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The Flute Author(s): James Wynn Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jul., 1929), pp. 469-474 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/738333 . Accessed: 20/10/2013 23:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Musical Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 216.87.207.2 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 23:37:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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The FluteAuthor(s): James WynnSource: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jul., 1929), pp. 469-474Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/738333 .

Accessed: 20/10/2013 23:37

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The MusicalQuarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

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THE FLUTE

By JAMES WYNN

NOT the least surprising thing about recent jazz orchestra- tion is that in occasional pianissimo passages one may hear the plaintive and unmistakable note of the flute. After

years of remaining stiffly aloof from any fellowships but those of the symphony orchestra and its aristocratic wood-wind, is it possible that the flute is beginning to consort with mere saxo- phones? Evidently its possibilities for so-called popular music are at least beginning to be appreciated. Not all nor even the majority of the leading jazz orchestras have flutists. But some do. And it is significant that they are among the best. Let any doubter listen to the effective whole-tone-scale arpeggios that open Bloom's "Soliloquy," as played by Whiteman.

The range of the flute's appeal seems always to have been remarkably wide, including other members of the animal kingdom as well as man. Horses and elephants appear to love the flute's tone; even wolves are attracted. Through the annals of human history it has charmed alike kings, philosophers, and poets. Bluff old Henry the Eighth, despite a bewildering succession of wives and state troubles, found time for daily practice on his recorder; and Frederick the Great, even as a youth, was so passionately fond of the flute that once his enraged father threatened to break the royal flute over the head of Quantz, the prince's teacher. Schopen- hauer, Stevenson, and Byron all played the flute. Sidney Lanier, perhaps our greatest Southern poet since Poe, became famed as a flutist during the Civil War, when, following his capture in a blockade runner, he spent five months in a Federal prison, winning scores of friends with his exquisitely beautiful flute tones. Even now it is questionable whether music or poetry more nearly repre- sent the true medium for his strange but indubitable genius.

One of the oldest of musical instruments, the flute boasts a genealogy extending into the shadowy era of prehistoric times. Fossil flutes have been unearthed. In the earliest chapters of Chinese, Japanese, and Hindu history there is record of the use of instruments of the flute type (instruments, that is, in which the lips audibly make vibrate an air column). The most primitive transverse flute was a mere cylindrical tube, closed at one end,

469

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470 The Musical Quarterly

with lateral holes to be covered by the fingers and a larger blow- hole aperture near the closed end. Representations of this flute are extant in Indian sculpture of the Gandhara school, dating back to the first or second century of the Christian era. This flute was undoubtedly in use in central Europe as early as the fifteenth century A.D., but it was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that its primitive structure underwent any significant developmental changes. The cylinder then became conical, larger at the head end, and began to acquire keys. With these important though not fundamental changes are associated the names of Quantz, Tromlitz, and Hoffmann in Europe; Potter, Tacet, and Florio in England.

It remained for Theobald Boehm, a Bavarian jeweler's assis- tant, to work the revolutionary changes which have made possible the modern instrument. In 1831, while in London, he heard Charles Nicholson play the flute, and being struck by the unusual richness of the artist's tone, ascertained that it was produced on a flute with lateral holes having a much larger than customary bore. With a jeweler's patience and ingenuity Boehm immediately went to work. A year later he produced a new flute embodying the large-hole feature and, in addition, a new key mechanism enabling one finger to effect the simultaneous closure of several holes. Fourteen years later he had completed further alterations in the structure of the flute, reshaping the shaft from cone to cylinder, and perfecting a head-piece with a new set for the em- bouchure and stopper. Boehm's fundamentally important con- tribution was the development of the mechanism which allows the production of eleven chromatic semitones intermediate between the fundamental and its first harmonic. This he accomplished by spacing eleven lateral holes on the flute's shaft so that as they are successively opened (from below upward) they produce exactly proportionate shortenings of the vibrating air column. Thus, within the scope of one man's lifetime, there was perfected an instrument which, from the standpoint of physics and mechanics, is incomparably superior not only to all the older transverse flutes, but also to other modern members of the wood-wind family.

The final chapter in the modern flute's evolution is not with- out its incident of tragedy-the career of Gordon, an officer in the Swiss Guards of Charles the Tenth. Captain Gordon was an enthusiastic amateur flute-player who, about the time of Boehm's work, himself began experimenting with new mechanisms for the flute. He developed a "ring-key" somewhat similar to the device now used to secure simultaneous closure of several holes with one

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Exotic Flutes in the Collection of Prof. Dayton C. Miller.

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The Flute 471

control. Boehm's less cumbersome hole-closing device, completed a year before Gordon's experiments, formed the basis for the latter's attempted modifications. In 1833 Gordon tried to sell his model to London flute-manufacturers. Probably because of temperamental peculiarities and business inexperience, his efforts proved futile. With the exhaustion of his meagre financial resources he returned to Switzerland, broken in spirit and health. While trying further experiments with his model, he had the misfortune to crack it beyond any hope of repair. In a fit of depression he cast the wreck of his flute-and his hopes-into Lake Geneva. Madness followed, and he died in an asylum. Sub- sequently a fiction for a time gained some credence to the effect that he had been the real inventor, Boehm a mere imitator, guilty of sharp practice in his dealings with Gordon. A disinterested investigation of all the facts of the story has completely vindicated Boehm, whose claim to the flute now bearing his name is to-day unchallenged.

Since the time of Boehm, minor improvements have effected lighter and more silent key-action and more perfect and synchro- nous closure of the instrument's key-groups. Boehm himself pointed out that silver or gold flutes had "liquid tones" of a deli- cacy better suited for solo work, while the rich mellow tone of the cocus-wood flute was better suited for the orchestra. In symphony orchestras of to-day one more frequently sees the silver flute, which, in its modern state of perfection, is easily the cynosure of the wood-wind, possessing a scintillating beauty with which the woodenly inconspicuous clarinets,' oboes, English horns, and bassoons can hardly hope to compete.

The orchestral importance of the flute is apparent at once to anyone with an ear trained to identify the voices in a symphony. As a wood-wind soprano, the flute is responsible for much that is vital in the treble score of almost any composition of symphonic proportions. The great composers, past and present, have realized and utilized its subtle appeal. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is full of graceful passages for the flute, and at the conclusion of the Andante in his Pastoral symphony, there are a few measures in which the call of the nightingale is mimicked (interestingly though somewhat inaccurately), by the notes of the flute. Weber in "Der Freischtitz" has used the instrument with eerie and telling effectiveness to suggest the supernatural (e.g., the Wolf Glen scene when Casper is preparing the magic bullets). By modern and near-modern composers the flute has been made

'In recent years silver clarinets have been introduced.-Ed.

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472 The Musical Quarterly

to voice the extremes of mood; in Tchaikovsky's "Danse des Mirlitons" from the "Nutcracker," there is an almost elfin spright- liness; on the other hand, in the Adagio sostenuto of Rachmaninoff's "Concerto in C Minor," for pianoforte and orchestra, there is a quavering melancholy of the rarest beauty. The foregoing are random citations from an almost endless number of possible examples-many of which may be enjoyed not only in symphony halls, but also wherever a reasonably good phonograph is available.

If capable of such versatility of expression, why has the flute never enjoyed a general popularity comparable, for example, to that of the violin? The reason (at least in part) would seem to be a notion widely prevalent, even among people of average musical education, that the flute is distinctly limited in its possibilities. For this impression the relative scarcity of first-class flute-players is undoubtedly responsible. To be sure, every city-in fact, almost every village-can boast a flutist, perhaps in the high school orchestra or town band. All too frequently his medium of expres- sion is an eight- or twelve-keyed flute of the early nineteenth cen- tury type, with leaky pads and an upper register a quarter of a tone sharp. With such an instrument there is little incentive to attempt anything more pretentious than "Long, Long Ago," or the "Carnival of Venice" (with the inevitable and atrocious varia- tions!). To Mozart is attributed the comment that the only thing worse than a flute is two flutes-an utterance readily intelligible to anyone who has been afflicted with the off-pitch, asthmatic piping that so frequently passes for flute-playing, that, in fact, has come to represent the possibilities of the instrument in the opinions of many people.

In timbre the flute is unique because of its scarcity of over- tone "partials" (of which, according to Helmholtz, only the octave and twelfth are audible). The result is a certain rich hollowness of tone in the lower register and a bell-like clarity in the upper; which give the instrument great interpretative possibilities, fully realized in the artistry of such masters as Georges Barrere, John Amans of New York, G. Laurent of Boston, and William Kincaid of the Philadelphia Orchestra-to name only a small but distinguished group of master flutists now in the United States. It is, however, discouragingly seldom that one hears flute music of such excellence; for the flute is no dilettante's plaything. The knack of producing a genuinely beautiful tone is often acquired only after months or even years of patient study and faithful practice. The ease with which technique may be mastered is more than offset by the difficulties of tone produc-

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The Flute 473

tion. Many flutists, even of professional rank, never quite suc- ceed in eliminating the faint hiss of escaping breath which is so prone to accompany vibration of the air column. The reasons for this distressing wheeze and the other imperfections that characterize a poor flute tone have long interested me. After fifteen years' study of the question I am convinced that the lower facial muscles rather than the lips themselves are the fundamentally important factors. Barrere-like tones depend in the main upon a highly specialized development of the oral musculature (to be specific, the orbicularis and triangularis oris, the zygomaticus, and the quadratus labii inferioris). For proper reception of breath stream, the flute-head must be supported with absolute steadiness in positions that vary constantly according to the pitch of the note produced. The accomplishment of this highly complex feat demands a subtle balance between muscular tonus and relaxation, or there results a disagreeable "pinching" of tone. The patience and persistence required to achieve optimal oral control no doubt account in a large measure for the paucity of real flutists, and the resultant general skepticism concerning the instrument's possibilities.

The scarcity of good flute-players has in turn led to a prevalent misconception regarding the flute's repertory. Even experienced musicians frequently credit the instrument with little or no vitality outside of the symphony orchestra. And yet there exists an extensive repertory of music written for the solo flute (with pianoforte or orchestral accompaniment). I do not refer to transcriptions, but rather the genuine flute classics, such as Franz Doppler's "Hungarian Fantasy," the epic "Fantasie- Sonata" of Max Meyer-Olbersleben, and the "Concerto" of Bern- hard Molique. The adequate performance of any one of these great works is usually an astounding revelation to the average musician as well as to the layman. A year ago, in my home city, a prima donna's eleventh-hour illness necessitated her flutist- husband's substitution for a recital program. An audience, at first inclined to be coldly critical, was almost at once won over and finally quite captivated by his brilliant interpretation of Doppler's "Fantasy," with its weirdly rippling cadences and haunting gypsy melodies. The resultant applause amounted to an ovation; the flute had been worthily introduced and had, as always, charmed its hearers, and won a new circle of friends.

It is this very question of a worthy introduction that is so disturbing in connection with the flute's recent appearances in modern jazz. The musicians in our leading jazz orchestras are

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474 The Musical Quarterly

always master technicians, often genuine artists. It is reasonable to assume that the flute-players who are beginning to appear among them will manifest the same proficiency. All of which leads inevit- ably to the question with which we started. Is the flute about to consort with saxophones? In short, is jazz destined to popular- ize the most venerable of all wood-wind instruments? We who have loved the flute tremble at the prospect. May it be popu- larized, yes; but not vulgarized. May the quality of persistence its mastery demands save it from a degrading ubiquity! Heaven forbid that it go the way of the ill-fated saxophone.

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