![]() ![]() 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). I was fascinated."įewer than 100 Heckelphones remain in the world, many of them in museums. "I'd go to the little town of Biebrich and play those instruments on the weekends - they don't allow that now. "They have a museum of instruments there, and I'd never heard of a Heckelphone," Grossman explains. Grossman became interested in the instruments when he was stationed in Germany in the late 1950s. 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. ![]() 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. 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. You never know what you're going to find on eBay. ![]()
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