This article was originally written for the British Flute Society in 2016 and has been shared with the permission of the author, Trevor Wye.

Throughout the world, each country developed their own forms of flute. It is tempting to think of them as primitive flutes and some are, but there are many that are anything but. Some of these pipes are played by soloists today who display astonishing virtuosity with the simplest of materials. The fact that it doesn't have 'keys' doesn't enter into the equation. The players stop the holes with the tips of their fingers but our modern flutes stop the holes using a metal key on an axle with a cup into which is inserted and glued a pad made of woven sheep's wool, backed with cardboard and covered with a double layer of fish skin. Levelling and making the pad seal perfectly takes great skill - and that in 2016!

Many of the simple flutes have remained unchanged for hundreds of years and we will look at some of them to see what is being played now.

The pipe and tabor, an instrument where the performer accompanies himself on the drum while playing a one-handed flute, is illustrated below. The player uses only three holes which is enough, as he uses the harmonics of these four notes to play about two octaves. If you wish to try one, buy a six-holed bamboo pipe from an ethnic shop - one where they sell goods from India and Asia at cheap prices. The pipe will need modifying: with some sticky tape, block up the first four holes, three LH holes and one RH leaving the last two at the foot end. A hole must now be drilled underneath the pipe at the same point where the 4th hole was positioned on the top. This hole is covered with the LH thumb. The LH little finger simply helps hold the pipe steady. If drilling is difficult, the sharp point of a pair of scissors would probably do the trick. A fingering chart can be found online.

The ethnic shops also sell small drums of various kinds, good enough to try out both instruments together.

The pipe below is a flabiol, played in Catalonia, Spain; the top view shows the common six finger holes. The second picture shows the underneath of the pipe: the left hand hole is closed by the left thumb: the middle hole is similarly closed by the right thumb but the larger right hole is closed with the top surface of the right hand little finger. When the author tried it, he found it difficult to play. Try this yourself: take a pencil in both hands as if playing a recorder and in the right hand, place the little finger underneath with the second joint positioned as if covering a hole. The pipe is also played one-handed while a tambori, a small drum attached to the left arm of the player, is played with the right hand. It can play two octaves. More commercial fabiol have four keys, added for semitones and extra flexibility.

Similarly in Spain, there is the txistu, (pronounced 'shistoo') also shown below on the right. The player on the left is holding this modern banded variety.

Another version of the 'harmonic flute' is the fujara, found in the Czech Republic. The author wrote to the Minister for Culture of the former Czechoslovakia in the 1980s requesting a fujara and was sent the instrument shown in the previous article. It has the usual three finger holes and uses the harmonics of these four notes to play melodies.

Let us take a look at just one country, Peru: below is a touristic assemblage that can be had in street markets there, showing miniature copies of the common Peruvian flutes and drums, these from just one Latin country. The variety of pipes is astonishing and is by no means all that is played.

The fife - from the German pfeife (a pipe) - was an important instrument in US colonial times, more important than even the violin or piano. American slaves adopted the fife and played music that reflected their African origin. One musician even played the blues on his homemade bamboo fife. However, it was as a military instrument that made the fife popular throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The battlefield signalling duties undertaken by fifers included orders to advance, retreat and fire weapons. It is sad to reflect that the fife was the last sound heard by countless numbers of soldiers and they charged to their deaths. The rank of Fife Major, similar to that of Drum Major, was a common rank, though later, the bugle took over as a more practical signalling instrument. In Russia, the fifes and drums still march at the head of parades in Red Square. In Argentina too, military fifers are still found. The Spring 2016 edition of the NFA magazine, The Flutist, features a fife band on its cover with the caption, The Virtuosic Fife.

There are many examples online of fife playing and fife bands but this modern fife example is particularly enticing: Wouter Kellermann on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1WPnnvs00I

Double and triple flutes were tried too, and modern equivalents survive to this day. Shown below are some double pipes from eastern Europe which either play two melodies in harmony, or the second pipe acts as a drone.

Below are three examples of triple flutes: on the left, a triple ocarina from Japan and on the right, a triple bird flute made by a French maker. Ocarinas have a limited range of just over an octave, but at first sight, the triple on the left below seems to be a true triple but in fact, the extra holes are connected to a different chamber, extending the range to about three octaves. The bird flute has three chambers played at the same time so it is possible to play a melody in two parts with a bass.

It is well worth listening to the virtuoso ocarina player, Michael Copley play the Carnival of Venice variations and some quartets with friends on CD007366.

Below is the double flageolet made in London in 1815. It is possible to play two independent parts and the player can even play one melody legato with a staccato accompaniment. This is achieved by a shutter which can momentarily shut off the air-flow to either pipe.

Double flageolet, Bainbridge, London (Author)

The triple flageolet below is a great rarity, there being no more than a dozen known and the others in museums. On it, a performer can play three independent parts and it is, in effect, a double flageolet with a third bass pipe added which covers an interval of a sixth. This instrument was made by Bainbridge and can be heard on the internet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwsJx-6rV0

Triple flageolet, Bainbridge, London (Author)

The Swiss Pipe, a folk flute, has been known for about a thousand years and itinerant players probably travelled to south Germany and to other European countries where it developed further. Perhaps the Chinese flute, the dizi, too, had been seen or tried by travellers who may have had trouble understanding how to stop the extra hole normally covered with a fragile membrane, once it had been broken. Perhaps they simply blocked it up. Six-holed flutes were found throughout Europe and over the years were compared by travelling players and copied.

Around 1300, there appeared a one-piece wooden flute of about 2 ft long (61 cm.) pitched in D, that is, its lowest note was D. In the early 1500s, shorter and longer versions appeared together which were collectively referred to as a consort of soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Michael Praetorius (c.1571 – 1621), a German composer and music theorist and the greatest musical academic of his day, compiled a record of musical practices of his times. Included in an appendix to the second volume of his Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia, (1620) are 42 beautifully drawn woodcuts, showing the common instruments of the early 17th century, grouped in families and shown to scale. This provides us with a valuable record of the flutes used at that time.

The first known use of the word flute was in the 14th century. Below are the simple forms of flutes of different sizes to give different pitches which would later develop into the renaissance flute.

A modern copy of a Renaissance Flute (1400 - 1600)

In 1670, a three-jointed, 1-keyed flute in D appeared in Jean-Baptiste Lully's famous orchestra in France which showed more changes: it had a conical bore, that is, it tapers from about one-third along its length from the blow hole, to the end with the holes closer together and with smaller finger-holes too. Flutes in the Middle Ages were usually known as German Flutes to distinguish them from the English flute, the recorder. Below is a highly decorated ivory 'English flute'. The name recorder derives from to remember, to recollect and may come from the medieval jongleur, an entertainer who recited poems and played music by memory.

A fine example of recorder playing using familiar flute music is the Bach C Major Sonata played by Michaela Petri on the treble recorder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFV-zW-dn9g

The journey from simple pipes to the Renaissance flute was long and included experiments in bore size, finger hole positions and materials as well as the overall length. Makers discovered that a narrower bore favoured the higher notes and allowed a greater compass, but this was at the expense of the tone of the lower notes and is why we see flutes of different lengths and bore sizes. These days we talk of 'alto' and 'bass' flutes, but in those times the flutes were of varying lengths to accommodate the different pitches the traveller found throughout Europe and for the regular performer, saved trouble in transposing. Players often played by themselves so a fixed pitch was not a necessity.

As music became harmonically more complex and more detailed, technically difficult ornaments were called for, so the makers tried to satisfy the performer by adding keys to make the job easier.

Jacques-Martin Hotteterre (1674 – 1763), was an important figure in the development of our flutes because he is credited with having devised the first key for Eb, a simple lever with a flat 'pad' of leather to stop the hole. Jacques’s grandfather, Jean (c.1605 to c.1690) is also said to have been an important influence in flute design. In addition to performing and teaching, Hotteterre continued his family's tradition of wind instrument making and it may have been him who made a number of changes in the design of the one-piece transverse flute. This he cut into three pieces: the head (with the mouthpiece), the body (with most of the holes), and the foot (with one key for the low Eb), making it easier to cut the bore accurately and also allowing easier transport.

Hotteterre (Engraving by Bernard Picart)

Johann Joachim Quantz (1697 – 1773) was a German flutist who became known as the finest flutist in Europe and after studying with Gabriel Buffardin, toured France and England. He was an innovator in flute design, adding a second key, a D# key in addition to the standard Eb, to help with making a difference between D# and Eb.

A fine French traverso player, Gabriel Buffardin - 'Buffers' to his friends - was visiting Germany and decided to call upon the famous composer, J.S. Bach (known to his friends as 'Jazz'). Jazz heard him play and was impressed as up to that time, he hadn't heard a really good flute player. Jazz and his wife invited 'Buffers' to dinner. In great German tradition, they had lots of pork, potatoes, sauerkraut and steins of beer. Buffers, being French, slim and rather particular about food, found the style and quantity of the fare overwhelming and was unable to eat a large portion of it. After dinner when Buffers had gone, Maria Magdelena remarked to Jazz, ''He's only a part-eater, isn't he''? Jazz thought for a moment, and said. "Liebste, what a good idea! I will write my first solo flute piece for him and call it a Partita!'' By the way, Buffers had mentioned during dinner that the English 'Rosbif' musicians were rather wooden and unmusical plodders, so Jazz wrote the fourth movement in the form of a foot- stomping Bourée, which Buffers found very amusing.

Later and after some hard practice, Buffers played the Partita to Jazz but complained of the violinistic style, with its lack of sympathy for the flutist's breathing. Jazz apologised and begged to be allowed to write for him a companion piece in C major in a lighter and more considerate style. This he did and, though the solo manuscript has been lost, the piece survives in the form of the Sonata in C to which the teenaged Kipper, (CPE Bach), later, as an exercise set by his father, added a continuo and in the Minuet, an obbligato part.

Reader: check it yourself: where have you ever seen or heard a bass line as in the first movement of the C Major Sonata? It was obviously written by a student.

During the next 40 years, more keys were added partly to help play purer semitones, but also, it should be noted, because music had become more ornamental, perhaps even fussy and to play these ornaments neatly and gracefully, players needed to be nimble-fingered and the only answer was to add more keys. On the one-keyed flute, after E natural, F natural was played forked (1st and 3rd fingers) and so to make this fingering and tuning easier, a key was added between the E and F# holes. G# on a traverso was really an A, flattened by adding RH fingers, and so a key was added between the A and G holes to give a true G#. Finally, Bb was in effect a B natural flattened by adding extra fingers, so a key was placed between the B and A holes. That's how the 4-keyed flute was born and in fact, a good example plays chromatically very well indeed. An example is shown below.

Adding keys became common and it was not long before the foot was extended down to low C# and C.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited Paris in 1778 when he was 22 and stayed at the home of the director of a public concert series who allowed Mozart to use his keyboard for composition purposes. Whilst living there, Mozart was introduced to the Duc de Guînes, a wealthy amateur flute player whose daughter Marie played the harp. Mozart was engaged to give her regular composition lessons and though she was a competent harpist, she had no talent for composition. The Duc asked Mozart to write a piece for flute and harp for himself and his daughter. There is no evidence that this was ever performed, though what is interesting is that the Duc had acquired a flute from London with a low C footjoint and Mozart included this extra note in the Concerto.

Mozart was never paid for the Concerto and was only offered half the fees for the composition lessons, which he proudly refused. It seems Mozart found composition so easy. "I compose music as a sow piddles", he remarked.

The low C# and C keyed foot-joint first appeared in London in about 1765.

Flute with low C c.1815 (Author’s collection)

Frederick II also known as Frederick the Great (1712 – 1786) was King of Prussia until 1786. He was a gifted flute player, composing 100 sonatas for the flute, some of which are of high quality, as well as four symphonies. His court musicians included C.P.E. Bach and J.J. Quantz. A meeting with Johann Sebastian Bach in 1747 in Potsdam led to Bach's writing The Musical Offering.

If we look at the rest of Europe, the industrial revolution was getting underway and that inevitably meant new ways to make and improve instruments. The flat brass springs formerly used to close the keys gave way to the needle spring, an invention by Dr. H. W. Pottgeisser. In reality, needle springs are metal needles which when heated and cooled rapidly become springy sewing needles and then, when heated to red hot and plunged into water, become blue in colour and make perfect springs for flutes. Similarly, an amateur flutist, the Rev. Frederick Nolan thought up a neat device to, as it were, add to the number of fingers on our hands by placing a metal ring around a hole so that when the finger covers the hole, it also depresses the ring and communicates motion to another key further up or down the flute. This was known as a 'spectacle key' due to its resemblance to spectacles. All these devices were in place when Theobald Boehm, a German flutist, inventor and composer visited London and heard the great Charles Nicholson play.

Wragg's Tutor for the (German) flute had been published and printed in about 1806 to meet the demands of the ever-growing number of players, and as the title page proclaims, 'without the aid of a master'. Notice that this cover states it is the 22nd Edition, a key to the popularity of the flute in these times - or the lack of books to help the many amateurs!

Wragg's 'Preceptor' 22nd Edition (Author’s collection)

Let us go back 200 years and imagine this scene: the date is March 1817 and the place, The Drury Lane Theatre, London.

The celebrated French flutist, Louis Drouet and the equally distinguished English flute virtuoso, Charles Nicholson, were each to give a concert within ten days of each other, an event without parallel! The London flute players, both professional and the many amateurs, would be able to compare the capabilities of these two giants within this short space of time. The music sections of the press were full of stories comparing the merits of these two players with correspondence from irate supporters and offering their readers conflicting opinions. A press satirist at one time called Nicholson, 'Phunniwistle' because of his employment of various 'tricks' such as the use of harmonics. Nicholson was renowned for his big, generous tone and his wonderfully expressive playing of slow melodies; to further these aims, he had experimented with enlarging the finger holes on his flute which resulted in a bigger tone. He was able to do this because he was a large man with big hands and broad finger tips. The 25 year old Drouet was fêted far and wide for his extraordinary technical dexterity and lightning articulation and his name well enough known throughout Europe for his amazing agility. The well-loved and admired Nicholson had recently begun experimenting with the use of both 'gliding' - a glissando between notes - and 'vibration', an early use of vibrato, executed by partially covering a hole with the fingers, but it was used very sparingly on long notes. The manner in which the 22 year old Nicholson played slow melodies was moving and a joy to hear, his supporters much appreciative of his expressive playing.

Flute recitals were not common at this time and were often shared with a vocalist or other instrumentalist, though the London audiences heard enough of each player to be able to compare these great masters. For weeks after the event, the flute playing public were divided in their opinions, though most came down patriotically in favour of the younger Nicholson and his eccentric manner of playing slow tunes. But many were also bowled over by Drouet's performance of the Variations on God Save the King, which he composed himself. The sheer technique displayed on an eight-keyed flute was hard to believe. People gasped in amazement as Variation succeeded Variation, each one faster and more technically demanding than the last. In one variation, he even trilled on every other note in a fast descending scale! Even the pianist was left behind! (This piece is published today by Broekmans en Van Poppel).

The merits of each player were discussed long after those two memorable concerts.

A re-enactment of this 200-year-old occasion took place at the BFS Convention in Manchester on 31st August, 1990 when Maxence Larrieu, the French flute virtuoso and William Bennett, the great English soloist, joined together in a Grand Contest Concert, Larrieu performing Drouet' s 'God Save The King' with Variations and Bennett performing the Air and Variations on 'Home Sweet Home' written by Charles Nicholson. That was a night to remember too. Bennett's playing of the melody was truly wonderful; Larrieu's nimbleness of tongue and fingers in the Drouet, astonishing. They were both partnered by the incomparable pianist, Clifford Benson.

Theobald Boehm was a genius who used his imagination to solve other non-flute problems. He suggested, for example, making the higher strings on a piano overlap the lower strings thus utilizing the full diagonal frame length of a piano resulting in richer low notes and known as over-stringing; he devised a new way to mass-produce the setting of the pins on a musical-box cylinder; he invented a new way to make steel. We must also not forget he composed some lovely music and some very useful studies too.

It is easy to think of the flutes of this time as rudimentary but listen to the virtuoso Rachel Brown play the Variations on Trockne Blümen by Schubert using an 8-keyed flute on a Chandos CD, No.0565.

When Boehm visited London and heard Nicholson play, he was very impressed by his hefty tone which was partly accomplished by making the finger holes larger. Nicholson was able to do this because he had large hands and fingers capable of covering the bigger holes. Boehm decided to return to Germany and redesign the mechanism to make larger holes, a bigger tone and to incorporate some of the latest devices such as needle springs and ring keys. The result was the first Boehm flute, the 1832 model shown below. The fingering is almost identical to our modern flutes today except that it has an open G#, with no extra Bb thumb lever. The 'spectacle keys' can be seen in the left and right hands.

Rudall and Rose Flute, 1832, London (Author)

A pair of these flutes which includes the flute above, can be heard on a CD made in 1983 with William Bennett, the author and George Malcolm playing Handel Trio Sonatas:- Phillips 412-598-2.

Let us remember that the players of that time were mostly gentlemen with leisure time and some who worked for a living and played in their spare time too, though the poor were too busy working to survive. A gentleman who visited Rudall and Rose, let's say, in 1825 when they were in Tavistock Street, near Covent Garden, was looking to purchase a new flute. Only men, it seemed, played flutes and a wit of the time wrote that '…ladies didn't play the flute as they would be unable to talk and play at the same time!’,’ a comment that would get a raspberry now. The visiting gentleman would be offered a variety of flutes both in wood and ivory and with several keywork options. Anthony Baines once suggested that customers with smaller hands may have been asked to place their fingers on a piece of wood and the salesman would make chalk marks to determine the spacing of their fingers, primarily to help those with smaller hands. A flute would then be made to accommodate the customer's fingers making allowances in the positioning of the tone holes for the altered scale.

To handle one of these instruments, such as the elegant 4-keyed flute or the ivory flute illustrated above is a fascinating experience. Ivory has a particular warmth and so too does golden boxwood, such a beautiful wood. The box hedge is a familiar sight in British gardens today but when these are grown to a great height, they produce the familiar wood from which almost all of the woodwind instruments at this time were made. Exploration in Siberia uncovered many ivory mammoth tusks millions of years old, which supplemented the stocks of elephant ivory commonly used in all instruments including keyboards. While in the USA, the author was asked if the ivory flute he played was very old. ''Oh, about 7 million years'', I replied. The options for the buyer were many, from the choice of wood to the composition of the rings around the ends of each joint and the number of extra keys and whether the tube should be of silver or a base metal. The polished mahogany velvet-lined case with brass handle and lock and key, says it all.

In the next part, we will look at the introduction of Boehm's flute of 1847, almost identical to our present-day flutes, and its consequences.

‘A History of the Flute: II. Pipes,’ by Trevor Wye

‘A History of the Flute: III. Enter Herr Boehm,’ by Trevor Wye

‘A History of the Flute: I. Whistles,’ by Trevor Wye