Sellner-type Oboes in Vienna and Mainz in the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century

Around the1820s the Viennese instrument maker Stephan Koch, together with the oboe virtuoso Joseph Sellner, developed an oboe-type that was one of the most advanced of its time in Europe. It was characterised by a relatively large number of keys, a modified bore and a tuning slide, and was said to be fully chromatic and equally in tune at various pitches. Curiously, the extant oboes of Schott and Alexander - all of the Koch/Sellner-type - seem to suggest that the same type of instrument was being built in Mainz during this period. This is remarkable, given that most German makers followed the Dresden tradition. Period sources indicate that the Sellner-oboe may have been brought to Mainz by the oboist Foreith (who had been active in Vienna), and by the makers Kaspar Anton Alexander (youngest of the four Alexander brothers, all Mainz instrument makers), and Franz Ott, who seem to have learned to build this type of oboe with Stephan Koch and Wolfgang Küss in Vienna.