In this photo are all the oboes currently in my possession. From left to right they are:
Baroque Oboe (2 keys) - Copy of an instrument by Thomas Stanesby Jr., London, (c.1710) - Made by Richard Earle
Classical Oboe (2 keys) - Copy of an instrument by Grundmann & Floth, Dresden, (c.1795) - Made by Alfredo Bernardini
Early Romantic Oboe (8 keys) - Copy of an instrument by Grundmann & Floth, Dresden, (c. 1815) - Made by Marcel Ponseele
Late Romantic Oboe (13 keys + brille mechanism) - Original instrument by Bertold & Sohnne, Speyer, (c.1870)
Early Ⅽ20th Oboe (Mechanism after Triébert System 3) - Original instrument by Hawkes & Son, London, (c. 1900)
Modern Oboe (Full Gillet System with Thumbplate) - Original instrument by Buffet Crampon (Greenline), Paris (2008)
The Baroque Oboe is the instrument which I use for composers such as Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Purcell.
It has only two brass keys, making playing in keys with more than three sharps or flats very challenging. This accounts for the fact that most of the oboe music from this period stays within the simpler tonalities. The sound of this oboe is fuller and rounder than that of the later oboes and is, arguably, the most beautiful of all of them. However, since the boxwood used to build it softer than the woods in use today, the sound is also quieter and more suited to the smaller concert halls which were common in the Ⅽ18th than to the massive concert halls of the present day. It plays at A=415, the pitch which has become standard for the performance of Baroque music in the Ⅽ21st.
The Classical Oboe is what I use for composers such as Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven.
Like the Baroque oboe, it has only two brass keys, giving it the same tonal limitations. The dimensions of the interior bore, however, are narrower than that of the Baroque oboe which accounts for a slight loss of the Baroque oboe's rounded tone. However, it also allows this instrument a greater flexibility in the high notes at the very top of the instrument's range. This is not to say that this instrument does not sound beautiful. Far from it! You might compare the difference between the sounds of the Baroque and Classical oboes as the difference between two people's accents from different parts of the country. It plays at A=430, the pitch which has become standard for the performance of Classical music in the Ⅽ21st.
The Early Romantic Oboe is the instrument I use for later Beethoven, Mendlssohn and Berlioz.
The instrument is essentially identical to the Classical oboe except that is has five extra keys. The keys make playing in keys with many more sharps and flats more practicable. The keys also mean that certain notes, which used to sound slightly muffled on the classical and baroque oboes, sound clearer. People started adding keys to their instruments in the first years of the Ⅽ19th and many original oboes exist which began life with only two keys but had more added to them by later owners. By 1825, instruments were being made with up to thirteen keys, but some players, notably the French, decided that the keys were an obstruction. Far from regarding it as an improvement, the keys were initially criticised for robbing the oboe of its own peculiar timbre in certain tonal keys. This instrument plays at A=438.
The Late Romantic Oboe is ideal for playing Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Wagner.
On the outside, this instrument looks to be the first of the later instruments. The keywork is much like that of the Early Ⅽ20th oboe and the lack of ornamental turning is also a trend which developed later on. However, on the inside, this instrument has more in common with the earlier oboes. The bore is roughly the same dimensions as the Early Romantic oboe and the sound is more comparable to those than the later instruments. The extra keywork makes this instrument possible to play in most tonal keys with relative ease. This style of oboe remained in use in Germany until the time of Richard Strauss though he said in his 1904 revisions to Berlioz's Treatise on Instrumentation that he preferred the sound of the French system oboes (see below). This style of oboe remained in use in Russia as far as the 1960s, making this instrument suitable for composers as recent as Prokofiev and Shostakovich. This beautiful instrument plays at A=440 but can also play down as far as A=435 with its interchangeable top pieces.
The Early Ⅽ20th Oboe is what I would use for the music of Ravel, Stravinsky and Holst.
This instrument was made by Hawkes & Son, before the merger which made the famous Boosey & Hawkes. The bore is even narrower than that of the Classical and later oboes, giving it a slightly more nasal but louder and more penetrating sound. The key system was desinged by Guillaume Triébert in 1840 and has been used on most French instruments ever since. Like the above Late Romantic oboe, all tonal keys now become practicable with this key system. Triébert manufactured three more systems of varying complexity throughout the century but they all coexisted. Unfortunately, this instrument is designed to play at "sharp pitch", A=456, which was common in England in the early Ⅽ20th, meaning that it is largely unusable for ensemble playing.
The Modern Oboe is an instrument I use for all the above music and the music of living composers.
This is the type of oboe which is in use in Britain today. The keywork is, in essence, that of Triébert's Systeme 5 (1849) though there has been more than one hundred years of fine tuning to the mechanism. All the tonal keys are almost equally simple to play in (with considerable practice!), the sound of the instrument is extremely focused and penetrative. This instrument can fill a 5,000-seater concert hall with a beautiful sound effortlessly and is what most professional oboists use today. These instruments have now supplanted almost all other oboe systems, the only notable exception being in Vienna where they still use an instrument which looks like the Early Romantic oboe though with many modern conveniences. This is a sleek, modern machine yet, what is has gained in efficiency, it has lost is character. That said, there is no question that this is a thoroughly useful instrument. It is made from a wood-resin composite material and plays at A=440, the modern international pitch standard.