Bassoon

For those of you unfortunate enough not to have encountered a bassoon, it is a rather unwieldy musical instrument, being about 4 foot tall. Here is a photograph of one

Bassoon are usually made of wood, and consist of a long tube with a reed on the end. The reed is made of two bits of cane stuck together, and the player blows through it to make a noise. The reed is on the end of the long thin protrusion on the photo. It belongs to the woodwind family, which means that the player blows down it, and, err, that it doesn't belong to the brass family of instruments.

It can play notes from B flat (two and a bit octaves below middle c, 116.5 Hz) to approximately e'' (one and a half octaves above middle c, 622 Hz) Probably higher notes are possible, though if you wanted to play them, you'd be better off with an oboe.

The bassoon developed from from a 16th century instrument called the dulcian. The design has not fundamentally changed since then, though more holes have been added to give it a chromatic scale, and the tube has been lengthened to extend the compass from C to B flat. Various attempts have been made to redesign the bassoon using acoustical theory, but these 'improvements' just made it sound like a saxophone, so they were abandoned.

Not to be confused with the bassoon protein

Must Read

• Spain and the Defence of Peru, 1579-1700
• Definition, Diagnosis and Classification of Diabetes Mellitus

Links

Newcastle concert band Band that I play bassoon in.
Newcastle chamber orchestra
First Act Theatrical orchestra
Semitones group that plays in care homes
Northumberland Orchestral Society
North east amateur orchestras

Other bassoon pages

Bassoon Resource Page
Double reed web ring Including several bassoon pages
Wikipedia

Suppliers / shops

Howarth
John Myatt
Doublereed : Second hand bassoons for sale
Musicalchairs 2nd hand bassoons (private sellers)

Manufacturers

Amati
Fox
Heckel
Moosmann
Puchner Takeda Wolf Yamaha Catalogue of makers

Books, sheet music

Dr Downing books
June Emerson Wind Music
Weait Music

Related Instruments

The Contrabassoon
The Dulcian
Contrabass compendium Lots of very large instruments
The Rackett

Useful Pages for bassoon players

Lots of Bassoon Fingerings
Bassoon reed adjusting
How to adjust Bassoon Reeds