ALiebesfussorLiebesfuß (German:[ˈliːbəsfuːs]; lit.'love foot'; French: pavillon d'amour) is a pear- or bulb-shaped element that narrows to a small opening in double reed instruments such as the oboe d'amore, cor anglais and heckelphone.[1] It serves as a damper that gives these musical instruments a characteristically soft timbre.[2][3] It is the eponymous characteristic of the oboe d'amore, which was developed in the baroque alongside other particularly sweet-sounding instruments such as the viola d'amore and the clarinet d'amore, which originated around 1740, died out in the mid-19th century, and was redeveloped from 2017 to 2020 on the basis of a basset clarinet in G.[4][5]
A slightly larger and 90-degree angled love foot, which can be rotated both forwards and backwards, can be found on historical basset clarinets,[6] as well as on a modern basset clarinet that adopts this detail from a historical clarinet, as Charles Neidich did.
^Albert R. Rice (1986), "The Clarinette D'Amour and Basset Horn", The Galpin Society Journal (in German), vol. 39, pp. 97–111, doi:10.2307/842136, JSTOR842136
