Contrabass oboe

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The contrabass oboe was a double reed woodwind instrument in the key of C, sounding two octaves lower than the standard oboe.

The instrument is believed to have first been developed in the mid-18th century. Having approximately the same range as the bassoon, it had, nonetheless, a distinct tonal quality of its own. Strauss states, in his edition of Hector Berlioz's Treatise on Instrumenation, that its tone "...had not the slightest similarity with the low tones of the bassoon."

Despite this distinction, the contrabass oboe never became a popular or widely employed instrument, and there remain few instances of it today.