thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
The visitor probably remembers the fact that there are no extant transverse flutes from the Middle Ages, a fact that leaves us unable to know how they sounded and how they were played. Besides that, just few examples of music written at that time for the flute were found - which leaves us in the dark when we try to figure out the characteristics of the flute repertoire back then. The Renaissance doesn't present such problems with the same depth: Renaissance flutes and Renaissance flute repertoire were both found and are being analysed by musicologists. Those sources, however, are not the only useful ones, for images and texts referring to the flute (the main kind of source we rely on when it comes to the Middle Ages) were also found. Most historians agree that the Renaissance lies between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Anne Smith (the author of the chapter dedicated to the Renaissance flute which belongs to John Solum's book "The Early Flute"), however, defines the Renaissance flute as the flute played in Europe between 1500 and 1670, being the last date an estimated year for the appearance of the baroque traverso. Smith describes the Renaissance flute as having a more or less cylindrical bore, six finger-holes and one embouchure hole. The Renaissance flute.Only rarely is the flute found in fifteenth-century paintings. The instrument is found more frequently in paintings of the next century. Those paintings suggest that the flute was played in two very different contexts, the military context being one of those two. Sources point out that the transverse flute became a traditionally military instrument around the sixteenth century. In 1467, Swiss troops achieved success in the battlefield by employing an extremely disciplined formation that was not only strong in defense but also movable when attacking. Testimonies related that those troops marched in perfect synchronicity, just like a deadly corps de ballet, accompanied by a fife (a transverse flute very similar to that one described by Annie Smith) and some drums. News about that original battle strategy spread all over Europe by the end of the fifteenth century.This image belongs to a German manual of military science and law published in 1555. In it, we see a fife player (his back turned on us) and a drummer. Hanging on the fife player's back, his case, inside of which four instruments could fit: a long fife, two middle-sized fifes and another shorter in size.Illustrations of battle situations dating from the sixteenth century do not represent the fife very uniformly: its size was highly variable (from 2 to 3 feet) and the number of finger-holes could vary from seven to eight. Thoinot Arbeau (1519-1595) wrote in his dance manual titled "Orchesographie" (1589) about a fife which characteristics are closer to those of the fife of our days: a little transverse flute with six finger-holes and a very narrow bore, which contributed to the brilliant timbre of the instrument. Arbeau also points out that the music played by military fife players was improvised.A richly illustrated edition of the first known treatise
on instrumentation was printed in Basel in 1511. Its title is "Musica getutscht" and it was written by Sebastian Virdung (c.1465-1511), a priest. Virdung was the first musical theorist of the seventeenth century to mention flutes of any kind. He uses the word "Floten" to refer to recorders, and the word "Zwerchpfeiff" to refer to the military fife (he doesn't mention any kind of transverse flue played outside the military context). On the other hand, Martin Agricola (c.1486-1556) published in Wittenberg in 1529 (and also in 1545, in a revised edition), his "Musica instrumentalis deudch". Agricola writes about a few kinds of transverse flutes - the "Schweitzerpfeiffen" (Swiss fifes) and the "Querfeiffen" or "Querpfeiffen" (transverse flutes or transverse fifes) -, but he describes another kind of context for the use of those flutes, one very different from the military context. The image above belongs to Virdung's "Musica getutscht". The fourth instrument from the top to the bottom was mentioned in the previous paragraph: it's the "Zwerchpfeiff". Right below it, four instruments from the family of the recorders (or "Floten", according to Virdung). The two instruments on the top are not flutes, but shawms ("Schalmey"), the predecessors of the oboe.I have mentioned the existence of two different contexts for flute-playing just a few paragraphs back. I've written about the military context. The other one is the one described by Agricola's writings: the court and the private residences - the chamber music (or, to be more specific, consort music). Consort music was written for a formation of instruments that belonged to the same family. If we take a flute for example, a consort of flutes would be formed by flutes of the same kind, but of different sizes (in order to explore low and high pitches), and each one with its individual melodic line. Agricola had in mind a flute consort in which three instruments of different sizes figured: one bass flute, another one of intermediate size which could play the tenor or the alto part, and a smaller flute to play high pitches. Philibert Jambe de Fer (c.1515-1566) describes in his "L'Epitome musical" (published in Lyons in 1556) a four-flute consort in which instruments of two different sizes were combined: one bass flute and three smaller flutes of the same size - versatile instruments capable to play in different registers. The first collection of music written for this kind of four-flute consort was published in 1519. That fact shows that Jambe de Fer was writing about a practice that was already common when it comes to music for flute consorts of that time. English Renaissance music played by a Renaissance flute consort. That consort (the Flotten Consort Stuttgart) is similar to the one described by Agricola. It has three instruments: one bass flute and two flutes of similar size (opposing to Agricola's description of a flute consort of three flutes of different sizes).It seems that the transverse flute has reached great popularity - as well as a certain level of predominance - at the middle of the seventeenth century. Such hypothesis is sustained
articulate every single note - even the fastest ones - saying that "he who doesn't articulate every syllable while giving a speech sounds like he is drunk and, therefore, such attitude would produce a poor effect in music as well". Another important aspect of Renaissance music-making was "diminution" - or improvised ornamentation of a melodic line. The instrumentalist had to be capable of improvising on the given melody, making his musical discourse even more rich. Thanks to the fact that there are extant Renaissance flutes and Renaissance flute-music, we can paint a clearer portrait of the flute of that time - a much clearer portrait than the one of the Middle Ages. However, it would be unwise to think that the knowledge we have is solid enough to make exact assumptions about the subject. The extant instruments are very fragile and, due to this fragility, just a few researchers have access to it. That means that we don't have many different points of view on the subject and that only a small number of individuals were able to make reliable replicas of those instruments and, therefore, to learn how to play them accordingly to the stylistic conceptions of the Renaissance. Besides that, it is not that simple to come up with the accurate dates of the making of the extant instruments - some of them were reevaluated as seventeenth-century replicas. What we know about the Renaissance flute is based on the vision of a small number of specialists, people in which we chose to trust. Main sources:POWELL, Ardal. The Flute. New Heaven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.SOLUM, John. The Early Flute. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
fim, o pe (a ponta da flauta, onde fica localizada a chave queabre o setimo e ultimo orificio). A flauta em quatro partes poderia seracompanhada de varios corpos superiores, cada um com um comprimento diferente.Dessa maneira, o flautista poderia, na hora de montar sua flauta, escolher qualdos corpos superiores utilizar, alcancando a afinacao apropriada para o localonde ele iria tocar: quanto maior o corpo superior escolhido, mais baixa aafinacao; quanto menor, mais alta. Esses corpos superiores extras eram chamados de "corps de rechange" (algo como "corpos de troca"). Flauta feita por Carl August Grenser (1720-1807), em quatro pecas. O luthier fez seis corpos superiores de tamanhos diferentes. Alem dos "corps de rechange", a flauta conta tambem com um mecanismo bem particular, localizado no pe: trata-se de uma peca retratil, a qual, na foto acima, esta em sua maxima extensao. Quanto mais para fora a peca retratil estiver, mais baixa sera a afinacao; quanto mais para dentro, mais alta.---Tendo feita essa pequenacontextualizacao historica acerca da historia da flauta transversal desde aIdade Media ate meados do Barroco, e chegada a hora de comecar a falar de formamais direta sobre o material do qual disponho. Decidi parar neste ponto dahistoria da flauta (no ponto do estabelecimento do traverso barroco como oinstrumento descrito nesta postagem, ou seja, a flauta de tubo conico, seteorificios e uma chave) a fim de, agora, falar sobre o material relacionado aesse tipo de flauta. Ao longo do periodo barroco e no inicio do periodoclassico, a flauta vai sofrer ainda muitas modificacoes, especialmente naquiloque trata do surgimento de novas chaves e mecanismos. Quando for o momento defalar sobre esses outros tipos de flauta, sigo com a contextualizacao historica comecando pela segunda parte desta postagem, portanto. O material voltadopara o traverso barroco de uma chave e vasto e de peso: o supracitado tratadode Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, o detalhadissimo tratado de Johann Joachim Quantze o igualmente minucioso primeiro tratado de Johann George Tromlitz, alem devarios metodos interessantes de autores menos conhecidos e publicacoes avulsasigualmente esclarecedoras.Postagens relacionadas:Uma breve historia da flautaOs diversos tipos de flautaHistoria da flauta transversal A Idade MediaHistoria da flauta transversal A RenascencaPrincipaisfontes:POWELL,Ardal. The Flute. New Heaven andLondon: Yale University Press, 2002.SOLUM, John. The early flute. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1992.
Before I start writing about the flute methods I own, a historical contextualization is necessary. The next three posts will be dedicated to the uses and the development of the transverse flute in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the first century of the Baroque era - the moment in history in which the one-keyed flute begins to be largely employed. These posts will serve as basis to a better understanding of the sources I'm going to write about in the future. The transverse flute in the Middle Ages Custom dictates that the history of our modern flute starts in 1700 with the advent of the baroque flute and with the printing of the first pieces of music written for that instrument. Taking that point of view, the precedent centuries seem impenetrable and remote, especially those of the Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries). All the knowledge we possess concerning the medieval flute comes from a handful of images and some textual fragments from the Middle Ages. No extant medieval flute was found so far, so we are unable to know how they sounded like or how they were played. Added to that, just a fraction of the medieval music was written down - and what was written lacks information related to which instruments should be employed or how to play the music. If we take fiddles and harps as models of comparison - instruments that appear very frequently in paintings and writings - the flute was clearly a rare instrument during the Middle Ages. But the extant flute iconography can't be interpreted literally: it was common for the artist to take a decision on how he should represent the flute based primarily on issues of the harmony and the composition of the painting itself, leaving the realism aside.A miniature shown in a collection of songs published around 1340. The flautist holds her flute to the right, but only to harmonize better with the fiddle, making both instruments point to the image's central point. Most of the representations of flautists from the Middle Ages show the instrumentalists holding their instruments to the left and not to the right - like we can see above and like we do nowadays.The interpretation of the written sources generates other kinds of problems. The word used to refer to the transverse flute applied, frequently, to recorders and whistle-like instruments. Besides that, looking for references of professional flute players in literature is a waste of time: at that time, musicians were not specialized in only one instrument, like most of us are today.Many ancient images (many of them even more ancient than those of the Middle Ages) depicted flautists in mythological contexts. Greece, India, and Egypt have legends that associate the creation of the flute to deities: the Greeks with Pan, the Hindus with Krishna, and the Egyptians with Osiris. Among those legends, only the Greek legend of Pan belongs to the western mythological repertoire. However, Pan's flute was not a transverse one. Among those three cultures, Hindu culture was the only one to attribute the creation
of a transverse flute to a god. Pan, a half human-like, half goat-like Greek deity, holding his creation: the Pan flute. Krishna, Hindu god, teaching Radha, a mortal, to play the flute.The transverse Hindu flute might have traveled to Byzantium around the 10th century and then it was spread into Europe. References to the transverse flute (both in visual arts and literature) start to pop out only in the 12th century. Until the 14th centurty, however, the use of the flute was limited to the borders of the Holy Roman Empire - which territory corresponds roughly to today's Germany. Due to that territorial limitation, the transverse flue became known as the "German flute" when it reached other countries between the 13th and the 14th centuries. The flute seemed to be already in use in France (where it was known as "flute d'Allemagne") by the end of the 13th century. Paintings show that the instrument was present in French and German military music around the 14th century. In Spain, the flute was already known in the mid-fourteenth century, but the instrument would only be introduced to Italians in the following century. The borders of the Holy Roman Empire throughout the centuries.The extant sources related to the transverse flute in the Middle Ages reveal that neither a consensus on how to build the flute or how to play it existed. The instrumentalists had to have a highly developed musical perception in order to be able to adapt the music they needed to play to the instrument they had in their hands at the moment. They should be able to, within a few minutes, identify where the tones and semitones of the flute were, identify the instrument's range, and play it accordingly. No fixed pitch existed for the flutes at that time - the pitch was different in each province, conditions under which every musical instrument was submitted to. Apparently, the only consensus was that the transverse flute should be held in a transverse fashion.Main reference:POWELL, Ardal. The Flute. New Heaven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
(para mais detalhes sobre as flautas dessas tres culturas, vera postagem presente neste blog referente aos diversos tipos de flauta).Pa, deus de aparencia metade bode e metade humana da mitologia grega, segurando sua invencao: a flauta de Pa. Krishna, divindade indiana, ensinando Radha, uma mortal, a tocar flauta.A flauta transversaindiana pode ter viajado ate Bizancio em torno do seculo X, e, a partir dai,passou a ser conhecida na Europa. Referencias a flauta transversal (tanto naliteratura quanto nas artes visuais) comecam a aparecer apenas no seculo XII. Ateo seculo XIV, entretanto, ela estava limitada ao territorio do Sacro Imperio Romano-Germanico. Vulgarmente falando, Tal territorio corresponde, hoje, a Alemanha. Por conta dessalimitacao territorial inicial, a flauta transversa passou a ser conhecida como flautaalema quando, entre os seculos XIII e XIV, chegou a outros paises europeus.Ao final do seculo XIII, a flauta transversa ja parecia estar presente na Franca (onde era conhecida como "flute d'Allemagne") e textos e imagens do seculo XIV demonstram que a mesma era utilizada no ambitoda musica militar tanto na Alemanha quanto na Franca. A flauta transversa jahavia chegado na Espanha em meados do seculo XIV, mas, na Italia, aparentemente,ela so seria conhecida no seculo seguinte.As fronteiras do Sacro Imperio Romano-Germanico ao longo dos seculos.Todo o materialcoletado sobre a flauta no periodo medieval revela a inexistencia de um padraode construcao do instrumento e de um acordo sobre como toca-lo. Com tantavariedade, o instrumentista precisava desenvolver uma percepcao musical boa osuficiente para lhe permitir, em poucos minutos, saber onde estavam os tons esemitons de sua flauta, os limites de sua tessitura e adaptar a melodia que eledeveria tocar ao instrumento que tinha nas maos. E desnecessario dizer quetambem nao existia um padrao de afinacao para flautas a altura do la variavade provincia para provincia, exatamente como acontecia com os demaisinstrumentos. O unico ponto comum que parecia existir era o seguinte: a flauta TRANSVERSAL deveria ser segurada de forma TRANSVERSAL...Principal referencia:POWELL, Ardal. The Flute. New Heaven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Marin Marsenne (1555-1648) was a French born theologist, priest, philosopher, mathematician and musical theorist. He played an important role in the dissemination of the scientific and philosophical production of his time: he maintained correspondence with Descartes, Galileo, Pascal, and Torricelli (among others). His main contribution to music was a treatise titled "Harmonie Universelle" (1636), which deals with many theoretical and practical aspects of seventeenth-century music - just like a great musical encyclopedia. In this post, I will relate to the definitions of "transverse flute" and "recorder" given by the author.Transverse flute ("Fluste d'Allemand")The entry which deals with the transverse flute is titled "Fluste d'Allemand" (if you recall it, the transverse flute was known at that time and in the majority of European countries as "german flute" - if not, go to the post related to the flute in the Middle Ages). Mersenne gives its measures and writes about its basic technical principles: how to hold the flute and how to blow inside of it. He also provides a fingering chart for it.But even before talking about the transverse flute, Mersenne's concern is to make it clear that the fluste d'Allemand is a completely different instrument from the "Flageollet" (written in some publications with a single "L" instead of a double one). The French version of the flageollet is very similar to the recorder: This is an English flageolet. Its sound is very similar to that of an Irish tin whistle. On the video posted above, we can hear and see a "double flageolet". Its shape resembles more closely that of an English flageolet. Its sound is somewhere between that of a recorder and an Irish tin whistle.The precedent image can be found in Mersenne's treatise. The letters and numbers contained in it are there to help the reader to understand what Mersenne wrote: "Even if some people prefer to put this kind of flute in the same category of the Flageollet because they both have six holes to be stopped with the fingers, I chose not to do the same because the embouchure hole is not located in the A B region (as it can be observed in the flutes of the other kind), but in the I hole (...). The embouchure is achieved by placing the inferior lip by the border of that hole and pushing the air rather softly into it.". The author sustains that the embouchure needed to play the transverse flute is more difficult to learn than the embouchure needed to play the flageolet and other similar flutes.Mersenne also talks about which materials could be used to make transverse flutes. Wood was more commonly employed, especially that of the plum and cherry trees. Ebony was also appreciated. Besides wood, glass and crystal could be used, even though more rarely. Still on the subject of the physical characteristics of the flute, Mersenne provides us with measurements for the holes' diameters, for the distance between them, and for the tube's diameter. But Ardal Powell (The Flute, 2002), sustains that some of those measurements are not accurate. The flute described by
Mersenne is, supposedly, a flute in G, but the provided fingering chart seems to relate to a flute in D - and the given distance between each of the finger-holes doesn't seem to correspond with neither instrument. The same fingering chart could be used, according to its author, by those who play the fife ("Fifre"). Mersenne writes that the fifre and the transverse flute are two very similar instruments, differing only in sonority (the tone of the fifre being more piercing and lively) but not in technique.Recorder("Fluste d'Angleterre")The entry which deals with the recorder is called FlustedAngleterre (english flute"), also known as Fluste douce (sweet flute)and nine-hole flute. Its first name is due to the fact that it was firstintroduced in French territory by an unknown English king. Its second name wasinspired by its sweet tone. The origin of its third name is rather obvious:that flute had, indeed, nine finger-holes. Today, this kind of flute is known as flutea bec (flute with a beak) by the French.The flute described by Mersenne could be played byright and left-handed musicians: the last finger-hole (the one located at the endof the flutes foot joint) was doubled, making it possible for both kinds offlutists to reach it. Mersenne affirms that the recorder and the Flageollethad the same extension (a 15th, approximately).This image can be found inMersennes Harmonie. Its shows many musical instruments, most of themrecorders. The letters written on the image are meant to help the reader tohave a better understanding of which instrument was Mersenne talking about. Theinstrument pointed by a green arrow is a recorder in its more familiar shape.The blue arrows show a less known kind of recorder. According to the author,that instrument could be 7 or 8 feet long. The blue oval shows a kind of resonatingchamber which hides some of the toneholes from our view. Those toneholes arestopped by the action of a key for the small finger. That key is doubled, afeature that allows right and left-handed flutists to play the instrument.Watch the following video to see and to hear this overgrown flute.This entry mentions a very curious technique. Mersennepoints out rather naturally that the natural extension of the recorder can beexpanded if the flutists sings and plays at the same time, for the wind whichleaves the mouth while one sings is capable of sounding the flute, making itpossible for a single man to play a Duo. It is interesting to notice that suchtechnique was not mentioned in the entry which deals with the transverse flute.The author mentions solely the possibility to build transverse flutes with twotubes, an invention that would allow a flutist to play a duet without the help ofanother musician. Maybe Mersenne hadn't met a flutist capable of applying thesing-while-playing technique to the transverse flute with equal success as itwas applied to the recorder. It can be inferred that Mersenne thought that suchtechnique could disturb the kind of embouchure needed to play the transverseflute and, therefore, it couldn't be used. Nevertheless, it is worthy of noticethat in 1636 a technique that still sounds rather strange to some