A basic technique lost and found

I was playing a concert recently with a rather speedy Bach continuo part. As I was practicing, it occurred to me to wonder what exactly had happened to the technique of double-tonguing on the bassoon in the first part of the 20th century.

Plenty of Baroque continuo parts, including those usually including bassoon, contain passages that only the most freakish of wagglers could single-tongue. It seems obvious that Baroque bassoonists must have been able to double tongue; and sure enough, in JJ Quantz’s chapter on articulation, after describing several tonguing techniques including double tonguing, he notes:

Why Quantz thinks you can’t double tongue on the oboe is a mystery for another day (or for a Baroque oboist to tell me); the point is, bassoonists were known double-tonguers in 1752, if not known good-reed-havers.

Why, then, did double-tonguing seem to disappear from the toolbox for a period of time? That it did is of course anecdotal, but it does seem to me that among the generation of professional bassoonists who got jobs in the early or mid 20th century, it was very much an optional technique. That generation is largely gone from the active playing scene, but many people still have stories of teachers or older colleagues who didn’t double tongue, and I have even heard it said by some of those players that bassoons don’t double tongue, or that if they do it is a new invention. (This does seem to be largely true on clarinet. “Fucking slur two tongue two… shit!”)

Bassoon historians slide into my DMs…