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 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