At the beginning of every orchestra concert, no matter which music is being performed, musicians tune their instruments to the note A played by the oboe. Although this practice is widely acknowledged, there is a lack of academic research on its history, or how the task of playing the tuning-A affects oboe players themselves. This dissertation examines the oboist’s relationship with the tuning-A through historical research on how the practice emerged and a survey of living professional oboists about their approaches to tuning the orchestra. It then shows how the tuning-A is used in a major twentieth-century work for the oboe: the first movement of the American composer John Corigliano’s Oboe Concerto, called “Tuning Game.”