In order to truly appreciate the explosion of artistic activity that occurred in England in the twentieth century it is indispensable to look at the broader context of the 19th century for a brief minute After the instrument ‘s great popularity in the Baroque period, making its zenith in the custodies of Mozartaˆ¦ we had virtually a proficient letup and an about retrograde period throughout the 19th century. This is, of class, soloistically speakingaˆ¦ ” ( Craxton ) The oboe soloist did manage to keep a topographic point in repertory and composers Black Marias into the 19th century ; nevertheless most oboists are improbably cognizant of the crisp lessening in solo and chamber repertory for the hautboy that occurs as the 19th century advancements. It has been good documented and likely felt by every one of us on juncture, particularly after a concert having a exuberant Romantic symphonic music. Why did n’t Schubert, Brahms or Mahler write us a beautiful solo or chamber work?

It is unfortunate that composers felt the hautboy to be less expressive when compared to other instruments of the clip, and that by itself the hautboy could non carry through the idealised romantic aesthetic. The romantics surely did non gloss over the hautboy ‘s endearing defects. Pierre Larousse ‘s popular Grand Dictionnaire universel said, “ every bit much as the tone of the hautboy can be soft and velvety ( albeit a small nasal ) when in the custodies of a skilled ace, it can be rancid and whining when the participant is inexperienced or lacks the gustatory sensation of a true creative person. ” ( Burgess 128 ) And Berlioz had the audaciousness to state in his Orchestration Treatise of 1841 “ aˆ¦but attention should be taken non to press it ( the hautboy ) into vocalizations of passionaˆ¦ for so its little acerb sweet voice becomes ineffective, and perfectly grotesque. Some great masters-Mozart among them-have non escaped this erroraˆ¦ ” He suggest giving the tune to the flutes or the clarinet, “ it has a opportunity of continuing something of its character if given to the flutes and barely loses anything by being assigned to the clarinets. ” ( 144 )

Composer ‘s ideas and feelings in respects to the hautboy are possibly apprehensible to some extent, when you remember that the oboe underwent a drastic makeover in the 19th century. There are legion good documented histories and scholarship that recount enterprises to assist the hautboy in respects to keywork, developing a larger dynamic compass, bettering the modulation, spread outing the scope, and bettering the hautboy ‘s ability to manage the increasing chromaticism found in the music of modern-day composers such as Debussy, Strauss, Mahler and Wagner.

In footings of instrumentalists and instruments in 19th century England there is a strong Continental presence. Numerous Continental instrumentalists would come to London in hunt of wealth and celebrity, and the English musical populace supported instrumentalists such as Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim, and Felix Mendelssohn. It was thought that English performing artists and composers lacked the necessary technique, unless trained on the continent. ( Caldwell ) Burgess remarks that “ both instructors and gifted pupils were in short supply. ” When the most outstanding oboist in England, Johann Freidrich Alexander Greisbach ( trained in Germany ) passed off in 1823 he left a station that no local participant could make full until Apollon-Marie-Rose Barret ( 1804-79 ) came to England in 1829. Barret had studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Gustav Vogt, and his reaching in England is a revealing clip in the history of the hautboy. He taught a fresh new coevals of oboists, developed the Barret theoretical account hautboy ( this system is straight linked to the 1 in usage in England today ) and published his antic hautboy method. ( Burgess, 145-150 ) After Barrett, a wont of conveying over Gallic oboists persisted with Desire Alfred Lalande ( 1866-1904 ) and Belgian oboist Henri de Busscher ( 1880-1975 ) who was in England for a spot until traveling to the US and in 1915 Leon Goossens took de Busscher ‘s place in the Queen ‘s Hall Orchestra at the age of 17. There were English oboists working in orchestras through the nineteenth century, two are retrieve for their bequest, but the others have fallen into obscureness. William Malsch ( 1855-1924 ) was an admired and important instructor of his clip, and Charles Reynolds ( 1843-1916 ) taught Goossens who has been portrayed as “ the merely great oboe participant of his coevals. ” ( Bailey, 14 )

Of 19th century British composers it has been said that “ the most successful ‘English ‘ composers were of either German or Irish beginning. ” England had non had much compositional invention or composers of international rank and influence since the seventeenth century. However, as the 20th century approached this would alter. No uncertainty foreshadowed by the international success of Edward Elgar, after old ages of tireless attempt, and his Mystery Variations in 1899. But court should be paid to Hubert Perry ( 1848 ) , Charles Villiers Stanford ( 1852-1924 ) , and Alexander Mackenzie ( 1847-1935 ) who did much to put the foundation for the coming English musical Renaissance. ( Caldwell )

The Muses

“ What I want to acquire across is that certain oboists have had a monumental influence on how we all playaˆ¦ we are all portion of life ‘s great conveyer beltaˆ¦ ” ( Black, 51 )

In 1915, 17 twelvemonth old Leon Goossens was appointed to the Queen ‘s Hall Orchestra, and he was to go “ single-handedly responsible for seting the hautboy back on the map as a solo instrument. ” ( Burgess 196 ) Goossens ‘ artistic ability was so eye-popping that he inspired legion composers to compose plants for him, music directors programmed concerti for him, he traveled to every corner of the universe on playing battles, his records were mass disseminated, and he has inspired coevalss of oboists. As Neil Black has said “ aˆ¦for some ground in Britain the hautboy had gone into a spot of an occultation and Goossens brought it out into the Sun. ”

It was in 1921 that Goossens foremost appeared as a soloist in Queen ‘s Hall, London where he performed a Bach Suite arranged by Sir Henry Wood and Gustav Holst ‘s Fugal Concerto ( officially the first oboe concerto of the twentieth century ) . His brother Eugene ‘s Concerto would follow in 1929 and he was the first to enter the ill-famed Strauss Concerto. A great trade of his position was a consequence of the overplus of recordings he made, until the 1950ss the bulk of recordings advancing the hautboy were for the most portion those by Goossens. ( Burgess 198 ) He besides inspired the reclamation of the hautboy and twine repertory after the Mozart four, but more on this later. Goossens brought about a flush of new composings and dedications, recordings, and solo public presentations that have been merely surpassed today by Heinz Holliger. ( 196 ) Numerous biographical histories of Goossens exist, they include parts of his book with Edwin Roxburgh in the Yehudi Menuhin Music Guides: Oboe, Carole Rosen ‘s The Goossens: A Musical Century, autobiographies by his brother Eugene and his sister Marie, Music in the Wind by Barry Wynne, and legion articles from our ain Double Reed publications.

Many have tried to depict what made Goossens so alone. Many have commented on his flexibleness, spun out line, development of breath vibrato, his subtle nuanced phrasing. Lady Barbirolli remarks that he “ revolutionized the sound and the manner of playing, and all the childs tried their best to copy that. ” ( Fairbairn, 57 ) Carole Rosen in her Biography on the Goossens household remarked how Leon “ transformed the hautboy from a necessary, but frequently unpleasant, bleating noise into the instrument capable of bring forthing undreamed polish and beauty of tone. ” The New York Times said of him “ He has been venerated as the Heifetz, Rubenstein, and Casals of the hautboy. ” ( Sundet )

Neil Black commented that, “ What was singular about Goossens was non merely his playing, but his magnetic figureaˆ¦ he had the immature ladies running after him. He was really much the ground why immature ladies started playing the oboeaˆ¦and in huge measures. ” This is really amusing, but it is true that we do hold the first adult females oboists as ensemble members and soloists appear in England during the 1930s including Janet Craxton, Joy Boughton, Evelyn Rothwell, Natalie Caine, Helen Gaskell, Sylvia Spencer ( pupil of Goossens and dedicatee of the Two Insect Pieces of Britten ) , Lucy Vincent ( instructor to Neil Black, principal in the Birmingham Symphony ) , Margaret Eliot ( professor of hautboy at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama ) , among others. All pupils of Goossens, or pupils of his pupils, who surely carried on his tradition of the hautboy as soloist and themselves inspired legion composings. What follows is a brief expression at the parts of some of these pioneering adult females.

Many of us are familiar with Goossens ‘ celebrated pupil Lady Barbirolli or Evelyn Rothwell ( 1911-2008 ) . She attended the Royal College of Music and was one of the first adult females to derive an orchestral assignment, as chief hautboy at the Glyndebourne Opera in the early 19030 ‘s. She was appointed by music manager Fritz Busch, who appreciated her sound over that of any of the male participants from the London Symphony Orchestra who had traditionally performed at the Festival. Evelyn embarked upon a solo calling in 1939 after get marrieding Sir John Barbirolli, and they often appeared in concerts together. ( Burgess, 247 ) Barbirolli was really supportive of her solo calling and he would plan concertos for her, make written texts of music by Pergolesi and Corelli for her usage ( other composers would follow suit such as Arthur Benjamin-Domenico Cimerosa and Gordon Bryan-Domenico Scarlatti ) ( 208 ) , and he was able to “ give her an border ” in the EMI entering studios. ( Bailey, 50 ) Gordon Jacob, Arnold Cooke, Edmund Rubbra, Edwin Roxburgh, and Elizabeth Maconchy all wrote plants for her in add-on to the four books she wrote on the hautboy.

Janet Craxton ( 1929-1981 ) studied the hautboy at the Royal Academy of Music with Helen Gaskell ( who was a pupil of Goossens ) and subsequently at the Paris Conservatoire with Pierre Bajeux. She was chief hautboy at the Halle orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli, the London Mozart Players, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, the Royal Opera House, and Covent Garden. She was appointed Oboe Professor at the Royal Academy, where she remained for 25 old ages and was coach to the National Youth Orchestra. In add-on to establishing the London Oboe Quartet in 1967, she was a member of the Leonardo Ensemble and the London Concertante. She was married to the composer Alan Richardson, who wrote a important figure of composings for hautboy. She was heralded for gift with chamber music and inspired legion composings by Vaughan Williams, Lennox Berkeley, Alan Rawsthorne, Elisabeth Lutyens, Francis Routh, Elizabeth Maconchy and Priaulx Rainier. ( Warrack ) In add-on she received dedications from non-English composers such as Francaix ‘s English horn four ( 1971 ) and Lutoslawski ‘s Epitaph for Alan Richardson ( 1980 ) . ( Bailey, 51 )

Natalie Caine ( married woman to bassoonist Cecil James ) , ( 1909- 2008 ) attended the Royal College of Music in 1928 and pupil of Sylvia Spenser ( who was a pupil of Goossens ) . She attended school with Joy Boughton, Evelyn Rothwell, Sidney Sutcliffe, and Benjamin Britten. It was in 1934 that she and Rothwell were hired to play at the Glyndebourne Festival and subsequently the London Symphony Orchestra. She combined raising three girls with a free spear calling in which she on a regular basis worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Mozart Players and the London Baroque Ensemble, in add-on to functioning as hautboy professor at the Royal College of Music from 1964 to 1979. It was to her that Benjamin Britten originally dedicated his Temporal Variations, her public presentation in 1936 received good reappraisals but the composing was dismissed. Britten subsequently withdrew his dedication and awarded it to Montague Slater, librettist of Peter Grimes. ( Francis )

Helen Gaskell ( 1906-2002 ) played with the BBC Symphony Orchestra from non long after its start in 1930 for over 30 old ages. “ If non the first adult female instrumentalist engaged in the woodwind of an English symphonic music orchestra in London, Miss Helen Gaskell is surely the first to keep the place of 2nd hautboy in Sir Henry Wood ‘s orchestra at the Promenade Concerts, ” commented The Sphere in August 1927. She was educated at St Paul ‘s Girls ‘ School, Hammersmith, where her music instructor, Gustav Holst, needed woodwind participants and diverted her away from the fiddle in the way of the hautboy and cor anglais. The composer William Alwyn wrote a Sonata for Oboe and Piano for Gaskell and her sister, Lillian, which they performed at a New Music Society concert at the Royal Academy ; some 11 old ages subsequently Alwyn was to compose his Concerto for Oboe and Harp for her instructor Goossens. In 1936 Alan Richardson ( 1904-78 ) dedicated his work Roundelay to Gaskell, even though he was married to the oboist Janet Craxton. ( Obituary, Helen Gaskell )

Joy Boughton ( 1913 -1963 ) was a pupil of Goossens at the Royal College of Music and for a clip was Professor of Oboe there herself. She helped to set up the English Opera Group and was a member of the Sylvan Trio. Two exceeding plants were written for her ; Rutland Boughton ‘s Oboe Concerto in degree Celsius and Britten ‘s Six Metamorphosis after Ovid. ( Francis ) Sarah Francis draws attending to the thought that Britten ‘s music is typically written for a specific individual, and so in the Metamorphosis we will see a portraiture of her character and musicianship tied into the work. The work was premiered on Joy ‘s birthday June 14th and from their first public presentation the Metamorphosis has had an built-in topographic point in our repertory and has influenced legion plants written subsequently. ( Caird, 73-77 )

The composers

Forgive me if it is cliche , but there are times when the composer is top and the creative person is a low retainer to the composer, and there are times when the performing artist is top and the composer is merely supplying fantastic ammo for this performing artist to fire off. ” Neil Black ( Sweeney, 107 )

The hautboy was basking rather a zenith in early twentieth century England in big portion due to the incredible figure of highly gifted oboists. It was in England, more than in any other state at the clip, where freshly composed plants for hautboy and oboe concertos featured on a regular basis in concerts and wireless broadcasts. English composers gravitated to the hautboy, possibly in portion due to the desire for a new sound or rediscovered voice that could capture their imaginativeness. The hautboy, as discussed earlier, was neglected during the romantic nineteenth century, nevertheless it was now a feasible instrument for the twentieth century. Goossens has commented that he “ It is merely a badge of historical unfairness that oboists must have on. This said, it must be stated that we have made up for it during my ain life-time with huge solo and concerto repertoireaˆ¦ ” ( Goossens, 158 )

It is besides possible that English composers likely gravitated toward the hautboy in portion due to the big figure of matrimonies, friendly relationships, and familial relationships between oboists and composers of the clip. Goossens ‘ brother Eugene composed legion plants for him, as did composer Rutland Boughton write for his girl Joy. Madaleine Dring and Alan Richardson were both composers who wrote for their partners, oboists Roger Lord and Janet Craxton. Eveyln Rothwell was married to the music director Sir John Barbirolli who provided her with legion chances and connexions. Benjamin Britten went to school with Helen Gaskell, Joy Boughton, Natalie Caine and Evelyn Rothwell. Possibly it would hold been hard to non cognize or be connected with a outstanding oboist in mid-century England as there were so many! What follows this article is a list, compiled with the aid of WorldCat and the New Grove Dictionary of Music, of plants that were inspired by Goossens and his pupils. The day of the months of the composings included scope from the early 1920s to the early 1960s ( unless the composing was clearly dedicated to an oboist but written much later ) , as it encapsulates the English Renaissance composers and captures a bulk the explosion in hautboy solo repertory. No woodwind quintets are listed, merely composings which feature the hautboy as a soloist, little chamber plants, and chamber plants with hautboy and strings. Merely original composings are listed, no written texts. I have besides included extra plants having hautboy by these composers, even if they were non expressly dedicated to an oboist.

As oboists, we should be everlastingly thankful to these composers for resuscitating one of the most beautiful chamber ensembles, that of hautboy and twine quartet/quintet. These English composers brought back to life the classical genre of the Mozart Quartet that was emulated by other composers of the epoch such as Bernhard Henrik Crussel and Franz Krommer. Goossens desired composings that he could play aboard the Mozart and encouraged composers to compose for this combination, what came approximately was a modernist return on an old classic. Britten ‘s Phantsy Quartet written in 1932 for Goossens ( nevertheless delight note that the quintets of Bliss ( 1928 ) and Bax ( 1925 ) predate Britten ‘s composing ) and would travel on to act upon legion other composers of this genre. Composers Gerald Finzi, Lennox Berkeley, Malcolm Hawkins all wrote pieces with this instrumentality that are to a great extent indebted to the Phantasy Quartet. ( Burgess 209 ) The continuance of this genre continued to turn in popularity particularly due to Janet Craxton and the foundation of the London Oboe Quartet in 1968 and the legion composings they commissioned.

Many of these composers who wrote for the hautboy could be classified as the “ English Renaissance Composers, ” a group which includes Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Arthur Bliss, Frank Bridge, Hubert Howells, John Ireland, E.J. Moeran, Eugene Goossens, and legion others. The trademark features of the Renaissance composer were a witting turning away of “ modernist ” music ; they were after a alcoholic, accessible, and romantic sound that had echt feeling. This coupled with a hunt for a national sound ; by and large found in folk songs, dance beat and the pastoral. ( Caldwell ) The English musical Renaissance significantly depends on the usage of common people music and is highly obliged to the work of Vaughan Williams whose music has “ an implicit in Englishness, with harmonic and melodious transmutations that could be traced back to the Tudorsaˆ¦and is, in the best sense of the word, original. ” ( Bailey 11 ) The music critic John Alexander Fuller Maitland commented that when listening to Vaughan Williams “ one is ne’er rather certain whether one is listening to something really old or really new. ” ( Ottaway ) The qualities desired by the Renaissance composer can be easy uncovered in the personality of the hautboy, it is no admiration they chose it as their agencies of look.

In hunt of arcadiaaˆ¦

“ I do n’t cognize if you ‘ve of all time heard — it ‘s a amusing old expression — English music is either runing or stalking! ” Robert Bloom ( Cook )

These English Renaissance Composers chose the hautboy in big extent due to the instruments long association with the idyll, non to advert that there was an highly gifted high profile English oboist among them in Leon Goossens. This is a big portion of why the solo hautboy was rediscovered, embraced in England and nowhere else in the universe. Yes, fantastic oboists from Georg Gillet were produced from the Paris Conservatoire and from Marcel Tabuteau in the United States but they were chiefly orchestral participants. The figure of plants these instrumentalists commissioned, recordings they made, and concerti they performed offer a crisp differentiation between what was traveling on in England and what was go oning elsewhere.

The hautboy has a long history of association with the pastoral, traveling back to Greek mythology and the aulos ( a set of dual reed pipes ) is shown as a shepherd ‘s countrified instrument ( Burgess, 10 ) . Even the rubric of the first Etude book written for hautboy, John Banister ‘s The Sprightly Companion of 1695 evokes a pastoral character and tradition. Numerous symphonic composers have used the hautboy in explicitly pastoral scenes ; Beethoven ‘s Pastoral Symphony, Rossini ‘s William Tell and Italian in the Algiers, Berlioz ‘s Symphonie Fantastique, Harold in Italy, and Rob Roy overtures. “ The rubric page of Gustave Goublier ‘s idyll for oboeaˆ¦illustrates the cardinal elements of the genre. A shepherd with his flocks site playing his hautboy on the bouldery mountains, high above the civilised universe represented by a small town hardly seeable in the vale below. ” ( 216-17 )

The hautboy is connected to the pastoral, as is the English mind and this is reflected in their great plants of humanistic disciplines. It is no accident that the most celebrated English painters were landscape painters. John Constable and William Turner are national heroes, painters in whom England takes great pride. In literature traveling back to William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlow were early descriptions of England as a green Garden of Eden. An overpowering preoccupation with nature can besides be found in the great nineteenth century English romantic poets of Byron and Keats. The novels of the 19th and twentieth century the scene of the landscape frequently plays an of import function such as Bronte ‘s Wuthering Heights, E. M. Forrester ‘s Howards End, and many of Thomas Hardy ‘s novels. Gardens and horticulture is frequently seen as an symbolic English interest, and the English garden that emerged in the eighteenth century rapidly spread across Europe and around the universe. The stereotyped English garden is characterized by a romantic position of nature ; having a lake, classical edifices or ruins or Bridgess, dramatic peal lawns and wooded countries. All designed and planned to make the semblance of an idealised countrified landscape, the lost land of Arcadia.

It is unquestionable that the pastoral hautboy did name to the English Renaissance composers, but it is my belief that something else in the hautboies personality beckoned to them every bit good, nostalgia, a construct with which the hautboy has an every bit long association. The hautboy was continually used in 18th and 19th centuries as “ the mournful call of nature, ” a voice of loss and isolation in the thick of pandemonium, a yarn of hope and redemption. Word pictures of the hautboy used in this manner can be found in Gluck ‘s Orpheus, Beethoven ‘s Fidelio, his Third and Fifth Symphonies, Wagner ‘s Tristan and Isolde and Lonhengrin. ( Burgess 219-29 ) Oscar Comettant remarked that “ of all instruments, merely the hautboy has sufficient appeal to sound the crude Alpine tunes, so potentially sad, so affecting and so chaste in their naA?ve simplicityaˆ¦ The psyche becomes ill from that cryptic unwellness, that mix of felicity, unhappiness, sorrow, hope and love that is called nostalgia. ” ( 220-21 )

“ If that Englishness in music can be encapsulated in words at all, those words would likely be: apparently familiar and platitude, yet deep and mystical every bit good as lyrical, melodious, melancholy, and nostalgic yet timeless. ” ( Ottaway ) The nostalgic voice of the hautboy called to the English spirit in all chance because of the sense of loss and melancholy that washed across their state during the early-mid twentieth century. A state seeking to mend after two universe wars, a disenchantment caused by the failure of war to alter the universe, rising prices, and rationing. In World War II more civilians were killed so soldiers, bombs destroyed great parts of the metropoliss, kids had to go forth their parents, people lost household members, and they were short of nutrient for a few old ages after the war ended. The military historian Correlli Barnett has argued that the WWI had no permanent economic consequence, merely that it had “ crippled the British psychologicallyaˆ¦ ” ( Barnett, 426 )

It is no surprise that English creative persons searched for ways to show their frights, disenchantment and travel toward mending as that is the intent of art. Looking back at 19th and twentieth century English literature you can clearly see a hunt for Arcadia. Arcadia is an fanciful Eden where there was an stainless simpleness and contentment, an stray Eden free from interlopers. The hunt for Arcadia besides evokes a melancholy ; ideas of decease and that our felicity on Earth is fliting and passing. Many of the great novels from this clip are really nostalgic plants in camouflage about the pandemonium brought approximately by the modernisation of England. They speak unmistakably of a yearning for Arcadia, conjured up attractively in the first portion of Evelyn Waugh ‘s Brideshead Revisited. “ I have been here beforeaˆ¦ ” It is clear that the composers of this followed the same way by turning toward the yesteryear and traditional folk song, the pastoral and melancholic hautboy.

It was the oboe chosen to give a voice to these complex, intertwined thoughts of the pastoral and the melancholy, while at the same clip naming out to the English people and repairing their mind in a clip of emotional convulsion. These composers and the hautboy together were able to make a music that had the power to make in people, as Rousseau says so elegantly, “ the remembrances of a 1000 fortunes which, touched on by this melody, remind those who hear it of their fatherland, their former pleasances, their young person, so their full manner of life, and excite in them a acrimonious unhappiness to hold lost all this. ” ( Burgess, 218 and 220 )

The hereafter is brightaˆ¦

So it was that in early-mid twentieth century England the hautboy was enjoyed a rediscovery and was booming. The position of the hautboy became much improved throughout the universe ; no thirster could we be referred to as the “ unpleasant, bleating noise. ” ( Rosen ) Goossens and his pupils did much to revive the literature and the profile of the solo oboist which continues to this twenty-four hours. They did much to put the basis and make a new criterion for quality. Composers now saw the hautboy as a feasible, various solo instrument.

Today the English soloist is still really present and thriving, with legion gifted oboists including Celia Nicklin, Douglas Boyd, John Anderson, Jonathan Kelly, Christopher Redgate, Christopher Cowie, Gordon Hunt, and Sarah Francis to call a few. However, the true inheritor of the Goossens tradition would hold to be Nicholas Daniel as he has been the receiver of legion plants for oboe including composings by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Henri Dutilleux, Thea Musgrave, A Nigel Osborne, John Tavener, Michael Zev Gordon, Rory Boyle, John Woolrich, Oliver Knussen, Michael Berkeley, David Matthews, Richard Rodney Bennett, James MacMillan, Michael Berkeley, and Sir Michael Tippett. Daniel can besides be heard on more than 30 recordings for such labels as Virgin Classics, Chandos, BMG Conifer, Naxos and Leman Classics. He besides continues to continue the traditional hautboy and strings genre as a founding member Britten Oboe Quartet and coactions with the Maggini and Lindsay threading fours.

Surely those at the IDRS Convention in Birmingham can certify to the quality and measure of gifted oboists in the UK, every bit good as the legion plants being written for them by their states composers. The constitution of the Isle of Wight Oboe Competition which has evolved into the Barbirolli Oboe Competition continues to distribute and pull a figure of gifted immature participants and committee new plants can merely be a testimonial to the strength and passion of the English hautboy tradition. The hereafter surely looks bright, and we can all be thankful for the British Invasion of repertory and oboists and trust it continues to make so! A bright topographic point in our repertory and history of our participants!