Instrument Names in Other Languages

Someone hands you a part and the label says "Posaune", "campanelli" or "cor". You can read the music, but first you need to know one simple thing: which instrument is this part for? This page answers exactly that, in the languages in which scores are most often published.

It covers 52 common instruments of the orchestra, the band and the classroom. For each one you get the English name (our reference), the name in Spanish, Italian, French and German, the abbreviation used in scores and, most useful of all, the false friends: names that look like they mean one thing and mean another. It is not a closed list of instruments, just the ones that turn up on the music stand.

If you want to know which family each instrument belongs to, see the instrument families.

American and British English differ on a few names. This page gives the American name first and marks the British one: English horn (UK: cor anglais). The unqualified names (flute, oboe, clarinet and so on) are the same in both.

Instrument names in five languages

Find the English name in the first column and read across. The Spanish column is there because Spanish-speaking readers often meet scores with Spanish part names (a few of them, such as requinto, lira and corneta, are used only in Spanish and Latin American bands).

Search an instrument in any language

Type the name as you read it on the page, in any of the five languages (Spanish included). You do not need accents or capital letters, and the start of the word is enough: the cell where it matched is highlighted in yellow, and that tells you which language your score is in.

The false friends that cause the most trouble

These are the names that make someone pick up the wrong part. Almost all of them come from two different instruments sharing a root in different languages:

• English horn. It is neither English nor a horn: it is an alto oboe in F. In British usage it is called by its French name, cor anglais, and that is the name on many scores in every language.
• Horn. The most dangerous false friend: Italian corno, German Horn and French cor all mean the (French) horn, not the cornet and not the English horn. Spanish trompa is also the horn, while Spanish trompeta is the trumpet.
• Trumpet and trombone. Italian tromba is the trumpet and trombone is the trombone. They look alike and are not the same. Spanish trombón is the trombone.
• Trombone. German has a name that looks like nothing else: Posaune.
• Cornet. Italian cornetta, French cornet à pistons and German Kornett are the valved cornet. Do not confuse it with the cornetto, a Renaissance instrument with finger holes and a cup mouthpiece.
• Flugelhorn. In French it is simply bugle, but the English bugle (as in a bugle call) is something else: the military instrument with no valves.
• E♭ clarinet. Spanish bands call it requinto, a name that also belongs to a small guitar in Latin America. In foreign scores you will always see it as a clarinet in E♭ (Es-Klarinette, clarinetto piccolo in mi bemolle, petite clarinette en mi♭).
• Alto saxophone. In Italian the alto is contralto: sassofono contralto. If you read "sassofono alto" in a modern edition, it means the same.
• Euphonium. Beware of bombardon: in French and German it is not the euphonium but a bass tuba. The German Baritonhorn is not exactly a euphonium either: it has a narrower bore and a lighter sound. In the US, "baritone horn" is also a separate, narrower instrument.
• Viola. In French the viola is alto. If you read "alto" between the violin and the cello in a French score, it is the viola.
• Timpani. In English, timbales are something else: the paired Latin drums of Afro-Cuban percussion. The orchestral drums are timpani (Spanish timbales, German Pauken).
• Glockenspiel. The Italian name is campanelli and the Spanish band name is lira. Be careful with campanelli (glockenspiel) against campane (tubular bells).
• Tubular bells. English players say "chimes" or "tubular bells". "Bells" alone is ambiguous, because it can mean the glockenspiel (orchestral bells) in one score and the tubular bells in another. Check the written range: the glockenspiel is notated high on the staff and sounds two octaves above, while tubular bells are written near middle C.
• Drum set. German Schlagzeug means the drum set and also the whole percussion section.

How to tell which instrument it is when you do not know the name

When the name does not help, the score itself gives three clues that almost never fail:

• Its place on the page. An orchestral score is always ordered the same way, from top to bottom: woodwinds, brass, percussion, keyboards and harp, then strings at the bottom. Within each family, from highest to lowest. A lone part between the oboe and the clarinet is almost certainly an English horn.
• The clef. The bass clef immediately rules out all the high woodwinds. The C clef on the middle line (alto clef) belongs to the viola, and on the fourth line (tenor clef) to the bassoon, the trombone or the cello in its high register.
• The key signature. If the part has two more sharps than the rest, it is a transposing instrument in B♭; if it has three flats fewer (or three more sharps), it is one in E♭. That narrows the list to two or three candidates.

Why Italian rules in scores

Modern notation took shape in Italy between the 17th and 18th centuries, and from there came the vocabulary of dynamics and of instruments. That is why an international edition says timpani and not "kettledrums", just as it says allegro and not "cheerful".

German departs the most, because it translated the names instead of adopting them: Posaune, Pauken, Bratsche or Querflöte look like nothing in the other languages. French has its own traps, such as calling the viola alto. In a modern English edition the usual thing is to find the English names, but the abbreviations are still almost always the Italian ones.

Abbreviations in an orchestral score

In the conductor's score, the full name appears only on the first system; from then on everything is abbreviated. The abbreviations in the last column of the tables are the Italian ones, which are used even in English and German editions. A number in front indicates the desk or player (1. Fl. is the first flute), and "a 2" means that the two instruments on that staff play the same thing.

For woodwinds, brass and strings these abbreviations are well established and rarely fail. In percussion there is no standard, and each publisher makes its own: Camp. can mean campanelli (glockenspiel) or campane (tubular bells), two instruments in very different registers. That is why those cells are empty in the tables: in percussion, trust the full name on the first system, not the abbreviation.

If you need to know which notes each of these instruments can play, the table of notes on each instrument lists them all with their range. To tune some of them, see the online tuners for the clarinet, trumpet, trombone, horn and tuba.