How Much Do You Know About Woodwinds?
For those music and piano students facing the challenge of playing a concerto for orchestra, and it is the first time they see a score that involves the piano, not much.
It is pretty tricky for piano teachers to explain why certain pianist decisions should take based on the orchestration of a piece; this becomes especially important for piano concertos. The soloist must know something about the instruments that they will play with them. Usually, this is not the case, and soloists should get involved in what is going on in the orchestra, not only what appears in the piano part.
Suppose you are interested in composing or arranging for this family. In that case, you have to study each instrument individually, as one melody in one instrument will not work in another; for example, a beautiful melody in the oboe can sound dull in the flute, just considering the range of the theme.
Also, each instrument is capable of different articulations and phrasing; a typical case is a flute, as it requires lots of air to play the notes, and conversely, long values in the oboe will be perfectly idiomatic.
The woodwind family is divided into the flute, the Oboe, the Clarinet and the Bassoon family. Each family represents a distinct timbre within the orchestra, and each has at least two members. The main instruments are the ones that name the families.
Within the flute family, we have the piccolo, the flute, the Alto flute and the Bass flute.
In the Oboe family, the Oboe and the English Horn.
The Clarinet family is quite extensive as the flutes: Clarinets in Bflat and A, Clarinets in E flat and D, and lastly, the Bass Clarinet.
Finally, the Bassoon family only has two members: the Bassoon and the Contrabassoon, which brings the lowest note of the whole orchestral range.
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