Solo Woodwind Repertoire: Oboe

The first piece of music where the oboe really resonated with me was Gabriel's Oboe from the film The Mission composed by Ennio Morricone. I love the pure, singing tone of the instrument in all its melodic capabilities.

I listened to the first suggested work Six Metamorphoses after Ovid by Benjamin Britten in my previous music course, so I'll revisit my notes from that time:

'Britten's collection of Metamorphoses demonstrates the range of the oboe's capabilities, where No.2 'Phaeton' shows a more dance-like character compared to No.3 'Niobe', which expresses yearning and melancholy. A little research into this work (Niobe) reveals that the score is marked 'piangendo', meaning weeping. This is portrayed excellently in that the oboe's efficiency at producing a melody that can really tug at the listeners emotions.'

Over a year later, I am listening to the work again and can make some further observations. The dance-like Phaeton piece is of a character I would not associate with the oboe, often using the lowest register of the instrument, which to my ears sounds like a strange but pleasant hybrid of bassoon and saxophone!

A treatise written as part of someones PhD requirements was very helpful in allowing me to further understand this work for solo oboe. The document can be found here. Below is a mixture of points made in that treatise and my own observations:

• The movements often have no 'absolute' time signature, but do have bar lines. Britten often places a different number of beats in each bar, and also alters the beaming.
• There is an interesting part in the movement Pan which is marked 'Lento ma subito accel.' - a beautiful, florid run of notes ascending and descending across the whole line.
• There is much use of pauses at the end of phrases.
• There was more use of traditional tonality than I expected, but also use of whole tone scales, and also an octatonic scale on G (Phaeton).
• A variety of articulations are used.
• Britten uses contrasting A-B-A sections, such as in the movement Phaeton.
• There is much use of tuplets in the pieces, often giving the sound a particular intricacy. The composer also makes use of unmeasured trills on several occasions.
• Narcissus is the first movement in the work to have an absolute time signature, giving a 'more rigid framework with regard to melodic line and phrases'.
• A very interesting part starting in bar 10 of Narcissus, where alternating groups of notes with upwards and downwards stems represent Narcissus and his reflected image. The interval between the two groups gradually decreases until they become indistinguishable from one another.
• The movement Arethusa demonstrates some large leaps of nearly two octaves.