THE OBOE MAKERS OF AMILLY

September posted in November

A few weeks ago I made a second work trip to Amilly in France.

My colleague Andrew and I grabbed five minutes to visit the L'Atelier Du Hautbois - next door to our factory in the Rue Mar Juin on the outskirts of the village of Amilly.

We saw a group was a small group of lovely people at work, dedicated to making the Oboe.

Seated right Stephane who is in charge of production

From ebony wood, which they mature for three years, this group of craftsmen create beautiful traditionally made instruments, using a bewildering and impressive number of nickel silver parts (the keys), plates, and holes, laid out on their work benches.

Featured in the drawing is Stéphane Guillaume, Responsible de la Fabrication

SIDE NOTE

The oboe double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family made from a wooden tube roughly 65 cm (25-1/2 inches) long, with metal keys

In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called the hautbois, hoboy, or French hoboy (pronounced "HOE-boy", borrowed from the French name, a compound word made of haut ["high, loud"] and bois "wood, woodwind"

The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English c. 1770 from the Italian oboè, a transliteration in that language's orthography of the 17th-century pronunciation of the French name.

RECOMMENDATION

A magical, haunting tune for the oboe is Samuel Barber’s Canzonetta  - do listen to it.