The Beautiful Bassoon!
Art of 4 Centuries
By Jesse Read
Art and architecture has always featured musical instrument images
Here are a few important, and some less common examples of our instrument from early sources through modern times. Some are from my own collection, some are unidentified, and some are very famous. Known or unknown, they all have interesting stories.
The Flute Maker
He who is generous, let him be silent,
He who takes-let him be noisy
Poverty is like a flute;
Let it use love’s breath,
Let generosity move the fingers.
Its voice of thanksgiving enriches your joy
By piercing through the clouds
And bringing blessing in return.
Is the poet talking about the voice of the bassoon in the last three lines?
As the bassoon became more sophisticated it also was used more as a solo instrument in the baroque period. Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philip Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi and many others wrote solo parts to feature the bassoon. This famous painting shows a bassoon from that time.
This portrait is of the court bassoonist Felix Reiner, who was among the most illustrious musicians in the south German court of the time. The portrait is from 1760. The inscription gives his birthdate as 1732.
A beautiful print of a late Baroque bassoon playing a duet with a vertical harpsichord from the music dictionary of J.-B. de La Borde’s ‘Essai sur la musique’ (1780)
Does he have a secret??
The famous still unfinished cathedral of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain designed by the great artist Anton Gaudi, was started in1882. Over the portico surrounding beautiful stained-glass windows is a nativity scene with musicians, including a striking sculpture of a bassoonist. She is holding the instrument correctly and the bassoon is perfect in its simple design as sculpture.
The bassoon was often used in church for singing hymns, playing along on the bass line to keep the singers in pitch. Here an illustration from about 1880 shows choir boys rehearsing with the bassoon and an ophecleide, an early tuba, assisting.
A striking and dynamic abstract oil painting by Ben Jaccov, 1981
Artist James C. Christensen says this about his 1996 creation:
“If you look closely, you’ll see that this is not your everyday bassoon and the bassoonist isn’t ordinary either. Note how our hero has adapted: he has eleven fingers . . . just a little something extra I was pleased to include.”
Charcoal on paper, an life drawing, 18″ x 24″, made by artist Wendy Hart Penner. The subject is Canadian bassoonist Nadina Mackie Jackson during a matinee solo concert for the Vernon Performing Arts Centre in Vernon, British Columbia in 2009. The original has been lost.
“How different it was”, he plays, “when once we were young and new!”
And sometimes yet with a soft tone, the thought tugs at his heartstrings:
“Ah, that which so swiftly has flown away; one’s youth-and one’s fortune”
Rops was a lesser known Belgian artist who had a very prominent career as an illustrator and painter in Paris where he died in 1898