Let's Play Oboe!

My band teacher used to say “well someone has to play the Oboe”.  I chose the Baritone.  Like a Tuba, except smaller.  The best thing about the Baritone is that you get to sit in the back row.  And even better, when you empty your “spit valve”, you get to fling it over the rest of the band in front of you.  It was great to be a baritone-playing band guy.  But an Oboe player?

 

Even the word “Oboe” is strange.  It derives from the 16^th Century English word “hautboy” from haut; "high, loud, and high-pitched”.  The sixteenth century history included having King Henry VIII sever ties with the Catholic Church and declaring himself head of the church in England.  I may have my English history wrong but I believe the driving factor behind this decision was that King Hank wanted a boy and she gave birth to the future Elizabeth I of England, whose gender disappointed Henry.  But in the midst of all this, some totally un-political folks invented the Oboe.  Sounds plausible.

The Oboe is such a strange looking instrument.  Like a clarinet with the degrees of difficulty ratcheted up.   The folks that play it look like they are trying to blow grapes through a straw.

Even after my spit-slinging, back-row-sitting, baritone-playing band experience, I never really noticed the Oboe players.  How prominent can this bizarre instrument be?

And then this happened:  “An Oboe player in San Francisco had an aneurysm on stage while playing the Oboe.  William Bennett, the longtime San Francisco Symphony oboist who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on Saturday night while performing Richard Strauss' Oboe Concerto.  He was 56.”

The poor gentleman’s head exploded whilst trying to blow into that tiny reed.

I began to wonder what the life expectancy of Oboe players was compared to other instruments.  So I searched.  First thing up, a Yahoo Answers question:

“Is it true that playing oboe can shorten your life span & make you cannot hear well?”

Best Answer:

”I think all that backpressure must take its toll on a person's brain fluid. After a time you'll probably be skipping down the street in a gerbil costume playing your oboe trying to entice owls into your car. I've seen it happen! Tragic.”

After six years of inactivity on LefthandedandColorblind, I uncover a conspiracy worth blogging about:  Oboe playing shortens your lifespan. 

Another proof in point:   James Brown – oboist, teacher and producer of countless editions of oboe works – died today.  Shocked neighbors saw Jimmy Brown stumble from the wreckage of his home in Malmesbury , UK after it was destroyed by a gas explosion today.  Owww, It Feels Good!  Although it may not be the same James Brown.

And so it began.

My friend, Nashville Rich, and I began a conspiratorial watch.  We both frequently attend the San Francisco Ballet performances and we began to watch for head explosions in the Oboe “section” of the symphony.  After the very unfortunate event with the exploding Oboe player across the street, we figured it would be best to monitor the situation.  Conspiratorially, SFB began to introduce two Oboe players in their symphony.  A strategy of fault tolerance I am certain.

During one performance, I received an important text message from him indicating that he was “hermetically sealed in Saran-Wrap” in case the current-night’s Oboe player exploded while trying to “blow grapes” through his reed.  A disturbing thought in any case when one pictures a middle-aged man hermetically sealed in Saran-wrap. 

So I investigated further and found a disturbing article about Oboe player “Dick”:

“So once a year, Dick pulls out his “oboe mouthpiece”–a teeny tiny mouthpiece with a teeny-tiny single reed–and tells us about how he used to bring it on tour and tell the other musicians it was “just in case” or whip it out and warm up on it to scare the pants off them (because it sounds reed-iculous).”

I may have to provide a better answer to the Yahoo Answer’s questioner.  Should you take up the Oboe as your instrument?  Perhaps, but flinging spit from a baritone is way more interesting.

And safer.