The old cylindrical ear-piercing fife is an obsolete instrument, being superseded by a small army flute, still, however, called a fife, used with the side drum in the drum and fife band.

The transverse or German flute, introduced into the orchestra by Lulli, came into general use in the time of Handel; before that the recorders, or flute douces, the flute à bec with beak or whistle head, were preferred. These instruments were used in a family, usually of eight members, viz., as many sizes from treble to bass; or in three, treble, alto or tenor, and bass. A fine original set of those now rare instruments, eight in number, was shown in 1890 in the music gallery of the Royal Military Exhibition, at Chelsea; a loan collection admirably arranged by Captain C.B. Day. They were obtained from Hesse Darmstadt, and had their outer case to preserve them exactly like the recorder case represented in the painting by Holbein of the ambassadors, or rather, the scholars, recently acquired for the National Gallery. The flageolet was the latest form of the treble, beak, or whistle head flute. The whistle head is furnished with a cavity containing air, which, shaped by a narrow groove, strikes against the sharp edge and excites vibration in the conical pipe, on the same principle that an organ pipe is made to sound, or of the action of the player's mouth and lips upon the blowhole of the flute.

As it will interest the audience to hear the tone of Shakespeare's recorder, Mr. Henry Carte will play an air upon one.

The oboe takes the next place in the wood wind band. The principle of sound excitement, that of the double reed, originating in the flattening of the end of an oat or wheat straw, is of great antiquity, but it could only be applied by insertion in tubes of very narrow diameter, so that the column of air should not be wider than the tongue straw or reed acting upon it. The little reed bound round and contracted below the vibrating ends in this primitive form permitted the adjustment of the lower open end in the tube, it might be another longer reed or pipe which inclosed the air column; and thus a conical pipe that gradually narrows to the diameter of the tongue reed must have been early discovered, and was the original type of the pastoral and beautiful oboe of the modern orchestra. Like the flute, the oboe has only the soprano register, extending from B flat or natural below middle C to F above the treble clef, two octaves and a fifth, which a little exceeds the flute downward. The foundation of the scale is D major, the same as the flute was before Boehm altered it.

Triebert, a skillful Parisian maker, tried to adapt Boehm's reform of the flute to the oboe, but so far as the geometrical division of the scale was concerned, he failed, because it altered the characteristic tone quality of the instrument, so desirable for the balance of orchestral coloration. But the fingering has been modified with considerable success, although it is true by a much greater complication of means than the more simple contrivances that preceded it, which are still preferred by the players. The oboe reed has been much altered since the earlier years of this century. It was formerly more like the reed of the shawm, an instrument from which the oboe has been derived; and that of the present bassoon. It is now made narrower, with much advantage in the refinement of the tone. As in the flute, the notes up to C sharp in the treble clef are produced by the normal blowing, and simply shortening the tube by opening the sound holes. Beyond that note, increased pressure, or overblowing, assisted by a harmonic "speaker" key, produces the first harmonic, that of the octave, and so on. The lowest notes are rough and the highest shrill; from A to D above the treble clef, the tone quality of the oboe is of a tender charm in melody. Although not loud, its tone is penetrating and prominent.

Its staccato has an agreeable effect. The place of the oboe in the wood wind band between the flute and the clarinet, with the bassoon for a bass, is beyond the possibility of improvement by any change.

Like the flute, there was a complete family of oboes in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century; the little schalmey, the discant schalmey, from which the present oboe is derived; the alto, tenor, pommer, and bass pommers, and the double quint or contrabass pommer.

In all these old finger hole instruments the scale begins with the first hole, a note in the bagpipe with which the drones agree, and not the entire tube. From the bass and double quint pommers came ultimately the bassoon and contra-bassoon, and from the alto pommer, an obsolete instrument for which Bach wrote, called the oboe di caccia, or hunting oboe, an appellation unexplained, unless it had originally a horn-like tone, and was, as it has been suggested to me by Mr. Blaikley, used by those who could not make a real hunting horn sound. It was bent to a knee shape to facilitate performance. It was not exactly the cor Anglais or English horn, a modern instrument of the same pitch which is bent like it, and of similar compass, a fifth below the usual oboe. The tenoroon, with which the oboe di caccia has been compared, was a high bassoon really on octave and a fifth below. It has been sometimes overlooked that there are two octaves in pitch between the oboe and bassoon, which has led to some confusion in recognizing these instruments.

There was an intermediate instrument a third lower than the oboe, used by Bach, called the oboe d'amore, which was probably used with the cornemuse or bagpipe, and another, a third higher than the oboe, called musette (not the small bagpipe of that name). The cor Anglais is in present use. It is a melancholy, even mournful instrument, its sole use in the orchestra being very suitable for situations on the stage, the effect of which it helps by depressing the mind to sadness. Those who have heard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" will remember, when the faithful Kurwenal sweeps the horizon, and sees no help coming on the sea for the dying Tristan, how pathetically the reed pipe of a careless peasant near, played in the orchestra on a cor Anglais, colors the painful situation.