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According to Berlioz the flute ‘is an instrument well-nigh devoid of expression, but which may be introduced anywhere and everywhere, on account of its facility in executing groups of rapid notes, and in sustaining high sounds useful in the orchestra for adding fullness to the upper harmonies.’ This is a fair description of the way the flute is generally written for in orchestral works, but there are many exceptions. The sounds of the middle and upper registers combine well with any ensemble and add lustre. The lower register lacks penetration but has a soft and seductive quality. ‘These low sounds‘, wrote Berlioz in his Treatise on Instrumentation, `are seldom, or else ill, employed by the majority of composers.’ All the great orchestrators have however always known how to write for the low register.

Overtures, whose function is, after all, to arrest the attention and raise the level of expectancy, are happy hunting grounds for instrumental passages of particular interest and excitement. One that makes most flautists tremble with terror occurs in the Andantino of Rossini’s William Tell overture. This florid passage of rapid upward and downward leaps is set against a languorous Swiss-type melody played on the cor anglais. Beethoven, in the overture Leonora No. 3, uses the low register in a passage of surprising boldness which starts from low D and rapidly clambers upward to declare the main theme, followed by downward splashes from the high register; this is a prominent and important passage in the overture. Equally prominent and important is a long and mostly low-register passage in Mendelssohn’s overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On account of its length and absence of moments for snatching a breath this is somewhat dreaded by flautists; moreover, conductors fail to scale down the volume of the supporting orchestra sufficiently, so the solo is not clearly heard — but the advantage of this is that the flautist is able to leave out a note here and there in order to take a breath.

The ethereal lamenting of the flute in Gluck’s ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’ in Orpheus and Euridice is in striking contrast to its erotic quiverings in Debussy’s Prelude a l’ Apres-midi d’un Faune, which starts on the weakest note of the instrument, C sharp.

To many composers flute timbre has a bird-like quality. Beethoven used it to imitate the nightingale in his ‘Pastoral’ Symphony, and numerous other composers have given it twittering roles. At the end of the 19th century, when the popularity of the flute was at its zenith, many pieces for voice and chirruping flute were popular, among them Bishop’s To, here the gentle lark.’ One little- known 20th century work of great energy and sensitivity is Lie Strewn the White Flocks, a Pastoral by Arthur Bliss for chorus, drums, string orchestra, solo flute and piccolo and mezzo-soprano. In this ‘The Pigeon Song’ is among the loveliest pieces ever written for voice and flute.

There is an old joke which asks ‘What is more dreadful than a concerto for flute?’ The reply is ‘A concerto for two flutes.’ Certainly no flute concerto, be it by Vivaldi, Mozart or Ibert, is much more than charming and elegant. Probably the most serious and best-known work for flute and chamber orchestra is the Suite in B Minor by J .S. Bach, but the last movement, a Badinerie, is often taken at a cracking pace for the sake of showing off brilliant technique in a difficult piece — which it isn’t.

Since the lower register of the flute is little used because of its lack of penetration, the alto flute, whose compass lies a fourth lower, is very rarely used and then only by composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel, at a time when orchestration had nearly become an art in its own right. The shriek of the piccolo, on the other hand, can he heard over the loudest passages played by the largest orchestra. The lower register of the piccolo is feeble and uninteresting, but its upper registers have a jaunty vulgarity that has been used for brief solos by Tchaikovsky (himself a flautist), Bartok in his Concerto for Orchestra and by Britten in his Young Person’s. Guide to the Orchestra. A quantity of trivial pieces for piccolo and band were written at the end of the last century, but these are best described as music hall turns, for they depend on brilliant execution for any effect they might make. The piccolo has remained an instrument most suitable for strengthening the higher register of the full orchestra and for the imitation of shrieking winds, banshees and other wild and diabolical forces.

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dodoAmplifier, Bose, Drums, Folk Music, Headphones, Microphone, Music Box, Music Equipments, Sony, Yamaha31 Aug, 2008