ABSTRACT
On the bell of the baroque oboe, two sound holes are located for acoustical reasons, to help the tone of the instrument and permit the sounding of the low c. Michael Praetorius shows five sizes in his Syntagma Musicum namely, klein discant schalmey, discant scalmey, alt pommer, tenor pommer and bass pommer. By carefully working at the fingerings, and playing long notes to build quality of tone, playing will improve and it should not be too long before the principles can be applied to simple pieces. When playing the oboe in a cold environment it is important to ensure that the body of the instrument is carefully warmed before playing to avoid splits occurring. The simple solution for this problem is simply to transpose the oboe part up an octave where necessary, a practice familiar to any baroque wind player and certainly one that the publisher would have been aware of.
