Contrabass oboe Baroque composers. This apparently was an oboe-type instrument in the bassoon range. It had, nonetheless, a distinct tonal quality of its own. Richard Strauss states, in his edition of Hector Berlioz's "Treatise on Instrumentation", that its tone "...had not the slightest similarity with the low tones of the bassoon." Despite this distinction, the contrabass oboe never became popular or widely used, and few remain today. 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,
Oboe rather than other instruments of the family, such as the "bass oboe", the "cor anglais" (English horn), or oboe "d'amore" In English, prior to 1770, the standard instrument was called a "hautbois", "hoboy", or "French hoboy" ( ; borrowed from the French name, a compound word made of "haut" ["high", "loud"] and "bois" ["wood", "woodwind"]). The spelling of "oboe" was adopted into English c. 1770 from the Italian "oboè", a transliteration of the 17th-century pronunciation of the French name. A musician who plays the oboe is called an oboist. Today, the oboe is commonly used in concert bands, orchestras, chamber