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581
FLUTE

MSS.[1] preserved in Paris, at the British Museum and elsewhere. There is moreover in the cathedral of St Sophia at Kiev[2] an orchestra depicted on frescoes said to date from the 11th century; among the musicians is a flautist.

The first essentially western European trace of the transverse flute occurs in a German MS. of the 12th century, the celebrated Hortus deliciarum of the abbess Herrad von Landsperg.[3] Fol. 221 shows a syren playing upon the transverse flute, which Herrad explains in a legend as tibia; in the vocabulary the latter is translated swegel. In the 13th century it occurs among the miniatures of the fifty-one musicians in the beautiful MS. Las Cantigas de Santa Maria in the Escorial, Madrid.[4] Eustache Deschamps, a French poet of the 14th century, in one of his ballads, makes mention of the “flute traversaine,” and we are justified in supposing that he refers to the transverse flute. It had certainly acquired some vogue in the 15th century, being figured in an engraving in Sebastian Virdung’s celebrated work,[5] where it is called “Zwerchpfeiff,” and, with the drums, it already constituted the principal element of the military music. Agricola (op. cit.) alludes to it as the “Querchpfeiff” or “Schweizerpfeiff,” the latter designation dating, it is said, from the battle of Marignan (1515), when the Swiss troops used it for the first time in war.

From Agricola onwards transverse flutes formed a complete family, said to comprise the discant, the alto and tenor, and the bass— respectively. Praetorius[6] designates the transverse flute as “Flauta traversa’ Querpfeiff” and “Querflöt,” and gives the pitch of the bass in the tenor and alto in and the discant in as varieties then in use. A flute concert at that time included two discants, four altos or tenors, and two basses. The same author distinguishes between the “Traversa” and the “Schweizerpfeiff” or fife (which he also calls “Feldpfeiff,” i.e. military flute), although the construction was the same. There were two kinds of “Feldpfeiff,” in and respectively; they were employed exclusively with the military drum.

Mersenne’s[7]> account of the transverse flute, then designated “flûte d’Allemagne” or “flûte allemande” in France, and an “Air de Cour” for four flutes in his work lead us to believe that there were then in use in France the soprano flute in the tenor or alto flute in and the bass flute descending to . The museum of the Conservatoire Royal of Brussels possesses specimens of all these varieties except the last. All of them are laterally pierced with six finger-holes; they have a cylindrical bore, and are fashioned out of a single piece of wood. Their compass consists of two octaves and a fifth. Mersenne’s tablature for fingering the flute differs but little from those of Hotteterre-le-Romain[8] and Eisel[9] for the diatonic scale; he does not give the chromatic semitones and the flute had as yet no keys.

 
Fig. 4. Fig. 5.
Fig. 4.—Bass Flute. From Museo Civico, Verona (facsimile).
Fig. 5.—Bass Flute. Brussels Museum.

The largest bass flute in the Brussels museum is in at the French normal pitch A 435 double vibrations per second. It measures 0.95 m. from the centre of the blow orifice to the lower extremity of the tube. The disposition of the lateral holes is such that it is impossible to cover them with the fingers if the flute is held in the ordinary way. The instrument must be placed against the mouth in an almost vertical direction, inclining the extremity of the tube either to the right or the left. This inconvenient position makes it necessary that the instrument should be divided into two parts, enabling the player to turn the head joint that the embouchure may be most commodiously approached by the lips, which is not at all easy. The first and fourth of the six lateral holes are double in order to accommodate both right- and left-handed players, the holes not in use being stopped up with wax. The bass flute shown in fig. 4 is the facsimile of an instrument in the Museo Civico of Verona. The original, unfortunately no longer fit for use, is nevertheless sufficiently well preserved to allow of all its proportionate measurements being given. The lowest note, E♭, is obtained with a remarkable amplitude of sound, thus upsetting a very prevalent opinion that it is impossible to produce by lateral insufflation sounds which go a little lower than the ordinary limit downwards of the modern orchestral flute.[10]

The bass flute cited by Mersenne should not differ much from that of the Museo Civico at Verona. We suppose it to have been in , and that it was furnished with an open key like that which was applied to the recorders (flûtes douces) of the same epoch, the function of the key being to augment by another note the compass of the instrument in the lower part. A bass flute in G similar to the one in fig. 5 is figured and described in Diderot and D’Alembert’s encyclopaedia [11] (1751). According to Quantz,[12] it was in France and about the middle of the 17th century that the first modifications were introduced in the manufacture of the flute. The improvements at this period consisted of the abandonment of the cylindrical bore in favour of a conical one, with the base of the cone forming the head of the instrument. At the same time the flute was made of three separate pieces called head, body, and tail or foot, which were ultimately further subdivided. The body or middle joint was divided into two pieces, so that the instrument could be tuned to the different pitches then in use by a replacement with longer or shorter pieces. It was probably about 1677, when Lully introduced the German flute into the opera, that recourse was had for the first time to keys, and that the key of D♯ was applied to the lower part of the instrument.[13] The engraving of B. Picart, dated 1707, given in Hotteterre’s book, represents the flute as having reached the stage of improvement of which we have just spoken. In 1726 Quantz,[14] finding himself in Paris, had a second key applied to the flute, placed nearly at the same height as the first, that of the , intended to differentiate the D♯ and the E♭.[15] This innovation was generally well received in Germany, but does not appear to have met with corresponding success in other countries. In France and England manufacturers adopted

it but rarely; in Italy it was declared useless.[16] About the same

  1. ↑ Greek MS. 510, Grégoir de Nazance 10th century, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; illustration in Gustave L. Schlumberger, L’Épopée byzantine à la fin du dizième siècle (Paris, 1896 and 1900), vol. i. p. 503. British Museum, Greek Psalter, add. MS. 19352, fol. 189b. written and illuminated cir. 1066 by Theodorus of Caesarea. A cylindrical flute is shown turned to the right, the left hand being uppermost. Smyrna, Library of the Evaggelike Schole B. 18, fol. 72a, A.D 1100, illustration by Strzygowski, “Der Bilderkreis des griechischen Physiologus,” in Byzantinisches Archiv (Leipzig, 1899), Heft 2, Taf. xi.; N. P. Kondakoff, Histoire de l’art byzantin (Paris, 1886 and 1891), pl. xii. 5; “Kuseyr’ Amra,” issued by K. Akad. d. Wissenschaften (Vienna, 1907), vol. ii. pl. xxxiv.
  2. ↑ A fine volume containing coloured drawings of these frescoes has been published in St Petersburg (British Museum library catalogue, sect. “Academies,” St Petersburg, 1874–1887, vol. iv. Tab. 1325a).
  3. ↑ This manuscript, written towards the end of the 12th century, was preserved in the Strassburg library until 1870, when it was burnt during the bombardment of the city. See the fine reproduction in facsimile published by the Soc. pour la conservation des monuments historiques d’Alsace. Texte explicatif de A. Straub and G. Keller (Strassburg, 1901), pl. lvii., also C. M. Engelhardt, Herrad von Landsperg und ihr Werk (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1818), twelve plates.
  4. ↑ MS. j. b. 2. Illustrated in Critical and Bibliographical Notes on Early Spanish Music (London, 1887), p. 119.
  5. ↑ Musica getutscht und auszgezogen (Basel, 1511).
  6. ↑ Organographia (Wolfenbüttel. 1618), pp. 24, 25, 40.
  7. ↑ Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636), Livre v. p. 241.
  8. ↑ Principes de la flûte traversière ou flûte d’Allemagne, de la flûte à bec et du hautbois (Paris, 1722), p. 38.
  9. ↑ Musicus αὐτοδιδακτός oder der sich selbst informirende Musicus (Erfurt, 1738), p. 85.
  10. ↑ Fétis, Rapport sur la fabrication des instruments de musique à l’Exposition Universelle de Paris, en 1855.
  11. ↑ See Recueil de planches, vol. iv., and article “Basse de flûte traversière,” vol. ii. (Paris, 1751). See also The Flute, by R. S. Rockstro (London, 1890), p. 238, where the wood cut is reproduced together with a translation of the article. The Museum of the Conservatoire in Paris also possesses a bass flute by the noted French maker Delusse.
  12. ↑ Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversière zu spielen (Berlin, 1752).
  13. ↑ Unless the contrary is stated, we have always in view, in describing the successive improvements of the flute, the treble flute in D, which is considered to be typical of the family.
  14. ↑ “Herrn Johann Joachim Quantzens-Lebenslauf, von ihm selbst entworfen,” in the Historisch-Kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik, by Marpurg (Berlin, 1754), p. 239. Quantz was professor of the flute to Frederick the Great.
  15. ↑ See Johann Georg Tromlitz, Ausführlicher und gründlicher Unterricht die Flöte zu spielen (Leipzig, 1791), 1, § 7, and Über Flöten mit mehrern Klappen (Leipzig, 1800), cap. vii. § 21.
  16. ↑ Antonio Lorenzoni, Saggio per ben sonare il flauto traverso (Vicenza, 1779).
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