Oboe and Oboe d'amore

I have wondered this for ages, and haven't been able to find a satisfactory answer on the web. Does anyone know?

I see. Most helpful :) Thanks!

The Oboe d'amore is a baroque instrument from the family of double-reeded instruments. Unlike the normal oboe, it is in "A" and it has a pear shaped bell. They aren't used that frequently but are sometimes called for. D'amore means - of love.

Hope this helps!

I think of an oboe's sound in terms of an equilibrium between clarinet-like and flute-like, and I think the d'amour is generally more flute-like (when played well).

That isn't probably very helpful if you don't think in the odd ways I do though....

The oboe d' amore is more mellow in tone compare to the oboe. When I first heard it in Monterverdi's opera 'Orfeo', I thought it was the sound of the horn until my friend told me it was the sound of teh oboe d' amore. if you want to hear the sound of the oboe d' amore, you can listen to the 1st movement of Debussy's Images for orchestra where the oboe d'amore plays a part which is the folk song 'The Keel Row'. Hope you get to know more about this instrument. :happy:

Don't forget the oboe di caccia (I think that's more likely to have sounded like a horn then the d'amore). It's similar to the amore in the fact that it's larger then the regular oboe, but it has a weird brass thing on it... Either way, bach evidently perferred them to using the regular oboe in obligatto parts.

Its compass is about the same as the oboe but starting on low G#. It's parts are transposed up a minor 3rd. So G# is written B - the original bottom note of the oboe. The tone can't be described - best is to hear one, there are recordings about. I've only known one amateur musician to have one - he used it to play oboe parts that didn't go too high because of the mellower bottom notes.

M

Well I say that they are very different. I play D'Amore a lot when playing Bach, and I play the Telemann concerto. It is really more of a baroque instrument, unfortunately. I really wish it hadn't died out. If you want to hear the sound, get a copy of the Telemann concerto in A. Bach also wrote a few concerti for d'Amore.

Zentari: The Oboe da Caccia's are no longer. No one makes them anymore. The English horn is somewhat the modern equivalent of the da Caccia.