[From Early Music, August, 1988, pp. 407-410. Copyright Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission. Ed.]

The early history of the bassoon is tantalizingly vague because of the scarcity of available evidence. It is not possible for us to say when or where the essentially one-piece instrument (which may conveniently be termed the dulcian) came to develop into the multi-jointed bassoon; neither do we know what the earliest bassoons looked like. It seems likely to have been in France that the new instrument first developed; in 1636 Mersenne,[1] the Trichet[2] soon after, seem already to refer to a jointed instrument.[3] Between the more than 70 dulcians and more than 30 archaic early bassoons that are known to survive, there are only two instruments that might be considered transitional. One of the set of seven dulcians from the Este collection in Catajo, now in Vienna, is built in three separate joints like a bassoon.[4] [5] A three-keyed bassoon by I. F. Roth[6] in Leipzig,[7] built at the higher Chorton pitch and thus somewhat scaled down in size, has a dulcian-type disposition of keys and holes for the two thumbs; on the butt the right-hand thumb has a key for written E and a hole for D, while on the long joint the left-hand thumb operates just the C hole and the B flat key.

Up to the present, the earliest datable bassoons have been those made in Nuremberg by J. C. Denner,[8] whose working dates are from c1678 to 1707. In 1696 he claimed to have been copying French models of mainly recorder and oboe for the past 12 years;[9] it is thus possible that his bassoons were also reflecting a French influence. Our earliest source for the fully developed fourjointed bassoon is iconographic and from the Low Countries: this is the painting of a bassoonist[10] which is attributed to Harmen Hals and presumed to date from the 1660s (see illus. 1). Like Denner's instruments it has decorative turned ring-mouldings which on the long joint serve also as key-mountings. The bulbous bellend suggests a d'amore type of inner cavity; the crook is long, of wide gauge and bears a massive reed approximately the length of the player's middle finger.

Our knowledge of the early bassoon in Holland has recently been significantly added to by an exciting discovery made in East Germany; this is of a well-preserved late 17th century instrument by Richard Haka, the most important member of the early Dutch school of woodwind makers. It forms part of a unique collection of large double reed instruments preserved in the castle of Sonderhausen,[11] a small town in Thuringia, which has been described and illustrated by the distinguished Leipzig scholar Herbert Heyde in two recent publications.[12] Among the other important instruments here are a pair of grossbass dulcians,[13] a contrabassoon[14] similar to one dated 1714 by Andreas Eichentopf[15] made in nearby Nordhausen, and a bassoon by Grundmann,[16] a Dresden maker of great importance whose surviving bassoons are, compared to his oboes, of great rarity." The Haka bassoon corresponds closely to the instrument in the Hals painting (see illus. 2 and 3). It is in good condition, having presumably formed part of the instrumentarium of the Schwarzberg-Sonderhausen Ducal Chapel since early times. It appears to have been built originally as a four-keyed instrument although some of its key-work (such as the swallow-tail touch, the fourth key for the right-hand fifth finger, and the saddles) is probably not original; there is no crook. Its pitch is approximately 390 Hz. It displays several interesting features, some of which have not been noted before on other bassoons, indicating a tradition that differs from, and may be earlier than that of, Nuremberg.

1 . A concave recess is hollowed out of the external wall of the long-joint which perfectly corresponds to the outer contour of the wingjoint, thus allowing it to lie closely adjacent to it.

2. The conformation of the inner bore of the instrument is uncharacteristically irregular and quite unlike that of any other early instrument studied; it has been drilled by using sets of spoon-reamers rather than the more usual straight-sided reamers.[18]

3. On the butt Haka has cunningly stamped his brandmark[19] under the swallow-tail keytouch rather than at the customary place just below the upper mount (see illus. 4); due to the protection from wear thus afforded, it has remained in pristine condition.

4. The rounded 'female' socket of the bell-joint corresponds perfectly to the rounded end of the upper long-joint tenon.

5. For supporting the instrument, instead of the customary eyelet ring mounted on the upper butt mount, a hole drilled obliquely permits a piece of gut to be threaded through to form a loop - a simple and effective solution.

6. Assuming that the hole for the G sharp key is original, it must be considered one of the earliest four-keyed instruments known;[20] As such it corresponds to the model shown on the trade-card of his apprentice and successor Rykel (see illus. 5).

7. The exterior surface of the central section of the long-joint on which the left-hand thumb hole is situated has a pronounced convex barrel-shape; this allows for a deeper ,chimney' for the C hole and for the two touches to lie more comfortably for the thumb. This is a feature that appears on very few instruments: however it was evidently inherited by Rykel (see illus. 6).

[Illustration 6 not supplied in the printed journal]

8. In spite of its exterior contour, the bell is almost exactly cylindrical, with a minimal choke at the extremity.

Richard Haka was born in London in 1646 or perhaps earlier; son of Thomas Haka [21] a charcoal-burner, and Agniene Robbers, he moved around 1650 with his parents to Amsterdam, starting work there in about 1660 as a woodwindinstrument maker. In 1676 when living in Kalverstraat, he married the 23-year-old Grietje van den Bogaert; although declaring himself at the time to be aged 30, it seems likely that he was in fact somewhat older. In 1679 he took his nephew C. Rykel[22] as apprentice, moving in about 1681 to a shop named "de Vergulde Basfluyt" (the gilded bass recorder) on the Spui; in 1691 he advertised himself as a maker of "fluyten, Houbois, Bassons, en VeltSchalmeyen". In 1696 Rykel, who had subsequently become his partner, took over this shop; Haka, by now evidently prosperous enough to retire, moved to Singe] 393 and a year later into a house he had built on the Keizersgracht. In the meantime he had evidently fallen out with his nephew, and published notices in the local newspaper of 18 October and 4 November 1698 in which he complained that Rykel was continuing to use his trade-name and brand-mark. Rykel replied a year later in the issue of 31 October 1699, maintaining that he had taken over three years previously the house, shop and tools of his uncle - but that from henceforth he would trade under his own name instead; his trade-card (see illus. 5) probably dates from this time. Haka himself died in Amsterdam in 1705.

In addition to Rykel, Haka trained as apprentices Abraham van Aerdenberg[23] and Jan Steenbergen,[24] both of whom later became successful makers. His instruments evidently enjoyed a wide reputation; a 1700 inventory of the Medici Court in Florence[25] lists a consort of 16 recorders by him. Today they are represented in many collections; in addition to recorders, examples of walking-stick recorder, flageolet, alto flute , shawm, altpommer, oboe, tenor oboe and deutsche schalmei survive.[26] This is the sole bassoon by him that has survived; the only other early Dutch bassoon that we know is a late 18th century instrument by W. Wyne[27] in the Hague.[28] Copies of Haka's historic instrument are currently being made by the West German maker Guntram Wolf; this important discovery sheds a welcome light on a previously uncharted area of bassoon history.

I wish to thank Herr Brust, Director of the State Museum, Sonderhausen, and Herr Gunter Angerhofer, Leipzig for allowing me to inspect and photograph the instrument, and Dr. Rob van Acht, the Hague, for unpublished biographical information.

About the writer...

William Waterhouse is a bassoon player and collector. He is author of articles on the bassoon and bassoons in The New Grove and The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. He is currently editing for publication the New Langwill Index of Historical Wind-Instrument Makers.

ENDNOTES

1. M. Mersenne, Harmonie Universelle (Paris, 1636). It is unfortunate that his rather crude woodcuts are not more informative.

2. P. Trichet, Traite des instruments de musique (Paris,1955).

3. See also R. Semmens, "The Bassoons in Marin Mersenne's Harmonie Universelle 1636", JAMIX X (1984), p.22.

4. A-W: 201. Another three-jointed dulcian, preserved in Madrid, is a late instrument datable to around 1800: see B. Kenyon de Pascual, "A brief survey of the late Spanish Bajón", GSJ, xxxvii, (1984), p.72.

5. It may be remarked that at least one outsize dulcian appears to have been constructed from transverse sections glued together.

6. Two other instruments are recorded by this otherwise unknown early 18th century German maker: a two-keyed "altoboe" in Hamburg (D-Hhg: 1928, 277) and a three-keyed bassoon in Linz (A-L: Mu129).

7. DDR-L: 1372.

8. Johann Christoph Denner (1655-1707).

9. Document quoted in full in E. Nickel, Holzblasinstrumentenbau in der freien Reichsstadt Nurnberg, (Munich, 1971), p.204.

10. Suermondt Museum, Aachen

11. Staatliche Museen Sondershausen, Mu5.

12. In Musikinstrumentenbau (Leipzig, 1986), and in "Contrabassoons in the 17th and early 18th century", GSJ, xl (1987), pp 24-36.

13. DDR-S: Mul (dated 1681) and DDR-S: Mu38

14. DDR-S: Mu2

15. Andreas Eichentopf (cl670-1721)

16. DDR-S: Mu37

17. While there are no fewer than 34 of his oboes listed in P.T. Young, 2500 Historical Wind Instruments (New York, 1982), only six of his bassoons are known to have survived (three in East Germany, one each in Austria, West Germany and Great Britain).

18. I am indebted to Herr Guntram Wolf, Kronach, for this information.

19. R. HAKA (in scroll)/(lily)

20. The conventional view that early bassoons have a progressively increasing number of keys is not borne out by the most recent evidence. A bassoon by J. C. Denner in Leningrad (USSR-L: 528) bears a fourth G sharp key for the righthand fifth finger, while another Denner butt-joint recently identified in the Salzburg museum (A-S: 15, 2) even has this G sharp key duplicated so as to allow for either left-handed or right-handed playing. This corresponds to the practice of the earliest flute and oboe makers supplying a key to raise the pitch of the six-finger note by a semitone to produce a note not other-wise obtainable by "forking".

21. The name also appears on documents as Hacka; Jeremy Montagu has suggested that "Haka" might be a Dutch spelling of an English name such as Harker. Much of the following information is taken from the valuable article by S.A.C. Dudok van Heel and Marieke Teutscher in the Kerkrade exhibition catalogue published in 1974 by the Gemeentemuseum, den Haag, Netherlands.

22. Coenraad Rykel (1664-1726)

23. Abraham van Aerdenberg (1672-1717)

24. Jan Steenbergen (1676-1752)

25. See V. Gai, Gli strumenti musicali della corte Medicea
(Florence, 1969), p.20.

26. See Young, op cit.

27. Attributable either to Wilhelmus Wyne (1730-1816) or an earlier unrecorded member of the family.

28. NL-DH: Ea585-1933

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