The contrabassoon is quite enormous – twice the length of the bassoon to be exact – meaning it sounds an octave lower and has to double up on itself twice, like a paperclip, to be playable by a seated human. While Beethoven was the first to write an entirely separate contrabassoon part in his 5th symphony, there are clues that it may have been used as far back as Bach.

However, the original iterations of the instrument were generally regarded as weak in sonority and dynamics, so its parts were often played on an alternate instrument like the serpent or contrabass sarrusophone (both of which are definitely worth looking up on Wikipedia!) It wasn’t until the late 19th century that significant improvements were made to the instrument, but after that it became increasingly common to hear the clattering, machine-like low end cropping up in orchestral repertoire.