Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A slender woodwind instrument with a conical bore and a double-reed mouthpiece, having a range of three octaves and a penetrating, poignant sound.
- n. A reed stop in an organ that produces a sound similar to that of the oboe.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An important musical instrument of the wood wind group, and the type of the family in which the tone is produced by a double reed. In its modern form it consists of a wooden tube of conical bore, made of three joints, the lowest of which is slightly flaring or belled, while the uppermost carries in its end the metal staple with its reeds of cane. The number of finger-holes varies considerably; in the larger varieties they are principally controlled by an intricate system of levers. The extreme compass is nearly three octaves, upward from the B♭ or B♯ next below middle C, including all the semitones. The tone is small, but highly individual and penetrating; it is especially useful for pastoral effects, for plaintive and wailing phrases, and for giving a reedy quality to concerted passages. The normal key (tonality) of the orchestral oboe is C, and music for it is written with the G clef. The oboe has borne various names, such as chalumeau, schalmey, shawm, bombardo piccolo, hautboy. etc. It has been a regular constituent of the modern orchestra since early in the eighteenth century, and is the instrument usually chosen to give the pitch to others. It has also been used to some extent as a solo instrument. The oboe family of instruments includes the oboe d'amour, the oboe da caccia or tenoroon, the English horn, and the bassoon.
- n. In organ-building, a reed-stop with metal pipes which give a penetrating and usually very effective oboe-like tone. It is usually placed in the swell organ.
Wiktionary
- n. A soprano and melody wind instrument in the modern orchestra and wind ensemble. It is a smaller instrument and generally made of grendilla wood. It is a member of the double reed family.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One of the higher wind instruments in the modern orchestra, yet of great antiquity, having a penetrating pastoral quality of tone, somewhat like the clarinet in form, but more slender, and sounded by means of a double reed; a hautboy.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a slender double-reed instrument; a woodwind with a conical bore and a double-reed mouthpiece
Etymologies
- Italian, from French hautbois; see hautboy.
Examples
“I think it helped me get the structure of music in my mind, starting with oboe, which is a C instrument, and I played that when I was in fourth grade because I was too young to be in the band and they won't let me in.”
“Mp3tunes is also great, there's a small plugin which sits on your machine called the oboe locker which just sits in the background uploading and downloading changes to your itunes or mp3tunes locker; very very useful.”
“I mean, the oboe is a very piercing instrument, as you know.”
“Plus the AGONIZING descriptions of reed-making, the bane of every oboist's existence: the oboe is the true love of my life, I played a bunch of other instruments too but the oboe was THE ONE except for the torment, the agony, of the reed thing.”
“There was an intermediate instrument a third lower than the oboe, used by Bach, called the oboe d'amore, which was probably used with the cornemuse or bagpipe, and another, a third higher than the oboe, called musette (not the small bagpipe of that name).”
“From the bass and double quint pommers came ultimately the bassoon and contra-bassoon, and from the alto pommer, an obsolete instrument for which Bach wrote, called the oboe di caccia, or hunting oboe, an appellation unexplained, unless it had originally a horn-like tone, and was, as it has been suggested to me by Mr. Blaikley, used by those who could not make a real hunting horn sound.”
“The oboe is a representative type of the higher pitched double-reed instruments.”
Critical and Historical Essays Lectures delivered at Columbia University
“At 11, he abandoned the piano in favor of the oboe, but only because he joined his junior high school orchestra so late that the oboe was the only instrument left.”
“(Before modern versions of instruments, the oboe was the most sonically stable instrument, and so the most likely to be in tune).”
“If you learn the clarinet, then the oboe is a relatively easy transition.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘oboe’.
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Organ Stops
A list of pipe- and pedal-organ stops. These have variously and perhaps at times capriciously been named and labelled by organ builders in Latin, English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, a...
diapason, double open diapason, sub-bourdon, double dulciana, bourdon, contra gamba, pyramidon, open diapason, stopped diapason, dulcis, dulciana, viol-di-gamba and 237 more...
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