Schalmey

Descended from the mediaeval schalmeys and pommers, the bassoon first made its appearance in the orchestra in 1659, and it has been a regular constituent of it since the time of Handel.

The Fleming Denis van Alsloot’s ‘Procession of the Religious Orders from the Town of Antwerp…’, painted in 1616 shows with excellent clarity six musicians playing a trombone, two alto pommers, a discant schalmey, cornetto, and a dulzian played on the left side with the right hand uppermost, the exact opposite to the dulzian’s descendant, the bassoon, which is played the other way round.

Richard Haka, the Dutch instrument maker who flourished in the last four decades of the seventeenth century, made both hautboys and baroque schalmeys, and in 1695 James Talbot describes English waits (as wide-bore shawms), Deutsche (baroque) schalmeys, and French hautbois.