A family of bass woodwinds noted for their typical stumpiness was played in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: stubby cylinders of ivory in which nine cylindrical channels were bored up and down, and connected alternately at top and bottom so as to form one continuous bore, with the channel finally emerging at the center of the top. The double reed, resembling that of the bassoon, was set on a staple and partly enclosed by a pirouette
that was halfway between a...
