Instruments of the orchestra.
A program for elementary and junior high school
pupils presented by the Wisconsin School of the Air.
Your teacher is Professor Richard Seachert, conductor
of the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.
[Piano music]
Hello boys and girls, what's the name of this instrument
that I've been playing on?
The bassoon, that's right, it's the biggest instrument
of the woodwind family and because it's the biggest
it has can play deeper tones than any of the other.
Let's see if we can find it over here on our big picture of the
orchestra conductor's score.
Well here are the bassoons right at the bottom of the
woodwind family and right beneath the clarinets,
the obos, and the flutes.
You know when we learn about these various instruments of
the symphony orchestra, the first thing we want to find out
is what vibrates to produce the musical sound that we hear.
Then we want to find out what the player has to do in order
to produce these vibrations.
Well now all these instruments that we've been talking
about in the woodwind family are played by blowing.
They're all wind instruments.
We found out that the flute has a hole at one end that
you blow across to make the air vibrates and you remember
the clarinet had a read and a mouthpiece that you blow
into and the read vibrates.
Then when we talked about the obo last time we saw
the tiny double read of the obo and we learned
that that is what vibrates when you blow on an obo.
Now our special guest for today or our special instrument,
the bassoon also has a double read.
Would you like to take a look at it?
Well here it is.
The readmaker has taken two pieces of read and has
fashioned them together like this so that there's an opening
between the end like that for the air to go through.
To see what that bassoon read looks like alongside of an obo
read. Well here is an obo read and as you can see the bassoon
read is wider and it gets much wider up here at this end.
Whenever you hear a sound on the bassoon this read is vibrating.
Now the bassoon read fits on to the end of a thin hollow
tube like that and the end of the tube that has a cork
on it fits into the bassoon right up here like that.
Now if I should close all the holes on the bassoon and blow
into it here the air would come out way up here.
How do you supposed to get there?
Well let's find out.
You blow here and that air goes
down around through here and then turns around the
corner and comes back up through and finally comes
back up here at this end.
I think you might be able to understand that a little better
if I show you a picture.
Let's pretend we're looking inside
of a bassoon and we'll look at this diagram here and this
represents where the read goes and if you blow in there, the
air goes down around through there and comes out there if
you have all the holes closed.
Well now I wonder how you'd like to hear a very fine bassoon
player play a solo for you.
We have a guest today whose name
is Jay Forrester and he's going to play a part of a clarinet
solo I mean part of a bassoon solo by the composer Mozart.
[Music]
Thank you very much.
Jay went to high school in New
York City and now he's a member of the University of
Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.
His accompanist was Paul Burgess.
How do you suppose you get all those different
tones on the bassoon?
Well you remember when we talked about
the other woodwind instruments you saw that there were holes
along the sides that the player covered with their fingers
to make the air travel farther and to make the sound lower.
Now it works just the same way on the bassoon.
Here you can see the holes up along
here that are closed with the fingers and then down here you
can see keys that are used to close pads which cover holes
that are too big and too far away for you to be able to
reach with your own fingers.
So the bassoon player learns which fingers to put down
to get the tone that he wants.
I haven't shown you how to blow on a bassoon avi.
Well it's really very simple if you have a good read.
All you do is just cover your
upper teeth a little bit with your upper lips and cover your
lower teeth a little bit with your lower lips and hold in
the size of your mouth just enough so that the air doesn't
spill out around the sides.
You hold your jaw quite loose and put the read
fairly well into your mouth and blow like this.
Now most people don't realize that the bassoon can also
play notes in the higher notes than you might expect
and up in that part of the bassoon the tone quality
is rather sweet sounding.
Listen to this.
When we were talking about the various woodwind instruments
I think it's interesting to remember that we learn that
each of them has a big or a little brother that sort of
goes along with them when they play on the symphony orchestra.
For example, you remember the flute had a piccolo, a little
brother that is used and played by one of the flute
players whenever the composer wants a high flute like sound.
And in the oval which we have here has a big brother with
a sort of a dark, sad voice.
And whenever that sound is wanted, why one of the oval
players plays an English horn.
The clarinet had a big brother too, the bass
clarinet which could go lower than the regular clarinet.
Now you might think that this bassoon could go low enough, but
it has a big big brother, but I'm going to show you right now.
It's over here and the name of it is the contrabassoon.
What do you think of that?
Would you like to hear what it sounds like?
Well, I'll see if I can play a few tones for you.
It has a read like a regular bassoon read, only of course
it's a little bit bigger.
[drums]
Well, that's really low.
In fact, this contrabassoon has the
lowest voice of any instrument in the symphony orchestra.
Well, now we've talked about all the different
woodwinds. Would you like to hear what they sound like
when they all play together?
We have a flute player, an oval player, a clarinet
player, and a bassoon player here today, and they're going
to play a piece for you.
Now, I think you all know what each of the instruments looks
like, but see if you can recognize what they sound like.
And while they're playing, you might be thinking of what
instrument you might like to learn to play sometime.
The woodwind quartet is going to play a piece
called a village dance.
[drums]
Thank you all very much.
The members of this family, the
woodwind family, get along together very well, don't they?
Well, now today, what have we done?
We've seen the contra bassoon, the lowest voice in
the entire symphony orchestra, and the bassoon, and you saw
a bassoon read, and you learned how to blow on a bassoon.
Well, no, I'm going to play a little game with you.
I wonder if you really know
what the names of these woodwind instruments are.
I'm going to hold them up and tell you just a word or two
about them, and then when I ask you, not before, you all say
very clearly what you think the name of the instrument is.
Ready? Here we go.
Now this one has a small double read up
at this end, and it looks like that.
What's the name of it?
The oval.
All right, let's try it again.
All this one has a hole at one end, and when
you play it, you hold it like this.
What's the name of it?
The flute, that's very good, and we'll try another one.
Let's see.
This one has a mouthpiece and a single read,
and you play it like this, and what's the name of that one?
The clarinet.
Very good.
And of course, you all know what
the bassoon looks like, because that's the one we especially
looked at and heard today.
Well, now on our next program, we're going to talk about
another family of instruments.
We've talked about all the woodwinds, and we're going
to talk about the brasses.
I think you'll find the brasses very, very interesting, so I
hope to see you then.
Goodbye.
[music]
This has been instruments of the orchestra, a
program for elementary and junior high school pupils.
Your teacher is Professor Richard C.
Church, conductor of the University
Symphony Orchestra.
This has been a Wisconsin School of the Air presentation.
[music]