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As a follow up to the question why does the orchestra tune to the oboe, I'm asking since when this became standard practice? For example, was it since the Modern oboe, or already since the Classical oboe used in Mozart time? Did Bach use the Baroque oboe to tune his orchestra?

If not (any kind of) the oboe, which instruments have been used to fulfill this function? Comments have identified: cello (which in turn is tuned by a chamber/continuo organ), clarinet, etc.

GratefulDisciple
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    Part of the problem is, throughout the baroque period and into the classical, there usually was a keyboard instrument present in pretty much any setting that would also have an oboe. – Andy Bonner Jan 16 '24 at 14:36
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    I don't know that it's historical, but I can speak to common practice in early-music ensembles today. That keyboard "continuo" instrument, be it portative organ or harpsichord, is joined in its role by low strings, esp. the cello. So, since the organ/harpsichord is too quiet for the whole ensemble to hear well, the cello first takes the pitches C, G, D, and A from the keyboard (one at a time, because temperament). It then plays them for the other low strings, then G, D, A for violins (and then the violone and violins take an E directly from the keyboard, or tune it by ear to neighboring – Andy Bonner Jan 16 '24 at 14:37
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    strings), and then the cello gives a pitch to whatever winds might be present (typically an A, or maybe a D depending on key). – Andy Bonner Jan 16 '24 at 14:38
  • @AndyBonner Who knows this style of portative organ was the one commonly used to tune the cello? It looks portable enough and dated back to the medieval period. Another demo with 21st century composition. – GratefulDisciple Jan 16 '24 at 15:03
  • I was speaking of the baroque period; that's a medieval hand-organ. Here's a video of what I had in mind, with our tuning procedure as well (though you can't see or hear much). You get some better shots of the organ once we start playing. So "portative" in the sense that it's not built into a building, but still something that takes two people to lift. https://www.youtube.com/live/sZb8f8mbwzA?si=i8x6Z0s2y91DAXk4&t=1854 – Andy Bonner Jan 16 '24 at 16:24
  • Interestingly (or not :-) ), Concert Bands, aka Wind Ensembles usually tune to the clarinet even though there are oboes in the group. – Carl Witthoft Jan 17 '24 at 14:33
  • I'm too lazy/busy to find a copy in the library so as to get more than the Google Books preview, but the definitive answer appears to lie in pp 375 ff of https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Birth_of_the_Orchestra/YT6LlQoeL8MC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=tuning&pg=PA375&printsec=frontcover. Looks like "not standardized to the oboe until the 19th century" is a safe answer. – Andy Bonner Jan 17 '24 at 15:53
  • @AndyBonner Thanks, will look into it. Re: "portative" organ, I was imagining a scenario where a "box / chamber/ positive organ" was not being used in the performance and therefor not available in the room (instead the continuo instrument was a harpsichord or a lute). I wonder whether in that scenario they took the trouble to bring in that medieval portative organ as the "tuning fork" only (since tuning fork was not invented until 1711), simply because of its portability and legacy. Or maybe the cellist go to another room to tune it first? – GratefulDisciple Jan 17 '24 at 16:04
  • I doubt anyone would bother to bring in any instrument that wasn't going to perform, solely as a tuning source (aside from tuning fork or pitch pipe). Also, organs really aren't a great stable reference! They have to warm up, and do go out of tune. Meanwhile, it might be necessary to delimit this question to "when did oboe wind up being standard," and not "what was the full history of ensemble tuning before that," because it was very heterogeneous. – Andy Bonner Jan 17 '24 at 16:30
  • @AndyBonner Thanks for the feedback, esp 1) the book reference which is most instructive to broaden tuning practice more than simply a matter of selecting the primary instrument (it mentions "preluding", for instance, even buying practice (!) for wind instruments and requiring the players to transpose a semitone or more) and 2) describing the current practice with cello without oboe. Sometimes my wild imagination gets the better of me. I hope the question is better now. – GratefulDisciple Jan 18 '24 at 09:49

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For baroque music you tend to have a preference for smaller ensembles (which is not to say that no large scale works exist), and you often to have a keyboard instrument (harpsichord or organ). It takes significant time to tune a harpsichord, and a lot more time to tune an organ. This means that usually you’d tune after the keyboard instruments, and with ensembles my experience is that people would tune after the cello (which tunes after the harpsichord). With larger ensembles you naturally get the problem that you need a lot of space, and this naturally means it is hard to hear a single instrument. The oboe naturally offers itself for this, as its high harmonic content makes the sound carry well, and due to coupling at the reed the overtones are harmonic.

So I suppose that with larger ensembles this would have been established quite quickly (though I do not know the exact history of this).

Lazy
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