Oboe d'amore
The ;, less commonly hautbois d'amour, is a double reed woodwind musical instrument in the oboe family. Slightly larger than the oboe, it has a less assertive and a more tranquil and serene tone, and is considered the mezzo-soprano of the oboe family, between the oboe and the cor anglais, or English horn,. It is a transposing instrument, sounding a minor third lower than it is notated, i.e. in A, so it can also be known as a Mezzo-Soprano Oboe. The bell is pear-shaped and the instrument uses a crook or bocal, similar to but shorter than that of the cor anglais.
Invention and use
The oboe d'amore was invented in the eighteenth century and was first used by Christoph Graupner in his cantata Wie wunderbar ist Gottes Güt. 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 eighteenth century, the oboe d'amore fell into disuse for about 100 years until composers such as Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Frederick Delius, and others began using it once again in the early years of the twentieth century. It can be heard in Toru Takemitsu's Vers, l'arc-en-ciel, Palma, but its most famous modern usage is, perhaps, in Ravel's Boléro, 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, one of his five Rückert-Lieder. 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.
In the twentieth century, it was used extensively by Philip Glass in his opera Akhnaten to complement the countertenor register of the titular character.
David Stock's concerto "Oborama" features oboe d'amore as a soloist alongside cor anglais, musette, bass oboe, and oboe