The Classical technique of winds doubling strings emerged in scoring for opera orchestras in the mid-17th century and continued to be important through the next century in the compositions of Haydn and Mozart. (Most 18th-century orchestras included at least four winds, usually two oboes and two horns; by the 1770s, Mozart was writing for double flutes, oboes, and bassoons, a brass section of pairs of horns and trumpets, plus timpani and four-part strings.) In effect, this rendered winds less prominent in the texture of the Classical orchestra compared with the Baroque, in which the distinctive sonorities of winds had been used to highlight the different contrapuntal lines. In Classical orchestration, oboes and bassoons generally double the string parts, while brasses reinforce the harmony in relatively slow note values or play idiomatic fanfares and horn calls. Wind instruments did, however, retain their programmatic associations in church music and opera; “magical” instruments in Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791; Die Zauberflöte) include the flute and the piccolo, the latter representing the character Papageno’s reed pipes. They also were used for obbligato accompaniments. Sesto’s aria “Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio” (“I leave…”) from Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito (1791; “The Clemency of Titus”), for example, features a basset horn obbligato.

In the late Classical period, Beethoven’s orchestration at first seems a continuation of the conservative Classical practice, with considerable doubling of parts. His use of winds, however, particularly in the symphonies, at times tends toward theatricality bordering on the operatic. Familiar examples are the “false” entrance of the horn before the recapitulation in the first movement of the Eroica (1804; Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major) and the oboe solo in the first movement of the Symphony No. 5 in C Minor (1808). Beethoven’s dramatically charged approach to wind scoring in nominally abstract music profoundly influenced later composers. In such late 19th-century works as Gustav Mahler’s first three symphonies and the tone poems of Tchaikovsky and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, wind parts have strongly connoted extramusical significance.

Another use of winds in the Classical and later periods was in small ensemble music. The Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully anticipated future developments with his marches, a tradition that continued either in the hands of later specialists (Anton Reicha’s wind ensembles, John Philip Sousa’s marches) or as exceptional works by great masters (the wind quintets of Mozart and Beethoven). Carrying forward Baroque practice, composers in the Classical era also wrote chamber music for mixed ensembles of winds with piano or strings or wind concerti, such as those for clarinet and bassoon by Mozart.

The Romantic period

In the 19th century, wind instruments underwent extensive improvements, which ultimately led to the expansion and diversification of the woodwind and brass sections of the orchestra. An early advocate of such enrichment was Hector Berlioz, whose Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes (1844; A Treatise upon Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration) dealt with the ranges, mechanical problems, and sound qualities of all wind instruments, including newly invented ones. Typical of Berlioz’s own compositions, the Te Deum, Opus 22, calls for an expanded wind complement of four flutes, four oboes, four clarinets, four horns, four bassoons, two trumpets, two cornets, six trombones, two tubas, and an alto saxhorn (a brass instrument lower in range than the cornet). Wagner augmented even those large forces in the service of the music drama, quadrupling in the Ring orchestra most of the woodwinds and scoring for an unusual combination of eight horns (four of which doubled on special tenor and bass instruments known as Wagner tubas), a contrabass tuba, three trumpets and a bass trumpet, one contrabass trombone, and three tenor trombones. In the late 19th-century symphony and symphonic poem, as in opera, the large, variegated orchestra maintained close ties with programmatic or operatic impulses.

Perhaps as a corollary of the expanding use of winds in the Romantic orchestra, the 19th century produced remarkably few concerti for solo winds and orchestra. There was a similar decrease in chamber music for winds. Among the few composers of music for solo winds with piano are Carl Maria von Weber, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Brahms also wrote some outstanding chamber works for winds and strings, as did Franz Schubert.

The 20th and 21st centuries

Although the huge symphony orchestra was accommodated for a time in the early 20th century by such composers as Mahler and Igor Stravinsky, two important trends in instrumental music emerged between World Wars I (1914–18) and II (1939–45). One of these was the ever-growing interest of composers in ensembles consisting predominantly of wind instruments. Stravinsky, for example, composed his Symphonies of Wind Instruments in 1920, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments in 1923–24, and Symphony of Psalms in 1930, the instrumentation of the last being noteworthy for its lack of violins and violas.

The other important trend was a relative increase in the proportion of new music for chamber ensembles, especially those with wind instruments. In this repertoire, such composers as Debussy (Syrinx, 1913, for flute) and Stravinsky (Three Pieces for Clarinet, 1919) extended the level of technique and the range of special effects demanded of wind players. Experimentation has continued into the 21st century, with the electronic amplification of winds and the development of new techniques, such as multiphonics, in which two or more pitches are sounded simultaneously on a single woodwind instrument.

In jazz

Jazz has been one of the most vital sources of American wind music. The first jazz ensembles to feature solo winds—trumpet or cornet, clarinet, and trombone—were formed in New Orleans in the second decade of the 20th century. In this early style, the soloists either improvised simultaneously or adapted their playing to the musical texture, the clarinet ornamenting the trumpet lead and the trombone filling in the chord notes and outlining the bass notes. By the mid-1920s, however, trumpeter Louis Armstrong, arguably the most important wind instrumentalist of early jazz, had developed a dramatic solo style that did not depend on ensemble interaction; this style became a model for later jazz soloists.

The following decade was the principal era of the big bands, the best known being those led by Duke Ellington and Count Basie. During the 1930s and ’40s, the wind sections of such groups grew from 6 (three reeds, two trumpets, and a trombone) to a standard of 13 (five reeds, four trumpets, and four trombones). After World War II, the big bands gradually were supplanted by smaller bebop groups, which almost invariably included trumpet and saxophone. The recorded performances of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, whose improvisational ability is legendary, are still studied and greatly admired. Beginning in the 1960s, jazz musicians, particularly trumpeter Miles Davis, were among the instrumentalists who experimented with new sonorities and—with the aid of electronic technology—forged new links between jazz and the music of the American and European avant-garde.

In folk traditions

Wind instruments play an important role in the folk music of many cultures. Most folk music for winds imitates vocal models, such as the folk music for harmonica played by Americans, the love songs for flute played by Native American men, and the bagpipe music of eastern Europe, which usually consists of richly ornamented versions of local folk songs. (Many kinds of bagpipes are found throughout eastern and western Europe. These vary from the very simple ones found in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland to the beautifully fashioned instruments with three and four pipes [which serve as drones] found in Scotland, Ireland, and the north of England.)

A few types of folk music are idiomatic to wind instruments. In Poland, perhaps because of the proliferation of instruments, including several basic types of flutes and bagpipes, folk music is dominated by instrumental tunes, most of them for dancing. In the Basque region of northern Spain and southwestern France, dances and processions are often accompanied by a single musician who plays a three-holed flute with one hand and a six-stringed dulcimer with the other. In certain African instrumental ensembles, percussion instruments sometimes are joined by teams of flute or horn players, each of whom plays a single note whenever it occurs in the melody. The Bambuti of eastern Congo (Kinshasa) often use up to six flutes, each playing variations of a different ostinato pattern.