A Renaissance wind instrument with a soft, sweet tone, belonging to the shawm family.
From Italian 'dolce' (sweet) meaning an instrument with a sweet sound, with the suffix '-ian' to denote the instrument type, used in 16th-17th century musical terminology.
The dolcian was basically the Renaissance version of trying to make a shawm sound pretty instead of loud—early musicians knew that sweet-sounding instruments won hearts better than brash ones!
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