Actually, I had played my Buffet bassoon, purchased in 1976, here in America before going to Paris to study in 1977. With the help of Jerry Corey's article cum fingering chart published in the IDRS Journal, and the patience of my colleagues, I began playing the Buffet exclusively in January of 1977 after several months of playing both the Heckel and the Buffet at various times.
After the close of my woodwind quintet's residency at the University of Delaware in May of that year, I went to France, first to Nice for studies under Michel Denize and that autumn to Paris for lessons with Maurice Allard. It was a great relief to learn a consistent and effective approach to the instrument after my previous rather improvisatory efforts.
Oddly enough, when I returned to the Philadelphia area, taking up residence in nearby Wilmington, Delaware, I found that if anything, my playing was slightly less compatible with my colleagues than it had been before I went to France, despite my feeling that I knew much better what I was doing. Now I realize that part of my discomfort was just not having the instrument under control a learning process which continues still. Also, the approach taught in France, brilliance, strength, and virtuosity, does need tempering to fit into the American milieu, which seems to value tight ensemble and intonation, flexibility at all dynamic levels, and a bit more covered timbre. (Actually, this latter consideration is surprisingly the least of these differences, I believe; some American Heckel players play "brighter" than some Buffet players in France.)
It has now been four years since I returned from France, a period filled with a good deal of scrambling, some disappointments, and some satisfactions. Generally speaking, I have found more sympathy and appreciation of my instrument in chamber music and recital situations, while the orchestral setting has lead to occasional controversy. While my association with some orchestral groups has continued without change due to my switching from Heckel to Buffet, e.g., the Bethlehem Bach Festival, other situations have been difficult.
One orchestra in Philadelphia with which I had played for quite a while, decided I should play the German bassoon if I wished to continue (though by that time I no longer owned a Heckel). After some soul searching I decided not to continue with that group, and there followed a hiatus of three years. Finally last spring I was asked to play a couple engagements with them again, on the Buffet. These seemed to go well and I was happily reengaged for a concert this fall. By this time it seemed I could play the Buffet well enough to satisfy.
In contrast, another orchestra engaged me for the first time, as principal, in the fall of 1978, and after two and a half seasons, the conductor finally decided he didn't care for the Buffet and I would have to go. This was after numerous discussions and extreme efforts on my part to sound as "Heckel" as possible, which this conductor seemed to notice and approve of for a time.
Another time I lost a single engagement because the conductor wanted a "matched pair."
In still further contrast to these vagaries, I have been able to play continuously in the Delaware Symphony for the past four years as second bassoon, also currently serving as librarian and personnel manager. . . My conductor has occasionally expressed a wish that I played the Heckel, but has not applied any real persuasion or pressure. He seems content when I play rather softly and be sure to blend with the first. While it's not always too much fun to play this way, it is a fact of life for second players no matter what the instrument, be it a Tasmanian flute or Mongolian oboe.
So, there can be a problem of blend, though as suggested, I don't believe it is a simple matter of brightness and darkness. Rather, I believe the Buffet tends to have a more pointed sound than the Heckel, just as the oboe can be said to be more pointed and penetrating than the clarinet. How acceptable this may be depends on the particular circumstances and artistic direction. I have yet to find a conductor who actually prefers or especially likes the Buffet, but eventually I'm bound to find him or her to notice the charm of the French bassoon.
Conductors aside (at last), I have been glad to receive appreciation from other individuals, both musicians and in audiences. It has been especially gratifying to receive positive notice of tone quality, something which seldom happened in my Heckel days (needless to say, many German players receive timbral compliments daily). It is mainly for the sake of this Buffet sound that one endures the struggle to change fingerings, reeds, embouchure, etc. Also the feeling of the instrument, a greater resistance perhaps, one hopes to turn, like the resistance of the oboe, to a musical purpose.
In short, it makes me happy to play this instrument. I think it is a matter of individual choice and suitability. The Buffet makes a "different" result, but one may say, "Vive la difference!," as did William Waterhouse in response to "Le Basson" the publication of Les Amis du Basson Français, which has solicited his and others' response to hearing the French bassoons at our Edinburgh meeting.
As Waterhouse and others have pointed out, the frequent international travels of our conductors and what has become a "professional standard" of recorded sound have tended to homogenize our regional differences and to push players down an increasingly narrow aesthetic path.
Despite these pressures the individual vision remains necessary for the renewal of our art, as for all the arts. The world is surely big enough to nurture all our separate visions.
Charles Holdeman is a free-lance bassoonist in the Philadelphia-Wilmington, Delaware region who switched from a Heckel to a Buffet French-system bassoon in 1977. A 1968 graduate of the Curtis Institute under Sol Schoenbach, he played in a woodwind quintet in residence at the University of Delaware from 1970 to 1977. Currently Holdeman leads three chamber groups, a woodwind quartet, a wind octet, and a mixed ensemble, and plays regularly in a baroque ensemble. He performed as a recitalist and as a member of the North American Bassoon Quartet (of French bassoons) at the Edinburgh IDRS meeting and is helping to organize French bassoon activities for the 1982 IDRS meeting in Baltimore.)