The reason lies in the way they are blown: the piccolo and flute are descendants of the baroque transverse flute, and are played through a hole in the side, rather than at the end, of the tube. The obeo, clarinet, cor anglais and basson are played through their ends, through reeds. The single reed of the clarinet gives it its smooth and fluid sound; the basson's double reed its gruff timbre.
RECORDER
The recorder, although familiar to children, only makes rare appearances in the orchestra.
Widely used by composers from Medieval times to the 18th Century, it comes from a family of instruments that had almost dropped out of the orchestra by Mozart's time. Only in recent years, with a revival of interest in early music, has it re-emerged as an instrument of the orchestra.
PICCOLO
This shrill piping instrument gets its name from the Italian for small flute (flauto piccolo) even through today its Italian name, the ottavino, points to its pitch, one octave above the standard flute.
Its bright, piercing tone colour lends itself to the depiction of song-birds in baroque music, particularly in Vivaldi and Rameau.
FLUTE
"The soft, complaining flute," was how the poet Dryden described the gentle melancholy and subtle timbre of the baroque transverse flute made of wood. Its modern counterpart was developed in the 1840s, and though still made of wood it had acquired a sophisticated mechanism of keys and padded plates to do the work of the fingers. Modern flutes are made of all kinds of metals from silver-plated nickel to solid gold and platinum.
CLARINET
A late arrival to the orchestra, the clarinet is only one of a group of woodwinds which share the unique feature of single-reed mouthpiece. Each clarinet player might be expected to play five instruments of the immediate family as well as the severn closely related types of saxophone.
The standard B-flat clarinet has a fluid tone and wide-ranging agility; although descended from an ancient pipe, the chalumeau, it uses an advanced key-system like that of the flute.
OBOE
Shakespeare's stage directions call for 'hautboys', the English form of the French hautbois, meaning literally 'high wood'. Not until the 19th Century did the instrument universally acquire the Italian name oboe.
Its reedy, polished sound has a singing quality, heard to great advantage in the beautiful slow movement of Brahms Violin Concerto.
COR ANGLAIS
In America, this alto oboe is known by a literal translation of its French name, the English horn, though it is no relation to the horn family and its connection with England only tenuous. Tuned a fifth lower than the standard oboe, its chief characteristics are the bent crook which holds the double reed and a peculiarly haunting, wailing sound, which Rossini used to suggest the lowing of cattle in his William Tell Overture.
BASSON
The basson is the oldest tenor instrument among the woodwinds, roughly equivalent in its range to the cello, with which, in baroque music, it often doubles to add extra weight to the bottom lines. Often heard in music of a rustic or humorous character, its gruff, oddly hoarse-sounding tone of voice makes it an ideal representative of the Grandfather in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.
SAXOPHONES
The saxophones are the brain-children of the Belgian instrument-maker Adolphe Sax, and were designed as military instruments. The soprano looks like a small silver clarinet and has a comparable range. However the alto is the standard instrument and the first one to be used by the Romantic composers. In the 20th Centuary it has become the most important member of the jazz band.
The tenor is also to be found in the symphony orchestra. Its range spans the A-flat at the bottom of the stave in the bass clef to the E-flat at the top of the stave in the treble clef. Like all of the saxophones, the tenor has the characteristic 'conical' tube and the turned up 'bell' of the alto.
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