Oboe D'amore - Invention and Use

Invention and Use

The oboe d'amore was invented in the 18th century and was first used by Christoph Graupner in Wie wunderbar ist Gottes Güt (1717). Johann Sebastian Bach wrote many pieces—a concerto, many of his cantatas, and the "Et in Spiritum sanctum" movement of his Mass in B minor—for the instrument. Georg Philipp Telemann also frequently employed the oboe d'amore.

Its popularity waning in the late 18th century, the oboe d'amore fell into disuse for about 100 years until composers such as Richard Strauss (Symphonia Domestica, where the instrument represents the child), Claude Debussy ("Gigues", where the oboe d'amore has a long solo passage), Maurice Ravel, Frederick Delius, and others began using it once again in the early years of the twentieth century. It can be heard in Tōru Takemitsu's "Vers, l'arc-en-ciel, Palma" (1984), but its most famous modern usage is, perhaps, in Ravel's Boléro (1928), where the oboe d'amore follows the E-flat clarinet to recommence the main theme for the second time. Gustav Mahler employed the instrument once, in "Um Mitternacht" (1901), one of his five Rückert-Lieder. American composer William Perry uses the oboe d'amore in his film scores and most recently in the third movement of his Jamestown Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (2007). In his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Vladimir Ashkenazy uses the oboe d'amore to highlight the plaintive solo of the "Il vecchio castello" movement.