There are lots of different types of woodwind instrument, they are not all made of wood and some have reeds and some don’t. So what was the first woodwind instrument, how do all the later ones follow on from it and are they actually all related?
The flute is the oldest the woodwind instrument. It dates back over 43,000 years when it was made from a bear thighbone. However, modern flutes weren’t around until 1847. Almost all modern woodwind instruments were developed as they are now during the 1800s.
I’m going to talk in more detail about the different types of woodwind instrument and when they were invented. There are lots of records of basic instruments being used in Roman and ancient Greek times, and although these are very different to the instruments we use today, plenty of comparisons can be made. I’ll talk about the instruments in three categories, no reeds, single reeds and double reed.
Which non-reed woodwind instrument came first?
Plenty of people know that the flute was the first woodwind instrument, but don’t necessarily know how different it was to a modern flute. Any instrument that is made up of some kind of tube with tone holes in it but no reed will be referred to as either a flute or a recorder, but the term flute came first. The early flutes are actually much more similar to what we call recorders today and “flute” now refers to an instrument blown transversely.
The first non-reed woodwind instrument on record was the flute, and this was actually the first of all types of musical instrument on record. Flutes were originally made of bone – the first is believed to be from the thighbone of a bear and originated in Eastern Europe between 35000 and 50000 years ago. Bones are an obvious choice as after the marrow is extracted, a hollow tube is left. Tone holes would be carved in this tube for pitch.
Other early bone flutes have also been found. Some have a hole in the end to blow into, while others have a hole in the side and are played sideways (transverse). They often appear in Byzantine artwork and are regularly depicted being played by shepherds.
The earliest known wooden transverse flute was the ch-ie – a Chinese flute dating back to around 900 BC. Flutes do not seem to have been played much in Ancient Greece but were certainly quite prominant in Roman culture. Between 1000 and 1500 AD, the flute begins to be used in a more standard way around Europe.
During the 16th century, the flute began to develop into something more similar to a modern flute. It wasn’t until the 18th century, however, that the recorder and the flute began being referred to as separate things – a flute being only the transverse form.
From this point, the recorder family of instruments didn’t experience any significant changes. Flutes, on the other hand, still had a lot more developing to do. For a while, the standard flute was what is now known as the Baroque flute, a wooden flute with a single key.
Around 1750, a full key system was developed for the Baroque flute and this gave some major improvements in the tuning. This key system wasn’t standard and there were many variations used by different flute makers. The metal flute wasn’t around until 1847 and was invented by Theobald Boehm, but this quickly became standard and isn’t significantly different to the flutes we have today – other than a few keywork changes.
Other flutes, for example, the alto flute and the piccolo, were in development alongside the flute. The developments in flute-making were directly applied to the other sizes of flute and piccolo. The standard piccolo was made in the early 1800s with the flute, while some of the larger flutes were improved later.
Which single reed instrument came first?
The single reed instruments we see in orchestras and bands today are the clarinet and saxophone families. The modern clarinet, now called the Boehm clarinet, was fully developed in the 1870s. The saxophone is a very new instrument – it didn’t exist at all until the 1840s and the basic design remains mostly unchanged.
The first instrument on record that was technically a single reed instrument was the memet, known to exist in Egypt in approximately 2700 BC. This was basically two reed canes attached together with tone holes cut in them. The player would just blow into the hole in the top of the cane, rather than onto a mouthpiece with a single reed attached to it like we see today.
As these instruments developed, the top of the cane was shaped more and more. This eventually resembled something closer to the type of single reed instrument we see today, although there was no separate mouthpiece, just carved reed. They are now usually referred to as double clarinets and used mainly in middle Eastern music.
Another early instrument categorised as a single reed instrument is the syrinx. This is basically the ancient Greek equivalent of the pan pipes and was developed around the same time as the memet. Again, the body of the instrument is cane and in this case, the player blows transversely across the opening at the top. Different length pipes attached to each other give a range of different pitches.
Single reeds where the reed is not the body of the instrument were developed considerably later. The first of these is called the Chalumeau, which was an earlier version of the Boehm clarinet. The Chalumeau came into use in France in the 1600s. The difference between this and earlier single reed instruments is the reed became separable from the instrument, with the main body now being made of wood.
The Chalumeau slowly began to develop into the modern clarinet. Originally, it had two metal keys that were added for ease of playing. The main difficulty it experienced was that it was only able to play well in the lower register. Attempts to rectify this led first to a similar instrument that was only able to play well in the high register. This was the instrument to first be called a clarinet.
For a while, the Chalumeau and the clarinet were used together, with the Chalumeau playing in the lower register and the clarinet in the higher register. It wasn’t until about 1800 that improvements in keywork were good enough to push the Chalumeau out in favour of the clarinet over the full range. Further improvements continued to be made until around 1870.
Other clarinets such as the bass clarinet and the Eb clarinet are directly comparable in terms of origins to the Bb clarinet. The bass clarinet underwent more developments later on but the main keywork followed the design of the Bb clarinet.
Which double reed instrument came first?
The double reed instruments found in ensembles today are the oboe, bassoon and cor anglais. The bassoon was developed before the oboe, in the late 17th century but they, and the cor anglais, share the same origins.
It is widely believed that the earliest double reed instrument was the aulos. This was around in Ancient Greek times and the earliest surviving example is from around 5000 BC. It was usually in the form of a two tubes and seems to be along the lines of something like a bag pipe, with a chanter and a drone. Each tube would have its own double reed.
In the 12th century, a new type of double reed instrument was invented in Europe – the shawm. This was a wooden instrument with a large bell and a double reed similar in size to a bassoon reed. By the 16th century, there were a variety of sizes of shawm, from sopranino to great bass and any later than this were developed with a single key.
The oboe was developed in the 17th century. Although it was inspired by the shawm, it was really quite different. A big difference was the reed design as the shawm did not have direct lip-to-reed contact. The keywork for the oboe was developed in the 1800s. Even now, there are multiple different arrangements of keys for the oboe and different players prefer different ones.
The first cor anglais (or English horn) was developed in 1720, possibly by the oboe maker J. T. Weigel. It was originally built with the same keywork as the oboe but with a different shaped bell and a small crook for the reed. It gradually developed with the oboe into the modern cor anglais.
Another instrument that was developed possibly more closely from the shawm is the dulcian – the predecessor of the bassoon. This was developed during the 16th century. This was the first double reed instrument to have a crook and was available in a range of sizes as it had only eight holes and two keys, so not all key signatures were possible on all dulcians.
The bassoon did not immediately replace the dulcian – both were in circulation for a while during the 18th century. The earliest bassoon was developed in the late 1600s and more keys were gradually added until the modern bassoon we see today was developed in the early 19th century.
Did all woodwind instruments develop from the same root?
The truth is that we don’t really know which came first, but it is believed to be a type of flute. This seems to make the most sense, as they are the similar to make in their least sophisticated form. Evidence backs this up, however, flutes were a bit more robust than the reed instruments so it could just be that these survived better.
There doesn’t seem to be a direct connection in ancestry between reed and non-reed woodwind instruments. They just seem to have been developed independently for the same purpose. Single and double reeds share more ancestry but were still developed alongside each other rather than one following the other.