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 d'amore was invented in the eighteenth century and was first used by Christoph Graupner in "" (1717). Johann Sebastian Bach wrote many pieces—a concerto, many of his cantatas, and the "" movement of his Mass in B minor—for the instrument. Georg Philipp Telemann also frequently employed the oboe d'amore. Its popularity waning in the late eighteenth century, the fell into disuse for about 100 years until composers such as Richard Strauss ("Symphonia Domestica", where the instrument represents the child), Claude Debussy ("Gigues", where the oboe d'amore has a long solo passage), Maurice Ravel, Frederick Delius, and others began using it once