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History of the (Flute) World, Part II

© Karen Stafford

Last week's article briefly covered some of the background of the flute's history. Of course, the flute started out as an instrument with holes, so there were many notes that couldn't be produced, and many more that could, but only with a lot of trick fingering and even trickier lip work to get them to play somewhat in tune. So, where did the keys come from?

Around the 1600's, the Jean Hotteterre family was employed by the French royal court as performers and makers. Their new developments for flute were to construct the flute in 3 sections, change the bore of the body from cylindrical to conical, and adding a key at the foot so Eflat could be produced.

In 1760, concern came up because of all the cross-fingerings that were necessary to enable chromatics to be performed, so flutemakers in London added G#, B-flat, and F keys. By 1780, low C and C# keys were added.

Theobald Boehm, jeweler and flutist, is considered to have created the most important revolution of the flute. After observing performer Charles Nicholson, who had a flute with large tone holes (which produced a fine, large tone)In 1832, he devised a mechanism that acted as an extension of the fingers, using larger holes and key rings. In 1847, he developed an instrument with a cylindrical body, a foot joint, and a parabolic head joint. The tone holes were large, so Boehm designed padded cups for each hole.

Louis Lot, a French flutemaker, accepted Boehm's design, thus giving it some "credibility". Lot modified the design by adding perforations to the key cups, developing what is now known as the French-style flute. Boehm's design continued to be a traditional German style, with an open G# key which remains popular in Eastern European countries and Australia.

But, the job hasn't stopped there! There are still flute performers and makers that are working to improve the flute even more, for comfort reasons as well as for reasons of contemporary techniques. Two of the best-known ones are John Lunn (geared towards playing comfort), and Robert Dick.

Some good links on the development of use of keys on the flute:
The Gemeinhardt site
The Collector's Exchange
The Standing Stones Website.

Speaking of interesting flute designs.......next week's article: the interesting, the strange, the unusual.......Is That a Flute??

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