AS Coursework Notes - The Flute
The Flute
P re 150, if a score said flute, what it really meant was a Recorder, as we know it today. In the late 19th to mid 20th Centuries, Baroque recorder music would be played on modern flutes.
The recorder only made a comeback in the 1960's, attributed to the Dolemesh family, who flooded schools with cheap recorders.
David Munro is singly attributed to the movement of Baroque music as a 'serious' genre. He comitted suicide, probably because he was so ashamed of himself.
From the 1750's onwards, the recorder was replaced with the transverse flute, still made of wood, with an inverted conical bore. It has one key. Imaginatively named the 'One Key Flute'.
This is the flute that Mozart would have known: limited register, lowest note was a D, and because of the inverted conical bore, it was too quiet on lower registers, to play in an orchestra.
About 1800, the bore of the flute was made cylindrical, and they started lining the head loins with a metal tube - wood would crack all too often as a result of the moisture. Some time in the 19th Century, metal was placed on the mouthpiece, which centred the tone much more.
It wasn't until the 2nd half of the 19th Century that flutes were made of metal. Bohn invented fingerings which became standardised.
The piccolo was used in opera orchestras and military bands, but only mainly in symphonic repetoire between the period 1750-1830. Beethoven 5 and 9 have important piccolo parts, as does the Egmont overture. The piccolo remains an inverted conical bore to this day.
The flute made slow progress in the symphony orchestra. Mozart reportedly didn't like the flute. Early Mozart concerto orchestras would instead include the standard for that time - two oboes and two horns. It isn't until around 1800 that the pair of flutes became standard in the orchestra.