DULCIAN: Italian musical instrument

The dulcian is a renaissance woodwind musical instrument that has a double reed and a folded conical bore. The musical instrument is equal to the name “curtal” in English language, "dulciana" in Italian, "douçaine" in French, "dulciaan" in Dutch", dulzian" in German and "bajón" in Spanish.

The predecessor of the contemporary bassoon, the musical instrument was popular between 1550 and 1700, though was perhaps fabricated earlier than that. Toward the end of this period that the musical instrument co-existed with, and was then substituted by the baroque bassoon, even though the musical instrument continued to be used in Spain until the early part of the 20^th century. The musical instrument was played in both secular and sacred context, all through the western and northern Europe and in the new world.

The musical instrument is commonly produced from a single piece of maple, having the bores being drilled and reamed, and then outside shape is plane. The reed of the instrument is affixed to the extreme of the metal bocal, put into the top of the tiny bore. Unlike the bassoon, the musical instrument often has a flared bell that is sometimes produced from a separate piece of timbre. This bell can sometimes be muffled; the mute is detachable, or carved into the musical instrument. The outside part of the musical instrument can also be covered in leather, just like the cornett.

Although the bass in F is the general size of the instrument, the musical instrument can come in several other sizes; the tenor, the alto and the soprano. There are also examples of a quart bass version of the musical instrument in C and contrabass version of the musical instrument in F. the range of each of the instruments is 2 ½ octaves, centered around the range of the accompanying singing voice.

The reed on the musical instrument is totally exposed, permitting the player of the instrument to control the sound and intonation of the instrument with his embouchure. At the time it first showed up, other double reed musical instrument had either the reed totally enclosed like the crumhorn or the bagpipe or somewhat enclosed, like the shawm.

It has been argued that this musical instrument displaced the bass shawm, on account of the portability of the musical instrument, though it has been argued that the two instrument co-existed and that the bass shawm showed up at approximately the same time as the bass dulcian. The musical instrument seems to have been in general use by the mid-16^th century.

The dulcian is a flexible musical instrument that is capable of being loud enough to perform in the outdoor bands. The instrument is quiet enough to be in the chamber music, it is expressive enough to be among the choir. The uses of the instrument would have been playing dance music along with the shawm and sackbuts of the city watch, chamber music and also the grand polychoral repertoire from Germany and Venice, like Giovanni Gabrieli and Heinrich Schütz. There are obvious dulcian fragments in the sonatas by Dario Castello.