Instruments of the orchestra.

A program for elementary and junior high school pupils presented by the Wisconsin School of the Air.

Your teacher is Professor Richard Seachert, conductor of the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.

[Piano music] Hello boys and girls, what's the name of this instrument that I've been playing on?

The bassoon, that's right, it's the biggest instrument of the woodwind family and because it's the biggest it has can play deeper tones than any of the other.

Let's see if we can find it over here on our big picture of the orchestra conductor's score.

Well here are the bassoons right at the bottom of the woodwind family and right beneath the clarinets, the obos, and the flutes.

You know when we learn about these various instruments of the symphony orchestra, the first thing we want to find out is what vibrates to produce the musical sound that we hear.

Then we want to find out what the player has to do in order to produce these vibrations.

Well now all these instruments that we've been talking about in the woodwind family are played by blowing.

They're all wind instruments.

We found out that the flute has a hole at one end that you blow across to make the air vibrates and you remember the clarinet had a read and a mouthpiece that you blow into and the read vibrates.

Then when we talked about the obo last time we saw the tiny double read of the obo and we learned that that is what vibrates when you blow on an obo.

Now our special guest for today or our special instrument, the bassoon also has a double read.

Would you like to take a look at it?

Well here it is.

The readmaker has taken two pieces of read and has fashioned them together like this so that there's an opening between the end like that for the air to go through.

To see what that bassoon read looks like alongside of an obo read.

Well here is an obo read and as you can see the bassoon read is wider and it gets much wider up here at this end.

Whenever you hear a sound on the bassoon this read is vibrating.

Now the bassoon read fits on to the end of a thin hollow tube like that and the end of the tube that has a cork on it fits into the bassoon right up here like that.

Now if I should close all the holes on the bassoon and blow into it here the air would come out way up here.

How do you supposed to get there?

Well let's find out.

You blow here and that air goes down around through here and then turns around the corner and comes back up through and finally comes back up here at this end.

I think you might be able to understand that a little better if I show you a picture.

Let's pretend we're looking inside of a bassoon and we'll look at this diagram here and this represents where the read goes and if you blow in there, the air goes down around through there and comes out there if you have all the holes closed.

Well now I wonder how you'd like to hear a very fine bassoon player play a solo for you.

We have a guest today whose name is Jay Forrester and he's going to play a part of a clarinet solo I mean part of a bassoon solo by the composer Mozart.

[Music] Thank you very much.

Jay went to high school in New York City and now he's a member of the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.

His accompanist was Paul Burgess.

How do you suppose you get all those different tones on the bassoon?

Well you remember when we talked about the other woodwind instruments you saw that there were holes along the sides that the player covered with their fingers to make the air travel farther and to make the sound lower.

Now it works just the same way on the bassoon.

Here you can see the holes up along here that are closed with the fingers and then down here you can see keys that are used to close pads which cover holes that are too big and too far away for you to be able to reach with your own fingers.

So the bassoon player learns which fingers to put down to get the tone that he wants.

I haven't shown you how to blow on a bassoon avi.

Well it's really very simple if you have a good read.

All you do is just cover your upper teeth a little bit with your upper lips and cover your lower teeth a little bit with your lower lips and hold in the size of your mouth just enough so that the air doesn't spill out around the sides.

You hold your jaw quite loose and put the read fairly well into your mouth and blow like this.

Now most people don't realize that the bassoon can also play notes in the higher notes than you might expect and up in that part of the bassoon the tone quality is rather sweet sounding.

Listen to this.

When we were talking about the various woodwind instruments I think it's interesting to remember that we learn that each of them has a big or a little brother that sort of goes along with them when they play on the symphony orchestra.

For example, you remember the flute had a piccolo, a little brother that is used and played by one of the flute players whenever the composer wants a high flute like sound.

And in the oval which we have here has a big brother with a sort of a dark, sad voice.

And whenever that sound is wanted, why one of the oval players plays an English horn.

The clarinet had a big brother too, the bass clarinet which could go lower than the regular clarinet.

Now you might think that this bassoon could go low enough, but it has a big big brother, but I'm going to show you right now.

It's over here and the name of it is the contrabassoon.

What do you think of that?

Would you like to hear what it sounds like?

Well, I'll see if I can play a few tones for you.

It has a read like a regular bassoon read, only of course it's a little bit bigger.

[drums] Well, that's really low.

In fact, this contrabassoon has the lowest voice of any instrument in the symphony orchestra.

Well, now we've talked about all the different woodwinds.

Would you like to hear what they sound like when they all play together?

We have a flute player, an oval player, a clarinet player, and a bassoon player here today, and they're going to play a piece for you.

Now, I think you all know what each of the instruments looks like, but see if you can recognize what they sound like.

And while they're playing, you might be thinking of what instrument you might like to learn to play sometime.

The woodwind quartet is going to play a piece called a village dance.

[drums] Thank you all very much.

The members of this family, the woodwind family, get along together very well, don't they?

Well, now today, what have we done?

We've seen the contra bassoon, the lowest voice in the entire symphony orchestra, and the bassoon, and you saw a bassoon read, and you learned how to blow on a bassoon.

Well, no, I'm going to play a little game with you.

I wonder if you really know what the names of these woodwind instruments are.

I'm going to hold them up and tell you just a word or two about them, and then when I ask you, not before, you all say very clearly what you think the name of the instrument is.

Ready?

Here we go.

Now this one has a small double read up at this end, and it looks like that.

What's the name of it?

The oval.

All right, let's try it again.

All this one has a hole at one end, and when you play it, you hold it like this.

What's the name of it?

The flute, that's very good, and we'll try another one.

Let's see.

This one has a mouthpiece and a single read, and you play it like this, and what's the name of that one?

The clarinet.

Very good.

And of course, you all know what the bassoon looks like, because that's the one we especially looked at and heard today.

Well, now on our next program, we're going to talk about another family of instruments.

We've talked about all the woodwinds, and we're going to talk about the brasses.

I think you'll find the brasses very, very interesting, so I hope to see you then.

Goodbye.

[music] This has been instruments of the orchestra, a program for elementary and junior high school pupils.

Your teacher is Professor Richard C. Church, conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra.

This has been a Wisconsin School of the Air presentation.

[music]