What do all the instruments in the woodwind family have in common?

Answer 1

A most interesting question!

In actual fact, all the members of the woodwind family have only one thing in common: they are sounded by wind.

For as long as the term has been in use, this term has referred to the following instruments:

• Flute
• Oboe
• Bassoon
• Clarinet
• French Horn
• Saxophone

and their various variations: Piccolo, English Horn, Baritone oboe, all the sizes of clarinet, contra bassoon, 'double horn', all the sizes of saxophone, recorder, pan pipes, etc etc.

Lets look at the differences first.

The flute and recorder were originally made of wood. The finest of them still are. However, flutes long ago parted from their wooden purity: they often, even when they appear to be made of wood, are actually metal tubes within wooden tubes. This is both for loos, feel and tone. Recorders are often made of plastic these days, and while that may seem even more of a 'cheapening' than metal flutes, many are made quite well, and my wooden alto rarely comes out of the case these days, having been supplanted by a very high quality plastic one. Why the non-wood content? Simple: Wood changes with moisture. The flute and recorder both operate by wind directed across a hole at a sharpened edge: those edges don't remain sharp when made of wood because of the moisture in a player's breath.

The oboe and bassoon are probably the closest to their roots (with the bassoon ahead by mile.) They are made of wood, although some metal-lined holes and even bores have been added for stability. Both have grown a forest of keywork, as posessed by all the 'fingered' wind instruments. They are sounded by the player's breath passing between two slips of 'cane' (arundo donax) which are carefully carved from a single starting piece which is folded and tied (to fit on the end of the instrument) and then scraped thin to a profile the player prefers. This means that the player makes their own reeds, or at the least buys reeds and finishes them to their own desires.

The clarinet and saxophone both use a single reed (also made from Arundo Donax) mounted on a mouthpiece and held in place with a wide ring called a 'ligature'. (That term is used fairly often in music to refer to things that are tied together or the things used to tie them together.) The clarinet usually retains a wooden body, although some are made from steel. The saxophone was invented, and we know the inventor's name: Adolphe Sax. It is made of brass alloy, and the only wooden part is the reed (if you class reed as wood, which we usually do.)

So, what do we have so far? Five families of instruments made in sizes, all of which were or still are made of wood, hence "Woodwind". However, there are more differences than similarities: double or single reeds or no reed at all (just a sharp edge.) Metal or wood bodies. Keys or lots and lots of keys. Even the bore shape (the shape of the elongate hold that the wind passes through) is not uniform: the oboe, bassoon and saxophone use conical bores, the clarinet is cylindrical and the flute? It has a bore that is smaller in diameter at the ends than in the middle.

Other unifying characteristics? hardly any. For instance, if you look at the spectrum of the overtones that give the characteristic sustained sound of these instruments, there is little to unify them. The most diverse comes from the Clarinet vs. all the rest: with its single reed and cylindrical bore, it produces mostly odd harmonics, while the others produce both even and odd harmonics.

Now comes the french horn. Unlike the others, it has never been made from wood. The mouthpiece operates by the player buzzing their lips as they blow into the horn. The sound of the horn is distinctly that of a brass family member, and it is classed with the trumpets and trombones as often as with the woodwinds. However, it has traditionally been used with the oboes and bassoons in the chamber orchestra setting (to which the flutes and clarinets have been added, but not the saxophones.) What makes it a woodwind? Its inclusion in the woodwind quartet and quintet.

So there you have it. All the woodwinds have in common is that they use wind (which the brasses do as well) and generally are related to the instruments used in the woodwind quintet... and not much else. Still, the term persists, and no one has shown any interest in making new terms or thinning out the definition by getting rid of that lip-reed instrument (the french horn.)