ABSTRACT
The small piece of the bassoon is the assembled reed and bocal. In the school setting, the most efficient way to introduce the bassoon to a student is to separate him/her from the large group of instrumentalists. In bassoon performance, intonation deficiencies often must be corrected by lipping, that is, deviating from the normal embouchure. Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony believed that string players should be Russian or Polish Jews, brass players German, and woodwind players French. The whisper key is not an octave key or register key. The upper register of the bassoon is achieved not by depressing the whisper key. The teacher who crows a reed and understands the information provided by the crow knows what can be expected of the bassoon player. The rubric that follows makes clear the expectations of the university student playing secondary bassoon as he or she approaches the end of an intensive three or four weeks of study.
