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No, Bach's taille was essentially the same as Lully's taille [des hautbois]—a straight, flare-belled tenor oboe in F. As the Wikipedia article plainly states (citing the New Grove article by Michael Finkelman), the cor anglais only came into existence ca. 1720, ""when a bulb bell was added to the oboe da caccia"". Sibyl Marcuse states that the name did not first start appearing in scores until ""around 1760"". This name was indeed drawn, according to Finkelman, from an older Germann term for the the flare-belled horns played by angels in paintings of the Middle Ages—doubtless shawms of all sorts—""engellisches Horn, meaning ""angelic horn"". There is a distinction to be made (as Finkelman does) between the emergence of the instrument called cor anglais, and the (German) term ""angelic horn"", loosely applied to shawms/oboes of all sorts. The French word taille (for what it is worth) is cognate with English ""tall"", and is applied to viols (tenor viola da gamba), violins (tenor violin, or viola). The taille des hautbois'' was known in England as ""tenor hoboy"", and Purcell scored for it in 1690, a good thirty years before the invention of the cor anglais, and seventy years before the name first appears in musical scores. To claim that it is ""essentially the same"" as the cor anglais is equivalent to saying the tenor lute is ""essentially the same"" as a guitar.—  "