Many flutes are held sideways across the player’s mouth. They are called side- blown or transverse flutes. The player blows across the top of a blow hole to play the instrument. Flutes are an ancient kind of instrument which became popular in European concert music about 200 years ago. Early fluteshad open holes along the pipe. You closed these with your fingers to change the pitch, just like a whistle. But early flutes were not easy to play because the fingering was complicated.

Making the fingering easier

A German jeweller and goldsmith called Theobald Boehm found an answer to this problem. Boehm was also an enthusiastic flute player and, around 1830, he concentrated his skills on improving the design of the concert flute. He wanted to make the complicated fingering easier. He invented an intricate system of keys, pads, hinges and levers to cover and uncover the holes. This made the fingering much easier.

If you look at concert flutes, you will see how Boehm’s system helps the flautist. It means that the player can press a lever and cover more holes than would be possible with the fingers. So the skilled flautist can play intricate music easily!

Different flutes

Some flautists prefer the sound of a wooden flute, but most concert flutes are now made from metal. There are two other kinds of metal flutes that are larger than the concert flute and play lower notes. They are called the bass flute and the alto flute and are usually played in quiet pieces of music, where their mellow sound can be heard best.

If you listen to The Magic Flute, an opera by the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, you will hear a concert flute played to great effect.

It is used to mimic the sound of panpipes played by one of the main characters, Papageno.

The piccolo

The concert flute has a small relative. It is half the size and plays twice as high. It is called the piccolo flute, because piccolo means small in Italian. The piccolo has the same system of keys as the concert flute. You can hear the piccolo in the Nutcracker Suite, which was written by the Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky.

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dodoEntertainment13 Nov, 2008