oboeinsight

Is the bassoon bigger than the double bassoon?

Well how silly is that? If you stack one bassoon on top of another, making it a double, it will obviously be taller! I think taller qualifies as bigger … right? ;-)

… as you’ve never heard it before.

Now I’ll have to confess, when I hear this I get some very strange lyrics in my head. As a kid we sang this to it:

Comet, it makes your mouth so clean
Comet, it tastes like gasoline
Comet, it makes you vomit
So go get Comet, and vomit, today!

(Anyone else remember the old comet commercial that used part of the Colonel Bogey March?)

There’s something very cool sounding when you get four bassoons together, don’t you think?

It says “Three Guys and a Lady” … and I see four guys. I’m so troubled by this … ;-)

Once more, a bassoonist is having fun. Figures. But I just know we oboists can have fun too. I won’t stop believin’ it. Really.

Anyone heard of a contraforte? I’m guessing so … I seem to be the last to know about things like this. Heck, I’m the last to know I should own and English horn with a low A♯ … go figure!

Anyway, check this out … read all about it!

Here’s a snippet to get you interested:

A few years ago, when the National Symphony Orchestra was rehearsing at the Kennedy Center for a performance of Stravinsky’s “Petrushka,” a funny thing happened to the orchestra’s contrabassoonist, Lewis Lipnick. He was playing a solo passage on his instrument, which is known for its erratic, sometimes flatulent sound. It must have sounded particularly gassy that day. Someone in the trumpet section threw a roll of toilet paper at him.

Leonard Slatkin, who was conducting at the time, stopped the orchestra and looked at him thoughtfully. “Well, you know, Lew,” Lipnick remembers him saying, “it wasn’t undeserved.”

And here is a contraforte:

On an electric bassoon! (Once again, a bassoonist is doing something fun. We oboists need to do something fun, don’t you think?)