Incredible Instruments: Rare Heckelphone has a voice of its own

You never know what you're going to find on eBay.

University of Washington faculty bassoonist Arthur Grossman was trolling the site one day as he often does, looking for good bassoon bargains for his students, and up popped a listing for a Heckelphone.

What, you may ask, is a Heckelphone? The history of wind instruments is long and varied, and it has many intriguing side roads; one of those is inhabited by this rare, conical-bore double-reed instrument. It was invented in 1904, long after a request by composer Richard Wagner, at the Heckel factory just outside of Wiesbaden, Germany — where top-quality wind instruments still are made today. Grossman became interested in the instruments when he was stationed in Germany in the late 1950s.

"They have a museum of instruments there, and I'd never heard of a Heckelphone," Grossman explains. "I'd go to the little town of Biebrich and play those instruments on the weekends — they don't allow that now. I was fascinated."

Fewer than 100 Heckelphones remain in the world, many of them in museums. All the players — and Grossman estimates there are maybe 50 in the world — are self-taught, because there are no teachers, and nobody really knows how the reeds should be made (Grossman's handmade reeds are not too dissimilar from his bassoon reeds). Early Heckelphones, like Grossman's, are based on 19th-century Viennese oboe fingering; later ones moved more toward a modern standard.

"I had to figure out the fingering," he explains, "by putting an electronic tuner on my music stand and figuring out which combinations of fingers made a B or a B-flat. These instruments are very finicky."

So what do you play on a Heckelphone? Well, there's a very nice Trio for Viola, Heckelphone and Piano (Op. 47) by 20th-century composer Paul Hindemith (see review at right). Richard Strauss also was a fan, giving the instrument parts in the "Alpine Symphony" and the operas "Salome" and "Elektra."

Conductor/composer Wilhelm Furtwãngler liked the Heckelphone and composed music for it; so did Hans Werner Henze and Percy Grainger ("The Warriors," a work in which Grossman played the Heckelphone for the Seattle Symphony performances a season ago). Holst also specified either a bass oboe or a Heckelphone for "The Planets." (For more opportunities, as Grossman suggests, players can "steal the oboe repertoire and play it down an octave.")

Where did Grossman's Heckelphone come from? Its provenance is mysterious; he bought it from a Texas collector of musical instruments, who had obtained it earlier from another collector, but beyond that, no one knows.

"I gave myself a limit beyond which I would not bid," says Grossman, who declines to specify the cost of the Heckelphone, "and of course I went over that amount. I've spent quite a bit on repair and maintenance, moving some keys to make them more reachable. Somewhere along the way, somebody soaked it in oil, and oil never really leaves the instrument; the pads stick, and I'm constantly putting baby powder on them.

"But I'm glad I got an old one. There's a real sonic difference to the early ones, which have thinner walls and more resonance — the older ones are much more rich and beautiful."