“The oboe,” writes Berlioz, “is especially a melodic instrument. It has a pastoral character full of tenderness,—indeed I might say timidity. Candor, artless grace, soft joy, or the grief of a fragile being suits the oboe’s accents: it expresses them admirably in its _cantabile_. “A certain degree of agitation is also within its powers of expression; but care should be taken not to urge it into utterance of passion—a rash outburst of anger, threat, or even heroism; for then its small _acid-sweet_ voice becomes uneffectual and absolutely grotesque. “Gluck and Beethoven understood marvellously well the use of this valuable instrument. To it they owe the profound emotions excited by several of their finest pages. I have only to quote from Gluck’s Agmemnon’s air in _Iphigénie en Aulide_ ‘Can the harsh Fates?’ These complaints of an innocent voice, these continued supplications, ever more and more appealing, what instrument could they suit so well as an oboe? And the celebrated burden of the air of _Iphigénie en Tauride_, ‘O Unhappy Iphigénie!’ “Beethoven has demanded more from the joyous accent of the oboe. Witness the solo of the _Scherzo_ of the _Pastoral Symphony_ and also that of the _Scherzo_ of the _Ninth Symphony_, also that in the first movement of the _Symphony in B-flat_. But he has no less felicitously succeeded in assigning them sad, or forlorn, passages. These may be seen in the minor solo of the second return of the first movement of the Symphony in A-major in the episodical _Andante_ of the finale to the _Eroica Symphony_; and above all, in the air of _Fidelio_, where Florestan, starving to death, believes himself, in his delirious agony, surrounded by his weeping family and mingles his tears of anguish with the broken sobs of the oboe.” In Beethoven’s _Pastoral Symphony_ the oboe impersonates the quail and in Haydn’s _Seasons_ it imitates the crowing of a cock in a long and difficult passage. Perhaps the most beautiful use of the oboe in all music is in Gluck’s opera of _Orfeo_, in which it plays an exquisite minuet with the flute and a beautiful ballet with the violin. Schubert uses it charmingly in the second movement of his _Symphony in C-major_. COR ANGLAIS The _cor anglais_, or English horn, differs slightly in appearance from the oboe; but these differences help us to identify it. In the first place, it ends in a kind of ball; and in the second place, there is a bent crook at the other end that holds the mouthpiece containing the double reed. It is supposed that the word _Anglais_ is a corruption of the word _anglé_, meaning bent; for in olden times this instrument was bent at an obtuse angle in the middle of the tube. It is, therefore, more correct to call it _cor anglais_ than English horn. The English have had nothing whatever to do with the development of the instrument.