Mus. [ad. F. basson, augmentative f. bas, basse BASS sb.5; or perhaps bas son deep sound (Littré).]
1. A wooden double-reed instrument, with a compass of about three octaves, used as a bass to the oboe, having a pipe eight feet in length, so arranged in parts (whence the Italian name fagotto) that the whole instrument measures only four feet.
1727–51. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., A good bassoon is said to be worth four or five hundred pistoles.
1778. Johnson, in Boswell, III. 39. In a different language it [poetry] may be the same tune, but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a flagelet.
1798. Coleridge, Anc. Mar., I. viii. The wedding-guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon.
1855. O. W. Holmes, Poems, 148. As if a broken fife should strive To drown a cracked bassoon.
1880. in Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 152/1. Handel’s scores contain few bassoon parts.
2. a. An organ-stop of a quality of tone similar to that of the bassoon. b. A series of reeds of similar tone in a harmonium, etc.
