Contrabass oboe Contrabass oboe The contrabass oboe is a double reed woodwind instrument in the key of C or F, sounding two octaves or an octave and a fourth (respectively) lower than the standard oboe. Current research, in particular that by hautboy specialist Bruce Haynes, suggests that such instruments may have been developed in France as part of an original attempt to maintain the complete family of double reed instruments when the oboe was created from the shawm. There was an instrument referred to as the basse de cromorne or basse de hautbois which was used by Lully, Charpentier, and other French
Oboe Concerto (Marcello) as the intended instrument for the arrangement, originated after Johann Bernhard's, but may have been copied from an earlier stage of Bach's arrangement. Another manuscript containing Bach's arrangement of Marcello's oboe concerto indicated "J. S. B." as composer on the title page, without mentioning an earlier model, or its composer, for the composition. The ornamentation as indicated in Bach's keyboard version of the concerto works well on harpsichord, but is less suitable for performance on an early 18th-century oboe. Nonetheless Bach's ornamentation has been used for 20th-century publications of the oboe concerto – the ornamentation causes fewer problems when performed