wind instrument

Classification

Wind instruments exhibit great diversity in structure and sonority and have been prominent in the music of all cultures since prehistoric times. A system of classification of these instruments must reflect and categorize the relationships and the differences between the many varieties. The conventional division of the symphony orchestra into sections has simplified the grouping of wind instruments into woodwinds and brasses, but this is an inaccurate classification that generally does not apply outside Western culture. The fact that some modern woodwinds, such as flutes and saxophones, are made of metal whereas several ancestors of present-day brasses, such as the cornett and the serpent, were typically made of wood illustrates the unsuitability of a classification according to material.

The standard method of instrument classification was introduced in 1914 by Curt Sachs and Erich von Hornbostel. It is based on the acoustical principles of an instrument’s sound, regardless of its stylistic or cultural context. In this system, all wind instruments—that is, all instruments in which air itself is the primary vibrating medium for the production of sound—are called aerophones, whether or not the air is enclosed in a tube.

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The Sachs-Hornbostel system further classifies aerophones as free aerophones or as wind instruments proper. The wind instruments subdivide into edge instruments, reedpipes, and trumpet-type instruments according to their manner of tone production. Free aerophones, which include a variety of folk instruments as well as such technologically sophisticated devices as reed stops in organs (see also keyboard instrument; the organ), are distinguished from the other categories because the vibrating air is not contained by a tube. The bull-roarer is the best example. A spatulate stone, bone, or board, sometimes carved in the shape of a fish or other object, is tied through a small hole to a string, which in turn is attached to a stick; when the instrument is whirled around, it produces a sound by its disturbance of the air. The mouth organ, the accordion, the reed organ, and the reed stops of the pipe organ are all considered free aerophones as well. They contain free reeds, which vibrate above or through a slot, setting the air into pulsations. The resulting pitch is determined by the thickness and length of the vibrating reed.

In edge instruments (or flutes), an airstream directed against a sharp edge sets an adjoining air column within a tube into regular pulsations, producing sound. Flutes are divided into so-called true flutes and whistle flutes (also called duct flutes, fipple flutes, block flutes, or recorders). Like all aerophones, flutes may be simple or complex, depending on their construction, the transverse flute being simple and panpipes, organs, and other multiple-tube instruments being more complex.

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In true flutes, a ribbon-shaped column of air is produced between the player’s lips and directed against the edge of an aperture. The player blows against either the sharp rim at the upper, open end of the tube (end-blown) or the rim of a hole in the side of the tube (side-blown). The Japanese shakuhachi is an end-blown flute, consisting of a wide bamboo tube with a notch at the top, four front finger holes, and one rear thumbhole. The transverse flute and piccolo of the Western orchestra are side-blown.

The player of a whistle flute, by contrast, blows through a mouthpiece. The air passes through a duct, or windway, between a plug in the mouthpiece and the flute wall; the duct directs the air against the sharp edge of another hole farther down the body of the instrument. Because the airstream is shaped and directed by the duct rather than by the player’s lips, whistle flutes are simpler to play than true flutes. The recorder and the open flue stops of the organ are both whistle flutes.

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The ocarina has a globular—as opposed to tubular—flute pipe. Consequently, it falls into a subcategory of whistle flutes known as vessel flutes. Such flutes, of various materials, are found in North and South America, Europe, Africa, China, and Oceania.

The second category of wind instruments comprises reed instruments, or reedpipes, which have a column of air that is activated by the vibrations between the two or more parts of a reed or between a single reed and the mouthpiece. In the Sachs-Hornbostel system, all multiple reeds are generically classified as oboes and the single reeds as clarinets. Accordingly, the bassoon is an oboe, and the saxophone is a clarinet.

The third category, trumpet-type aerophones, includes instruments in which the vibration of the player’s compressed lips sets the air column in motion. Depending on the shape of the bore (the hollow tubular interior of the instrument), trumpet-type aerophones are either trumpets, whose bore is cylindrical, or horns, whose bore is conical, although in practice they are sometimes difficult to distinguish. (Some writers prefer to call horns those instruments known or believed to have developed from instruments made from animal horns or tusks, terming the remaining lip-vibrated instruments trumpets.) Trumpet-type aerophones are further classified in two ways: (1) according to the position of the mouth hole—they are end-blown if it is located at the upper orifice of the tube and side-blown if pierced somewhere in the side—and (2) by the presence or absence of a mouthpiece. Finally, trumpet-type aerophones are classified according to construction designed to permit the playing of chromatic pitches. They are natural if not so constructed, such as the conch shell and the hoop-shaped baroque trumpet, and chromatic if built with finger holes, slides, or valves, as is the orchestral trumpet.

With the Sachs-Hornbostel classification well in mind, the common terminology can be used with the understanding that the term woodwinds refers to flutes and reed instruments and the term brasses to lip-vibrated aerophones. Since the late 20th century, other categories have been suggested as additions to the Sachs-Hornbostel list. Notable among these is the human voice, which approximates the criteria for a double-reed aerophone. Approximating the sound—but not the structure—of reedpipes would be the so-called membranopipes, a proposed category embracing instruments that have a membrane, as opposed to a reed, to set the column of air in motion.