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 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