Arias with obbligato bassoon:
the bassoon in vocal works, 1700-1850.

Jim Stockigt, Melbourne, Australia

jrs@netspace.net.au - for additions, corrections or comments

This website is a continuing extension of the review and preliminary list of works published in “The Double Reed”, Journal of the International Double Reed Society, 2008, vol 31/1, pp 86-109.

Highlights:

• Listing of over 250 arias with obbligato bassoon from the period 1700-1850.
• An aria from Handel’s Messiah in a 1786 version with obbligato bassoon.
• Tuba Mirum from the Mozart Requiem published in 1800 with solo bassoon.
• Over 30 arias with obbligato bassoon by Christoph Graupner and Georg Gebel.
• Many Telemann and Handel arias with obbligato bassoon.
• A Vienna collection of 12 arias (1700-1740) with obbligato bassoon(s).
• YouTube links to about 90 arias with prominent bassoon parts.
• Links to scores or solo parts for about 60 arias.

This site gives information about more than 250 vocal works written between about 1700 and 1850 in which bassoon is used as an obbligato instrument, either alone, or with other instruments. Sources, published and unpublished are listed, together with links to recordings of lesser known works. Of particular interest are over thirty unpublished arias from the cantatas of Christoph Graupner (1683-1760, Darmstadt) and Georg Gebel (1709-1753, Rudolstadt), and a collection of 12 arias with obbligato bassoon by various Viennese composers, compiled in an early eighteenth century Sammelband, held by the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Wien. Permission has been generously given to include the initial pages of the scores or the solo parts of these works here (see links).

Additions, corrections, details of further works and sources and recordings are welcome.

This repertoire collection is dedicated to the late William Waterhouse in appreciation of his unique contributions to bassoon literature, scholarship and organology. Without his stimulating and generous encouragement, this project would not have progressed. He was the key to many of the collaborations that are acknowledged here.

Jim Stockigt

Jim Stockigt is a physician-endocrinologist who studied bassoon in Melbourne with Thomas Wightman. He has had professional experience on both modern and baroque bassoon and has been active in orchestral and chamber music in Australasia, California and London. He has participated in numerous Kronach symposia. Medical travel has often been enhanced by side-trips to music libraries.

The Munich bassoonist, Felix Reiner (1732-1783) From painting by Jakob Horemans, 1774

Postcard, anon, circa 1950