Talk:Bassoon

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Bassoon was a good article, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

^{Delisted version: November 8, 2006}

Bassoon is included in the 2007 Wikipedia for Schools, or is a candidate for inclusion in future versions. Please maintain high quality standards, and make an extra effort to include free images, because non-free images cannot be used on the CDs.

[edit] Instrument Classification

All other instruments have that box on the side that classifies the instrument and shows it's range. Can someone please add this to the Bassoon Article? WOW THANKS! How do you edit it?Bassoonist123 21:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It's at the top of the page, hit "edit this page" while looking at the article. What do you want to change about it? I see the background color needs to be fixed. --Gmaxwell 21:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bassoon range

I think we should agree on what range we will publish for the bassoon. I suppose that certain freaks of nature enjoy playing high A-flat above the treble staff, but I am not one of them. Nonetheless, doesn't it seem logical that the graphical depiction of the range should match the text description? I, for one, certainly don't want a bunch of young composers reading this page and writing high G's in all their bassoon pieces. I vote for low b-flat to high d, with perhaps some discussion of extended ranges (to low a and high g). Anybody disagree?

I'm fine with the range depicted in the picture, with standard range extending to high E (indeed, a good portion of fairly mainstream solo rep has the high E in it, much to my frustration!), and extended range extending upwards. Will change the wording to reflect that. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 16:10, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

O.k. I accept the high E as mainstream. Is there mainstream literature that includes the high A-flat? George Perle uses the high G quite famously in the three inventions, but I have no knowledge of either literature examples or fingerings for a-flat. I could be convinced if someone would like to send me a recording of themselves playing an a-flat major arpeggio covering three octaves (humor).

I can't think of any pieces offhand than contain it, but there are fingerings published on the International Double Reed Society website here (actually, there are fingerings published for even higher notes, too, up to the C#: theoretically you can go even higher, but no one's written it down that I know of, probably because anyone who's tried has passed out after trying. ;-)). You can, however, hear a high A-flat being played in the audio sample of the bassoon's range, now, if you'll take that as proof that it is possible. I suppose I could manage an arpeggio as long as I didn't have to play it too fast! (Of all the fingerings on the website, only one of them worked for me, and naturally, it's the hardest one to reach.) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 19:14, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image reversed

Umm, I just realized that the picture of the black bassoon is left-right reversed. Can it be edited so that it's not backwards?

I can make a mirror image of the posted image if I get some confirmation that this is really and still the case. Notthe9 03:03, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

The image has now been replaced with a different picture (one both correctly oriented and licensed under the GFDL). Mindspillage (spill yours?) 19:14, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bassoonists

I trimmed the blurbs about prominent bassoonists—but actually, those should go in stubs about the players themselves. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 19:52, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Do we think it's actually useful noting how many notable bassoonists have also been teachers, and if so, would it not be more useful to say "teachers" rather than the odd term pedagogue? By comparison with other instruments' pages/lists of notable players it seems strange. --JennyRad 17:30, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I do, actually; some are as notable for their writings and instructional materials as for their work with students or their playing. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 03:21, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Point taken. But in that case the page almost devalues the term by applying it so much to almost everyone, instead of just, say, Camden, Weissenborn, Cooper and Toplansky. Doesn't it? --JennyRad 17:27, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Someone seems to have added a fifteen-year-old girl as a notable bassoonist. I find that very hard to believe, but I won't revert this just yet, maybe the contributor messed up the appended date or something. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 12:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Solo and chamber literature" section removed

I removed the "Solo and chamber literature" section that followed "Concerti and other orchestral literature", because it was empty. I'll keep its structure here hoping that someone will write it.

==Solo and chamber literature==
===Baroque===
===Classical===
===Romantic===
===Contemporary===
Nabla 23:20, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

This was my outline, and I am a lazy bum who hasn't written it yet. Did look kind of ugly on the page empy there... :-) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:19, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lindsay Cooper

I've changed the spelling of bassoonist Lindsey Cooper to Lindsay Cooper. "Lindsay" appears to be the more common way of spelling her name. Google returns 2000 hits for "Lindsay Cooper"+bassoon and 135 hits for "Lindsey Cooper"+bassoon. Also Google finds 161 pages crediting the album A View from the Bridge to "Lindsay" and 9 pages crediting it to "Lindsey" – so it can't be two different people. --Bruce1ee 08:58, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Contemporary music

I disagree with the use of the term "contemporary" for music of the 1900s. I think we should reserve its use for music of our generation, going with the literal definition of the term. Thus "Twentieth Century" would be a good substitute for our literature list. Don't you agree?

First, please Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages. Thanks.

User:209.11.111.66 wrote in an edit summary [1] changing the subsection heading "20th century" to "Contemporary":

"20th century implies a specific *STYLE* of music, not just a time frame. Richard Strauss, for example is very much not 20th cent. music. Thus we use contemporary to avoid being inaccurate."

Early
History of European art music
Medieval	(500 – 1400)
Renaissance	(1400 – 1600)
Common practice
Baroque	(1600 – 1760)
Classical	(1730 – 1820)
Romantic	(1815 – 1910)
Modern and contemporary
20th century classical	(1900 – 2000)
Contemporary classical	(1975 – present)

I reverted this as "20th century" does not imply a style any more than "Contemporary" does (I would argue that the latter has more stylistic connotations). Taking the preceding subsections as styles: "Baroque", "Classical", "Romantic"; the next step would be "Modernism". Taking them as time periods or eras would give "20th century" and then "Contemporary", as in the rest of Wikipedia:

Lastly, it is far from accurate to describe Strauss as "contemporary".

Hyacinth 07:31, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Usage in Ensembles

I don't think it's appropriate to say the Beethoven's Fifth is the first piece to have an independant contra part. Haydn called for it in the Creation and Mozart used it the Gran Partita Serenade. Should we revise this?

Grand partita originally called for a double Bass not contrabassoon. But today many people use contrabassoon instead for a complete wind ensemble...

[edit] Main manufacturers

Changed the "main manufacturer" part. It shouldn't sound like Heckel and Fox are the "main" manufacturers. Not in Europe at least.

World wide they are, in terms of number of instruments sold. The current text is very awkward, "the Heckel factory remains and the"... I'm not even sure what this is attempting to say. --Gmaxwell 18:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Curtal

I just uniformized the spelling of "curtal" and linked the first instance. However, curtal redirects to dulcian, where it says the two terms are equivalent. This article says the dulcian evolved into the curtal. One or the other would seem to require correction. -- Rsholmes 15:41, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External References

Wisconsin Public Radio's "University of the Air" today (21 May 2006) had an hour long program on the bassoon. Centering around an extended interview with a prominent French bassoonist, the conversation including discussion of the history of the instrument as the instrument's qualities and expressiveness. It also contained numerous and varied performance excerpts demonstrating what was discussed. The program's web page link to program page is not very detailed, but the show maintains an audio archive. Once the program appears in the archive, it might make a good external reference / link to include on this page. -- Update: I've added a link to the show's page. The link to the audio archive is on that page.

[edit] Doubling in French orchestral music (esp. Berlioz)

If my memory serves, Berlioz generally uses twice as many bassoons as the other woodwinds, but it seems to me that this is really just written-out doubling...there aren't four independent parts going on. I believe this is due to the fact that the French bassoon has a lighter sound than the German bassoon and cannot balance the other instruments as well without extra numbers. Wspencer11 13:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Technique

In the ''Extended Technique'' section, the article claims that flutter tounguing is used on the bassoon. I know that bassoonists can double, and even triple toungue, but I don't know of anyone who can flutter toungue. Can anyone give me a source on this?Amphion 14:36, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I believe flutter tonguing occurs in the Janacek sextet for winds, Mladi. At least, when I played it there was such a passage... Wspencer11 15:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks. Amphion 19:42, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

There is an example of flutter tonguing in the audio examples towards the bottom of the article too. --Gmaxwell 00:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 03:11, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reasons for GA Delisting

This article's GA status has been revoked because it fails criterion 2. b. of 'What is a Good Article?', which states;

(b) the citation of its sources using inline citations is required (this criterion is disputed by editors on Physics and Mathematics pages who have proposed a subject-specific guideline on citation, as well as some other editors — see talk page).

LuciferMorgan 00:48, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pitch

Is a bassoon pitched in C or B♭? — $PЯINGrαgђ 01:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

It depends on how you define the term "pitched." The fundamental note of the instrument is B-flat, so acoustically you could say it is "in" B-flat, but there is no difference between the written note and the resulting pitch (that is, a printed C on the page would result in a sounding B-flat), which is the usual definition of what "key" an instrument is in. So most people would say it is in C. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 13:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Deep nitpickery, You wouldn't say that it's acoustically in b-flat.. the first harmonic wrap/register transition is on G. Acoustically it looks like a "G" instrument with a keyed extension tube. --Gmaxwell 13:53, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

"Pitched in (some key)" is such a funny term. My bassoon instructor says you determine the pitch of an instrument in the following way: Put down the 3 standard keys with your pointer, middle and ring finger on both hands, and the 'most commonly used key' with your right pinky, and what ever concert pitch that is, is the pitch of the instrument. Alto sax you get E flat (which is what it's "pitch" is) On bassoon, you get F, BUT, bassoon reads music keyed in C, while alto sax reads music keyed in E flat, its a REALLY confusing issue to be honest. Bassgoonist Talk 15:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, what do you mean by pitch? Bb is clearly wrong: you're not going to claim that an instrument changes to A just because you put on an interchangeable A bell. There are two possibilities:

Does normally written music for the instrument transpose or not? That's what makes saxophones and clarinets "in Bb" or "in Eb". Bassoon music doesn't transpose. By this definition, it's in C, and that's what Wspencer11 is referring to.

What's the base note? This is what Bassgoonist is referring to. The problem is to find a base note. On the bassoon, all fingers off works correctly, placing it in F, like the cor anglais and (treble) recorder. But on those instruments, all fingers off gives a slightly different note, because of their fingering systems. All fingers on (but in the case of the bassoon, no thumbs) should give an octave lower, but again fingerings get in the way. For all current instruments, all fingers of the left hand give the dominant. In the case of the bassoon, it's C, so the instrument is in F if you look at it like that.

I can't understand Gmaxwell's viewpoint at all. Groogle (talk) 03:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Good article status

I think what would put this article back on the good article list is inline citations. There is enough information here, but there are no citations. Werothegreat 19:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The[2] article[3] has[4] been[5] well[6] cited[7] for[8] a[9] while[10], it's[11] just[12] that[13] no[14] one[15] has gotten[16] around[17] to[18] breaking[19] the[20] readability[21] by sitting[22] down[23] with[24] the[25] sources[26] and[27] moving[28] them[29] inline[30]. :) --Gmaxwell 14:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additions and Improvements

I've taken the liberty of adding some improvements, based on my 30+ years as an amateur bassoonist--hope you like them. The section on "History" still needs to be re-written, as it says nothing about the likely invention of the bassoon by the Hotteterres--i.e., the bassoon was not "developed" from the dulcian, but arose alongside it, much as the piano arose alongside the harpsichord, the cello alongside the gamba, etc., etc. I'm not sure what to do about the problem of missing citations, but on the other hand, I don't see that many statements that are questionable--a couple I've removed, such as the one in the opening paragraph about the bassoon being "statistically the most difficult to play". Now that's something that you will never be able to document, even if it might be true! Cbrodersen 15:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I've edited the "early history" section, taking out the parts of the discussion that were beside the point, and adding the pertinant infomation, especially the bit about Hotteterre and the other makers. Cbrodersen 13:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Similarity of Flute, Clarinet and Bassoon Fingerings

Anyone who has played these instruments (as I have) knows that there is absolutely no basis in fact for making this claim. The clarinet, for example, overblows at the octave and a fifth, whereas the flute and bassoon overblow at the octave. And the bassoon has the additional burden of "flicking" (see the section on Technique in the article), which places it apart from either the flute or clarinet.

Besides, this sort of gratuitous information is completely unnecessary in the introductory paragraph, and should be avoided. I even think the sentence that was added about key and tonehole spacing being too wide for children is out of place, and should be relocated to elsewhere in the article. Cbrodersen 11:47, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] pic

I straightened the Praetorius pic, GA's shouldn't overlook such things. pschemp | talk 01:05, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Virtuoso players of the instrument

I'd like to see more info on scholars and players of the instrument; in the modern era, there are William (often Bill) Waterhouse and Milan Turkovic, and probably others. We owe a particular debt to Waterhouse, who not only contributed seminal recordings, but has also contributed commentary on history, has edited a great body of sheet music, and has made recordings that illustrate the character of different, often rare, types of the instrument, such as the tenor bassoon and various earlier types. He is also a major collector of such instruments, a role that should not be underestimated. 82.71.48.158 23:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mozart concerti?

There's something not quite right about this sentence in the list of concerti: "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Bassoon Concerto in B flat, K191, the only surviving of an original three bassoon concertos by Mozart as well as the Sinfonia Concertante k 292a (spurious) for oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon." I don't remember the details of what Wolfie actually wrote compared to what survives, so I'm hoping someone with access to sources can clean this up. Thanks! --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 13:22, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I removed the Sinfonia Concertante (Its K297b and not K292a). Its likely spurious and its for an ensemble of oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. That's an ensemble piece. Include this and you include Haydn's non-spurious Sinfonia Concertante for Oboe, Clarinet, horn and bassoon, a few sinfonia concertantes by JC Bach plus many more of those types of work as well. Mozart has a Bassoon and Cello Duo, K292. I figured this section should stick to bassoon concerti and sonatas. DavidRF (talk) 06:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Still active bassoonits.

Unless someone can put down why these are actually notable, they should be removed. These names add nothing to the article without context. Aar☢n Bruce^Talk/_Contribs 14:54, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Based on the above, while tidying up some stuff, I removed all the redlinked and unsourced "notable bassoonists. I replaced them with links to articles. For the inactive bassonists I also replaced any that were alread mentioned in the body of the article. Without articles and sources it's hard to tell if the person is really notable or not. It also allows the drive-by adding of peoples friends. Here's the list of redlinks I removed. Still active: Gilbert Audin, Sergio Azzolini, Richard Beene, Stefano Canuti, Daniele Damiano, Dag Jensen, Cory Jones, Paulo Justi, Benjamin Kamins, Laurent Lefèvre, Eberhard Marschal, Christopher Millard, Frank Morelli, Gustavo Núñez, Stefan Schweigert, Klaus Thunemann, Milan Turkovic, Matthew Wilkie, Annaliese "Anya" Lawrence, Cory Jones and Diego Chenna. Inactive: Désiré-Hippolyte Dihau, Baron von Duernitz, Georg Friedrich Brandt, Louis Marie Eugène Jancourt, Mordechai Rechtman, Norman Herzberg and Ryan Chow. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 22:52, 8 June 2008 (UTC)