One of my favourite engravings is by Hogarth, and it's called "The Enraged Musician." It shows an angry and desperate violinist stopping his ears, as outside his window a host of people join together to create absolute bedlam! Prominent among these rowdies is a disheveled and villainous-looking busker who blows fiercely on an oboe . . . Now, I like to think that it's this oboist, more than anyone else, who gives the musician his great rage. And I like to think that I know, just how that oboe sounded. For in such unskilled hands the oboe can be coarse-toned and raucous completely without charm. Fortunately this street-use of the oboe was and still is exceptional, for unlike the flute, it never became a popular instrument. We can thank the fragile and temperamental double reed for that, for its difficulties mercifully deter those who want fast results and a relaxed playing life.
But even in the hands of professional players the oboe has not always had the lovely and lyrical voice we expect from it today. In fact an English flute player of the 1890's used to say that the oboe was of use only because its hideous tone made the flutes and clarinets sound that much more beautiful! Mind you, the French and Belgian oboists were honorable exceptions to this stricture. But in England we had to suffer some rather crude and inelegant playing for many long years.
For example, George Horton, the oboist of Queen Victoria's Private Band, and a professor at the Royal Academy, was described as, ". . . a typical pork-butcher of a player, with a sound like frying sausages." While Malsch, professor at the Royal Academy, the Royal College, Trinity College and the Guildhall, was notorious for his ugly, harsh tone. "His tone bites like aqua fortis," protested an American critic, while a very kindly English player described him as "The Original Cat On A Hot Tin Roof!". . . In the early days of the Queen's Hall he played in the orchestra for a season, but, as Sir Henry Wood put it, ". . . his tone and general playing got on my nerves so much that I appointed Lalande to take his place."
Lalande brought with him a completely different style of playing, for he was one of Georges Gillet's pupils and his tone had the smooth quality taught by his master. And the playing was expressive and fluid. But Lalande didn't live very long and the French school never became influential in Britain. Instead the Belgian traditions of Guide of the Brussels Conservatoire were the great influence. These traditions were brought to England by Henri de Busscher and transformed by Leon Goossens into a unique English school.
But if Gillet's ideas failed to take root in England, it was very different elsewhere. For as professor at the Paris Conservatoire he taught a steady stream of fine oboists and these became soloists in orchestras throughout the continent of Europe and America. I think I'm right in saying that for over sixty years his pupils were the soloists of the Boston Symphony, and for fifty years the oboes of the Philadelphia were led by yet another of his pupils, the late Marcel Tabuteau, who was, so I'm told, the most dominant oboist in the States in more ways than one!
Looking back at Gillet's achievements it's clear that he was the most influential French oboist of the 20th century, and for that matter of the 19th century too. Apart from his fine pupils and formidable technical studies he also bequeathed us the Gillet Model oboe. His cooperation with the great maker Loree led to those refinements which give the Gillet oboe its extra flexibility. In truth Gillet's whole approach was a search for maximum flexibility. He stressed ease of articulation and a fine flowing quality of tone as the great ideal. And to reach these ends he used softish, thin-tipped reeds that spoke easily. His tone, like that of his most faithful pupils, was rounded and flute-like, his tonguing soft and subtle, his whole playing was beautifully fluent, with the notes seeming to float out of his instrument. He said that he took the sound of a well-played violin as his standard.
In his teachings Gillet drew on French traditions that were over a century old, for in 1800 the French were already using lighter, narrower reeds than anyone else, and they were carefully looking at the whole design of the oboe. By the 1830's, Henri Brod, a fine French player and a re-designer of the oboe, could write this, "Reeds are made differently in all the countries where the oboe is played, the Italians, the Germans and in fact almost all manufacturers make them stronger than we do, furthermore, they have a hard, dull sound that denatures the instrument, and makes their playing so laboured that it becomes wearisome, even for the listeners. The quality of sound which has been achieved by the oboe in France is unquestionably the best, and makes this instrument closest to the violin." The English magazine "The Harmonicon" confirms what Brod has to say, when it describes the reeds used by the German player Griesbach, ". . . a very large, strong reed, almost the size of that of a bassoon, hence the fine, rich quality of his tone . . . to produce which, required great exertion. . . . Young Cooke . . at the Philharmonic used a reed of a size and substance between those of Griesbach and Vogt." Vogt himself used a reed very similar to the one championed by Brod. And in Brod's Tutor there is a full size drawing of such a reed, showing it to be only slightly larger than a modern French example.
Having shown that the French had for long been aiming at fluency, at expressiveness, I now have to pose a problem. Can anyone tell me why the admirable Gillet school was supplanted by the retrogressive standards of Louis Bleuzet? For in Bleuzet's playing there is no beauty of tone and no singing quality. The performances are truly "so laboured that it becomes wearisome." And yet when Gillet gave up his post at the Conservatoire, it was Bleuzet who took over the Professorship.
As far as I can find out, Bleuzet used a clamp-like embouchure and very hard reeds. And this combination made his playing stiff and unmusical, and his tone blatant, without the least hint of beauty. When you listen to his playing, you'd never guess that the oboe was capable of tender and poetic speech! His recordings show us a man unable to phrase gracefully and unable to exploit the dynamics of the oboe, because the whole of the time he seems to be trying to master his reeds. So, once again, may I ask, why did the French take a backward step when they were so advanced? It would be nice to get an answer from a Frenchman, perhaps someone who studied with Bleuzet. But any answers would be most welcome. For it puzzles me, and I don't enjoy being puzzled for long!