the oboe d'amore is deeper in pitch than the orchestral oboe.
is the oboe d'amore higher or lower in pitch than the orchestral oboe?
deeper
the standard oboe has several siblings of various sizes and playing ranges. the most widely known and used today is the cor anglais, or english horn, the tenor (or alto) member of the family. a transposing instrument; it is pitched in f, a perfect fifth lower than the oboe. the oboe d'amore, the alto (or mezzo-soprano) member of the family, is pitched in a, a minor third lower than the oboe. j.s. bach made extensive use of both the oboe d'amore as well as the "taille" and oboe da caccia, baroque antecedents of the cor anglais. even less common is the bass oboe (also called baritone oboe), which sounds one octave lower than the oboe. delius and holst both scored for the instrument. similar to the bass oboe is the more powerful heckelphone, which has a wider bore and larger tone than the baritone oboe. only 165 heckelphones have ever been made. not surprisingly, competent heckelphone players are difficult to find due to the extreme rarity of this particular instrument. the least common of all are the musette (also called oboe musette or piccolo oboe), the sopranino member of the family (it is usually pitched in e or f above the oboe), and the contrabass oboe (typically pitched in c, two octaves deeper than the standard oboe).
oboe
its popularity waning in the late eighteenth century, the oboe d'amore fell into disuse for about 100 years until composers such as richard strauss ("symphonia domestica", where the instrument represents the child), claude debussy ("gigues", where the oboe d'amore has a long solo passage), maurice ravel, frederick delius, and others began using it once again in the early years of the twentieth century. it can be heard in toru takemitsu's (1984), but its most famous modern usage is, perhaps, in ravel's "boléro" (1928), where the oboe d'amore follows the e-flat clarinet to recommence the main theme for the second time. gustav mahler employed the instrument once, in (1901), one of his five "rückert-lieder". american composer william perry uses the oboe d'amore in his film scores and most recently in the third movement of his "jamestown concerto" for cello and orchestra (2007). in his orchestration of mussorgsky's "pictures at an exhibition", vladimir ashkenazy uses the oboe d'amore to highlight the plaintive solo of the movement.
oboe d'amore