a comparison of the baroque and modern flutes
A comparative study of the use of the barqoue and modern flute in composition, with specific reference to V Sonata IV for flute and continuo by J.S Bach, and Sonata for flute and piano by HindemithThe baroque, or transverse flute is of great interest to me, mainly because of my own flute playing experience. Since listening to a concert which included both a modern orchestra and a baroque orchestra playing together in a specially written composition, and separately, I have considered the baroque flute a much softer and more beautiful instrument, in construction and sound. It is because of this interest that I have decided to carry out my investigation upon the difference between the two flutes, particularly in composition. Firstly, I plan to study the development of the baroque flute, as it is my main focus for this project, and what its capabilities were for composition. Then I will compare the flutes, using the pieces I have chosen, one written for a baroque flute, and one for a modern flute. From this investigation, I hope to be able to draw some conclusions about the better of the two flutes. At the moment I prefer the baroque flute to the modern flute, and I would like to prove that it is indeed the better flute.
In 1727, Robert Woodcock (London) published concertos for wind instruments with strings and basso continuo. The flute blends less with the strings, and the contrast between tonalities that was so dramatic, either dark and closed or bright and open, was lost also. On the whole one made do with oboe and violin pieces, which one adapted as well as one could. The modern flute was designed with equality in mind, and also with attention to ease of fingering and tuning V as modern composers require, such as Hindemith, whose Sonata for flute will be looked at in greater detail later. The baroque flute also is conical, so the end that is blown into or across is wider, while the modern flute is cylindrical. However, with this change of material, the unique rich, rounded sound of the baroque flute was lost. In this he showed how to distinguish between enharmonic notes. Quantz said of his first flute lessons in 1719 V"we only played fast pieces, for this was my teachers great strength K At that time there were few pieces that had been specifically written for the flute. He showed how notes with a flat are actually higher than those enharmonic equivalents with a sharp. The introduction of keys enabled players to explore tone colours much more and also made the sound of the instrument much smoother. The recorder was the predecessor of the transverse flute, but gradually, the flute became the more dominant instrument. On the baroque flute there are two different sets of accidentals, as previously discussed with reference to Hotteterre (paragraph 4). The flute gained many qualities that were and are useful and necessary for modern composition, but in the process lost many qualities that contribute to the character of the baroque flute. The production of sound is basically the same, though the baroque flute requires less breath, and responds to the breath slowly, resulting in pear-shaped notes, with mellow tones that blended with each other and with the strings. History of the baroque fluteThe earliest record of a flute is in a ninth century BC Chinese poem ¥Shih Ching', but the first pictorial evidence of a transverse flute did not appear until the second century BC, on an urn in Italy.
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