Melody, Metamorphosis, and Memory Music for Oboe and Friends
Thomas May
Serving as a beacon for the entire orchestra during the ritual of tuning before a performance, the oboe as we essentially know it emerged around the time of Jean-Baptiste Lully in the mid-17th century. Further refinements made in the later 19th century by Paris instrument makers led to the Conservatoire oboe that set the modern standard. The oboe’s French associations are preserved in the name itself, derived from hautbois (literally, “high wood”). In his Treatise on Orchestration, Hector Berlioz noted that “the oboe is above all a melodic instrument [possessing] a rustic character, full of tenderness, even of bashfulness.” That emphasis on cantabile playing betrays the Romantic era’s perspective, and in the 19th century the oboe most frequently figured as an orchestral instrument. Beethoven, for example, makes the oboe a quasi-protagonist in the “Eroica” Symphony. “Because of the difficulties associated with reeds and the patience required to produce an acceptable tone quality,” according to the Grove Dictionary of Music, “the oboe [of the 19th century] never became popular as an amateur instrument and was little used in domestic music-making.” During the 20th century, the oboe, which played a crucial role in the Romantic orchestral repertoire, came back into its own as a solo instrument—a development, Grove remarks, that was “largely inspired by the playing of a number of fine oboists.” Cristina Gómez Godoy, who has been the Staatskapelle Berlin’s principal oboist since 2013, has chosen a wide range of works demonstrating this new solo prominence for her Pierre Boulez Saal solo debut.
13
