As I understand it, the contrabass sarussophone is the only member of its family that is not obsolete, the reason being that some orchestras in Europe use it in preference to the contrabassoon.

Worth a quick look:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarrusophone

I'd forgotten about Threni! The Sorcerer's Apprentice in the published score does indeed mention the sarrusophone but as an alternative to the contrabassoon ('Contrebasson (ou Sarrusophone Contrebasse)').

I don't know exactly when your information dates from, Tony, but I'm afraid I've never seen one. Alas the French bassoon is also still losing even what ground it has in France - I believe the Paris Conservatoire has stopped teaching it. Damn shame - the German bassoon is really a very different sound. Oh well, it's not as though there's a lot of music where it makes a difference, just Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Poulenc, Dukas, Berlioz, chaps like that, none of them particularly good orchestrators anyway...

Don't know about precedent either but French bassoons in the Concerto for Orchestra would certainly be a very lovely thing! Actually for Elgar it would make a lot of sense too. Thing is, bassoons cost such a heap it's unfair even just on the financial level to expect players to have both at their disposal. Even if they could reasonably be expected to programme their thumbs differently each week.

I reckon it's dreadful how rarely we hear the opening of the Rite on a basson instead of the usual fagott...

They are in fact (as you doubtless know already) the normal French terms for the French and German bassoons respectively.

But yes, I indeed decided to put them in italics so that people wouldn't get the impression either that I couldn't spell bassoon or that I couldn't spell... er... yes, anyway.

Anyone else up for resurrecting the old pronunciation of bassoon as bazoon? Personally I find that a most attractive way of saying it. It's also somehow onomatopoeic...



If you see one like the one on the right, take a good hard look and a good hard listen. You might not get much more of a chance. 

Crudely put it's a bit like the difference between the French and German clarinet. Or I suppose the French and German horn. The French versions of all three have a smaller bore and a lighter, tangier sound (apparently the Selmer has a wider bore than the Buffet though). Personally I don't think you can change the sound of the winds to that extent for the French repertoire without losing a heck of a lot of what makes that orchestral sound special. (Alborada del Gracioso with a German bassoon misses the point a bit for me.)

You can hear the French bassoon in the old Boulez Rite of Spring with the ORTF orchestra (that's the group now called the Orchestre National de France) on the Adès label if you can find it. It looks like this:



I'm eternally grateful to James Dillon for the recommendation - I think it's my favourite Rite.

You can also hear it in the Boulez discs from the Domaine Musical - it's a great sound for Varèse too, as are the French French horn and the other small-bore brass instruments.

Unfortunately Amaury Wallez changed to the German system while he was at the Orchestre de Paris, thus before he made those Poulenc chamber music recordings with Rogé. I suspect he was playing Buffet on the older set with Février on EMI though. (Listens - oh goodness me yes, although that dry recording isn't going to endear the French sound to unsympathetic ears.)



And there's that wonderful set of quintets with the ONF wind quintet from the 1950s (bassoonist was René Plessier) including the Françaix first quintet, written for them.

Thanks for posting that, opilec. That was an excellently bracing way to start the day. Funny thing is it took me straight back to the 1970s as much as to the Middle Ages. Will definitely be getting a copy to celebrate both. 

At best it's slowing it down a tiny bit but it's really the orchestral culture that's determined it. I think it was the mid-1980s when Barenboim arrived at the Orchestre de Paris and told the bassoon players to change; that was I think a period when orchestras around the world were basically aiming at a sound of maximum Karajan-inspired fatness and the French bassoon doesn't do that well. Many of the other orchestras have hung on but the realities of the orchestral market mean that someone learning French bassoon can aim at a handful of orchestras in France (and I think also Luxembourg), someone learning German bassoon can aim at any other orchestra on the planet. So the French bassoon market is much more restricted than that for the German clarinet, for example; and even then from what I've heard it's much less difficult to change between clarinet systems than between bassoon systems.

Of course the period instrument movement has its own realities driven by the market more than by the music... (he said in an attempt to steer things a little more towards the topic )