What do all woodwind instruments have in common?

Answer 1

"They are all made of wood......

and they have something to do with wind." (Original answer)

While somewhat humorous, the original answer was only half right. Only the oboe and bassoon are regularly made of wood these days: when the flute is made with wood, it usually has a metal lining and often players will use a metal head joint on a wood-covered body. The French Horn and Saxophone have always been made from brass alloy and never have been made of wood. (An instrument from the renaissance which was played with a brass-type mouthpiece, but made of wood with fingerholes, with individual names for the sizes, from smallest to largest: cornetto, lysarden, and serpent, survived in the Serpent into the Romantic era, but did not 'become' the French horn, so even that loose connection fails to materialize!)

While all the instruments in the family have something to do with wind, that something does not differentiate woodwinds from brass instruments.

As for the members of the woodwind quintet, the oboe, flute, Clarinet, bassoon and horn, they are a case of guilt by association and association by guilt: They sound good together. The Saxophone does not often feature in Classical Music anywhere near the others, although in jazz it isn't uncommon to find saxes, clarinets and the occasional flute on stage at the same time.

In short, what the woodwinds share is a romantic conception, a grouping and naming by fancy.

Answer 2

Woodwind instruments do not actually have a single unifying characteristic. The things that all woodwind instruments have in common are not unique to woodwind instruments as a group. To review: The members of the woodwind family are:

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

The French horn is actually not a 'wood wind' at all, because it has always been made of brass and sounded in the same fashion as the other brass "lip-reed" instruments. The Saxophones, invented in the late 1800s, have never been made of wood. The reeds that are similar between the Saxophone and Clarinet are unlike the double reeds that associate the oboe with the bassoon, and the Flute and its family of instruments have no reed at all: the wind from the player's embouchure strikes a sharp edge and turbulence makes the vibrations.

Additionally, the characteristics which make the tone of each instrument different are both diverse and communal between the group as a whole and pairs. The Oboe, Bassoon, and Saxophone have conical bores which act as "closed pipes" in organ pipe terms: they produce a fundamental and all the overtones in decreasing-power-by-increasing-frequency. The Flute acts as an open pipe, but is neither conical nor cylindrical: it starts at one diameter, which increases towards the center, then contracts going towards the other end. The open-pipe and wind-over-an-edge gives the instrument the sound of the characteristic flute stop of the organ. The clarinet has a cylindrical bore, constant diameter from the chamber of the mouthpiece down to the end just before the bell. And the French Horn, for all that it has a conical bore, is a brass instrument, and characteristically fits with the trombones and trumpets.

The 'standard' of being called a woodwind because originally, the precursors of the instruments were made of wood fails utterly for the Horn and Saxophone, which have never been made of wood. The use of the lowest overtones to extend the range of finger holes which is used on the other instruments is dwarfed by the horn's use of overtones: past the first two octaves of partials, the horn can play diatoic scales without using the valves, and after that, chromatic scales as well.

So what do they have in common that cannot be claimed by other instrument families? That they are members of the woodwind family. That's about it.

Answer 3

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