Tom Stanley, age 15, of Gulfport, Miss., for his question:

WHO INVENTED THE OBOE?

The oboe, a double reed wind instrument with a wood body and narrow conical bore, was invented in the mid 1600s by two French musicians named Jean Hotterterre and Michel Philidor.

The oboe was designed for indoor use and was a modification of the louder shawm, the prevailing double-reed instrument.

Hotterterre and Philidor's instrument, called "hautbois," which means "high or loud wood," had a narrower bore than the shawm1s, a body in three sections instead of one and a smaller reed grasped near its tip by the players lips.

By 1700 most orchestras included a pair of oboes.

Early oboes had seven finger holes and two keys. By the 1700s, four-keyed models were also in use. In the 1800s additional keys were added, reaching 15 or more, and the bore and sound were redesigned.

The range of the modern oboe extends two and one-half octaves upward from the B below middle C. The English horn is an alto oboe, a fifth lower in pitch, and is probably identical with the "hunting oboe" used by Johann Sebastian Bach.