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 da caccia Oboe da caccia The oboe da caccia (; literally "hunting oboe" in Italian), also sometimes referred to as an oboe da silva, is a double reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family, pitched a fifth below the oboe and used primarily in the Baroque period of European classical music. It has a curved tube, and in the case of instruments by Eichentopf (and modern copies of same), a brass bell, unusual for an oboe. Its range is close to that of the cor anglais—that is, from the F below middle C (notated C4 but sounding F3) to the G above