Bassoon or English Horn?

Long ago, I had started but given up a piece for piano and oboe, but recently I found it again, and decided that it needed a darker tone, so I tried writing it for the English horn instead of the oboe, but perhaps the English Horn was not dark enough, so I also tried the bassoon.

Here are versions with the bassoon and the English horn respectively, for comparison. I think I prefer the possibilities of the bassoon for further work on this, but the English horn is also beautiful.

I think the bassoon lends it a more narrative feeling, but the English horn gives it more poignancy. I want something in-between - an English bassoon!

Edited July 15, 20187 yr by Hugget Zukker

something like the bass oboe or heckelphone then?

Both are good, but I prefer for this music the bassoon.

@Hugget Zukker

I prefer the Eng Horn because:

*It's closer to the oboe, still has this... taste.

*You won't have to constantly think about the way you need to get to high sounds, their difficulty, their loudness (like in bassoon).

I read what @Luis Hernández posted and have it in bookmarks now, and I know from lessons I took and things I other things I read- writing for the bassoon is difficult.

*Eng horn is higher, and it has this... I dare to say tenor range, which can be dark but can also player higher, where it could be better heard without being more difficult to play.

I'm not talking about super high, normal high, say middle C and the octave above it.

If you can't decide you can write for both.

Also you should follow your posts, you wouldn't want to miss a comment like this:

9 hours ago, bryla said:

something like the bass oboe or heckelphone then?

 

19 hours ago, bryla said:

something like the bass oboe or heckelphone then?

 

The heckelphone sounds very beautiful. I may prefer its sound over that of the English horn. It's quite rare though.

Then I may write it "for heckelphone", but make it playable on the English horn.