, this rendered winds less prominent in the texture of the Classical orchestra compared with the Baroque, in which the distinctive sonorities of winds had been used to highlight the different contrapuntal lines. In Classical orchestration, oboes and bassoons generally double the string parts, while brasses reinforce the harmony in relatively slow note values or play idiomatic fanfares and horn calls. Wind instruments did, however, retain their programmatic associations in church music and opera; “magical” instruments in Mozart (Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus)'s The Magic Flute (1791; Die Zauberflöte) include the flute and piccolo, the latter representing the character Papageno's reed pipes. They also were used for obbligato accompaniments. Sesto's aria "Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio" (“I leave…”) from Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito (1791; “The Clemency of Titus”), for example, features a basset clarinet obbligato.

      In the late Classical period, Beethoven (Beethoven, Ludwig van)'s orchestration at first seems a continuation of the conservative Classical practice, with considerable doubling of parts. His use of winds, however, particularly in the symphonies, at times tends toward theatricality bordering on the operatic. Familiar examples are the “false” entrance of the horn before the recapitulation in the first movement of the Eroica (1804; Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major) and the oboe solo in the first movement of the Symphony No. 5 in C Minor (1808). Beethoven's dramatically charged approach to wind scoring in nominally abstract music profoundly influenced later composers. In such late 19th-century works as Gustav Mahler (Mahler, Gustav)'s first three symphonies and the tone poems of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, wind parts have strongly connoted extramusical significance.

      Another use of winds in the Classical and later periods was in small ensemble music. The Baroque composer Lully (Lully, Jean-Baptiste) anticipated future developments with his marches, a tradition that continued either in the hands of later specialists (Anton Reicha's wind ensembles, John Philip Sousa's marches) or as exceptional works by great masters (the wind quintets of Mozart and Beethoven). Carrying forward Baroque practice, composers in the Classical era also wrote chamber works for mixed ensembles of winds with piano or strings, or wind concerti, such as those for clarinet and bassoon by Mozart.

James M. Borders

The Romantic period (Romanticism)
      In the 19th century, wind instruments underwent extensive improvements, which ultimately led to the expansion and diversification of the woodwind and brass sections of the orchestra. An early advocate of such enrichment was Berlioz (Berlioz, Hector), whose Grand traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes (1844; A Treatise upon Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration) dealt with the ranges, mechanical problems, and sound qualities of all wind instruments, including newly invented ones. Typical of Berlioz's own compositions, the Te Deum, Opus 22, calls for an expanded wind complement of four flutes, four oboes, four clarinets, four horns, four bassoons, alto saxhorn, two trumpets, two cornets, six trombones, and two tubas. Wagner (Wagner, Richard) augmented even these large forces in the service of the music drama, quadrupling in the Ring orchestra most of the woodwinds and scoring for eight horns (four of which doubled on tenor and bass Wagner tubas), a contrabass tuba, three trumpets and bass trumpet, one contrabass, and three tenor trombones. In the late 19th-century symphony and tone poem, as in opera, the large, variegated orchestra maintained close ties with programmatic or operatic impulses.

      Perhaps as a corollary of the expanding use of winds in the Romantic orchestra, the 19th century produced remarkably few concerti for solo winds and orchestra. There was a similar decrease in chamber music for winds. Among the few composers of music for solo winds with piano are Carl Maria von Weber, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Brahms also wrote some outstanding chamber works for winds and strings, as did Franz Schubert.

The 20th and 21st centuries
      Although the huge symphony orchestra was accommodated for a time in the early 20th century by such composers as Mahler and Igor Stravinsky (Stravinsky, Igor), two important trends in instrumental music emerged between World Wars I and II. One of these was the ever-growing interest of composers in ensembles consisting predominantly of wind instruments. Stravinsky (Stravinsky, Igor), for example, composed his Symphonies of Wind Instruments in 1920, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments in 1923–24, and Symphony of Psalms in 1930, the orchestration of the last being noteworthy for its lack of violins and violas. The other important trend was a relative increase in the proportion of new music for chamber ensembles, especially those with wind instruments. In this repertoire such composers as Debussy (Syrinx, 1912, for flute) and Stravinsky (Three Pieces for Clarinet, 1919) extended the level of technique and the range of special effects demanded of wind players. Experimentation continues into the 21st century, with the electronic amplification of winds and the development of new techniques, such as multiphonics, in which two or more pitches are sounded simultaneously on a single woodwind instrument.

Eugene J. Enrico James M. Borders

Winds in jazz and folk music

In jazz
       jazz has been one of the most vital sources of American wind music. The first jazz ensembles to feature solo winds—trumpet or cornet, clarinet, and trombone—were formed in New Orleans in the second decade of the 20th century. In this early style, the soloists either improvised simultaneously or adapted their playing to the musical texture, the clarinet ornamenting the trumpet lead and the trombone filling in the chord notes and outlining the bass notes. By the mid-1920s, however, Louis Armstrong (Armstrong, Louis), arguably the most important wind instrumentalist of early jazz, had developed a dramatic solo style that did not depend on ensemble interaction; this style became a model for later jazz soloists. The following decade was the principal era of the big bands, the best known being those led by Duke Ellington (Ellington, Duke) and Count Basie (Basie, Count). During the 1930s and '40s, the wind sections of such groups grew from 6 (three reeds, two trumpets, and trombone) to a standard of 13 (five reeds, four trumpets, and four trombones). After World War II, the big bands gradually were supplanted by smaller bebop groups, which almost invariably included trumpet and saxophone. The recorded performances of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker (Parker, Charlie), whose improvisational ability is legendary, are still studied and greatly admired. Beginning in the 1960s, jazz musicians, particularly trumpeter Miles Davis (Davis, Miles), were among the instrumentalists who experimented with new sonorities and—with the aid of electronic technology—forged new links between jazz and the music of the American and European avant-garde.

James M. Borders

In folk traditions
      Wind instruments play an important role in the folk music of many cultures. Most folk music for winds imitates vocal models, such as the folk music for harmonica played by Americans, the love songs for flute played by Native American men, and the bagpipe music of eastern Europe, which usually consists of richly ornamented versions of local folksongs. (Many kinds of bagpipes are found throughout eastern and western Europe. These vary from the very simple ones found in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland to the beautifully fashioned instruments with three and four pipes [drones] found in Scotland, Ireland, and the north of England.)

      A few types of folk music are idiomatic to wind instruments. In Poland, perhaps because of the proliferation of instruments, including several basic types of flutes and bagpipes, folk music is dominated by instrumental tunes, most of them for dancing. In the Basque region of northern Spain and southwestern France, dances and processions are often accompanied by a single musician who plays a three-holed flute with one hand and a six-stringed dulcimer with the other. In certain African instrumental ensembles, percussion instruments sometimes are joined by teams of flute or horn players, each of whom plays a single note whenever it occurs in the melody. The Bambuti of eastern Congo (Kinshasa) often use up to six flutes, each playing variations of a different ostinato pattern.

Eugene J. Enrico James M. Borders

Additional Reading
Anthony Baines, Woodwind Instruments and Their History, 3rd ed. (1967, reprinted 1977), remains an authoritative work in its field; Arthur H. Benade, Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics (1976, reissued 1990), addresses the questions of sound production; and Adam Carse, Musical Wind Instruments: A History of the Wind Instruments Used in European Orchestras and Wind-Bands from the Later Middle Ages Up to the Present Time (1939, reprinted 1975), surveys the instruments by type. Good illustrations are presented in Phillip T. Young, Twenty-Five Hundred Historical Woodwind Instruments: An Inventory of the Major Collections (1982); and James M. Borders, European and American Wind and Percussion Instruments: Catalogue of the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments, University of Michigan (1988). See also Jean Jenkins (ed.), International Directory of Musical Instrument Collections (1977); and Lyndesay G. Langwill, An Index of Musical Wind-Instrument Makers, 6th rev. ed. (1980).Individual instruments are studied in F. Geoffrey Rendall, The Clarinet: Some Notes Upon Its History and Construction, 3rd ed., rev. by Philip Bate (1971); William H. Stubbins, The Art of Clarinetistry: The Acoustical Mechanics of the Clarinet as a Basis for the Art of Music Performance, 3rd rev. ed. (1974); Philip Bate, The Oboe: An Outline of Its History, Development, and Construction, 3rd ed. (1975); Gunther Joppig, The Oboe and the Bassoon (1988; originally published in German, 1981); Lyndesay G. Langwill, The Bassoon and Contrabassoon (1965, reprinted 1975); William Waterhouse, The Proud Bassoon (1983); Will Jansen, The Bassoon: Its History, Construction, Makers, Players, and Music, 5 vol. (1978); Barra Boydell, The Crumhorn and Other Renaissance Windcap Instruments: A Contribution to Renaissance Organology (1982); Theobald Boehm, The Flute and Flute-Playing in Acoustical, Technical, and Artistic Aspects, 2nd ed. (1922, reissued 1964; originally published in German, 1871); Philip Bate, The Flute: A Study of Its History, Development, and Construction, 2nd ed. (1979); Nancy Toff, The Development of the Modern Flute (1979, reprinted 1986); Raymond Meylan, The Flute (1988; originally published in French, 1974); Michael Seyfrit (comp.), Recorders, Fifes, and Simple System Transverse Flutes of One Key (1982); Edgar Hunt, The Recorder and Its Music, rev. ed. (1977); R. Morley-Pegge, The French Horn: Some Notes on the Evolution of the Instrument and of Its Technique, 2nd ed. (1973); G.B. Lane, The Trombone in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1982); Robin Gregory, The Trombone: The Instrument and Its Music (1973); Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, new ed. (1978); and Werner Menke, History of the Trumpet of Bach and Handel: A New Point of View and New Instruments, trans. from German (1934, reissued 1985).Eugene J. Enrico James M. Borders

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