instrument.[1] He went resolutely to work, and during the year 1832
he produced the new flute which bears his name. This instrument
is distinguished by a new mechanism of keys, as well as by larger
holes disposed along the tube in geometrical progression.
Boehm’s system had preserved the key of G♯ open; Coche,[2] a professor in the Paris Conservatoire, assisted by Auguste Buffet the younger, a musical-instrument maker in that city, modified Boehm’s flute by closing the G♯ with a key, wishing thus to render the new fingering more conformable to the old. He thus added a key, facilitating the shake upon C♯ with D♯, and brought about some other changes in the instrument of less importance.
Boehm had not, however, altered the bore of the flute, which had been conical from the end of the 17th century. In 1846, however, he made further experiments, and the results obtained were put in practice by the construction of a new instrument, of which the body was given a cylindrical bore, while the diameter of the head was modified at the embouchure, the head-joint becoming parabolic (see fig. 2). The inventor thus obtained a remarkable equality in the tones of the lower octave, a greater sonorousness, and a perfect accuracy of intonation, by establishing the more exact proportions which a column of air of cylindrical form permitted.
The priority of Boehm’s invention was long contested, his detractors maintaining that the honour of having reconstructed the flute was due to Gordon. But an impartial investigation vindicates the claim of the former to the invention of the large lateral holes.[3] His greatest title to fame is the invention of the mechanism which allows the production of the eleven chromatic semitones intermediate between the fundamental note and its first harmonic by means of eleven holes so disposed that in opening them successively they shorten the column of air in exact proportional quantities.[4] Boehm (Essays, &c.) published a diagram or scheme to be adopted in determining the position of the note-holes of wind instruments for every given pitch. This diagram gives the position of the intermediate holes which he had been enabled to establish by a rule of proportion based on the law of the lengths of strings.
The Boehm flute, notwithstanding the high degree of perfection it has reached, has not secured unanimous favour; even now there are players who prefer the ordinary flute. The change of fingering required for some notes, the great delicacy and liability to derangement of the mechanism, have something to do with this. In England especially, the ordinary flute retains many partisans, thanks to the improvements introduced by a clever player, Abel Siccama, in 1845 (Patent No. 10,553). He bored the lateral holes of E and A lower, and covered them with open keys. He added some keys, and made a better disposition of the other lateral holes, of which he increased the diameter, producing thus a sonorousness almost equal to that of the Boehm flute, while yet preserving the old fingering for the notes of the first two octaves. But in spite of these improvements the old flute will not bear an impartial comparison with that of Boehm.
A flute constructed on a radically new system by Signor Carlo
Tommaso Georgi and introduced in 1896 places the technique of
the instrument on an entirely new and simple basis. The principal
features of this flute consist in an embouchure placed at the upper
extremity of the tube instead of at the side, which allows the instrument
to be held in a perpendicular position; no tuning cork is required.
There are eleven holes mathematically placed in the tube
which give the semitones of the scale; there are no keys. The
eleven holes are fingered by the fingers and thumbs, the C♯ hole
being closed by the side of the left fore-finger. All the notes are
obtained by means of simple fingering as far as G♯ of the third
octave, the remaining notes of which are produced by cross-fingering.
For the convenience of players with short fingers keys can be added,
and the head of the Georgi flute can be used with any cylinder flute.
The compass of the Georgi flute is almost the same as that of
the concert flute; viz. 
If the lower C and C♯ are
required, extra holes and keys can be added.
Everything that is possible on the Boehm flute is
possible on the Georgi and more, owing to the simplicity
of the fingering; each finger having but one duty to perform,
all trills are equally easy. The tone is the true flute tone, brilliant
and sympathetic.[5]
The old English fipple flute, or flûte à bec, is described under the headings Recorder and Flageolet. (V. M.; K. S.)
2. In architecture the name “flute” is given to the vertical channels (segmental, semicircular or elliptical in horizontal section) employed on the shafts of columns in the classic styles. The flutes are separated one from the other by an “arris” in the Doric order and by a “fillet” in the Ionic and Corinthian orders. The earliest fluted columns are those in Egypt, at first with plain faces without any sinking, subsequently at Karnac (1400 B.C.) with a segmental sinking equal in depth to about one-seventh of the width of the flute. The columns flanking one of the “beehive” tombs at Mycenae have segmental flutes and are the earliest Greek examples. In two of the earliest Doric temples at Metapontum and Syracuse (temple of Apollo) the flutes are also segmental, but in later examples in order to emphasize the arris they were formed of three arcs and are known as “false ellipses,” and this applies to nearly all the fluting in Greek examples whether belonging to the Doric, Ionic or Corinthian orders. The number of flutes varies, there being 52 in the archaic temple of Diana at Ephesus and from 30 to 52 flutes in the Persian columns according to the diameter of the column. In the Greek Doric column 20 is the usual number, but there are 16 only in the temples of Sunium, Assos, Segesta and the temple of Apollo at Syracuse; 18 in one of the temples of Selinus and the temple of Diana at Syracuse, and 24 in the temple of Neptune at Paestum. The depth of the flute also varies; in the Propylaea at Athens the radius is equal to the width of the flute and the flute is segmental. In the Parthenon the radius of the central part of the flute is greater than the width, but the smaller arcs on either side accentuate better the arris. A similar accentuation is found in the Ionic and Corinthian orders, where the flutes are separated by fillets, and their section is always elliptical in Greek work, the depth of the flute, however, being always greater than in the Doric order. Thus, in the temple of Ilissus and the Ionic column in the cella of the temple at Bassae, the depth is about one-quarter of the width, in the Propylaea at Priene it is about one-third, and in the Erechtheum and other examples of the Greek Ionic order it is little more than one-half. The width of the fillet also varies, being as a rule one quarter of the width of the flute; and the same applies to the Greek Corinthian order. In the Roman Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders, the flute is either segmental or semicircular, its depth being about one third of the width in the Doric column, and in all Ionic, Corinthian and Composite columns half the width of the flute. The fillet also is much broader in Roman examples, being about one-third of the width of the flute. In Roman columns sometimes the flutes of the lower part of the shaft, about one-third of the height, are partly filled with a convex moulding, “cabling” being the usual term applied to this treatment. The French architects of the 16th and 17th centuries carried this decorative feature much farther, and in the Tuileries and the Louvre carved a series of leaves in the flutes. In a few Italian buildings, instead of the fluting of the column being vertical, it twines round the column and is known as spiral fluting; a fine example is found in the Bevilacqua palace at Verona by San Michele. Fluting is sometimes introduced into capitals, as in the tomb of Mylasa, and in friezes, as in the theatre at Cnidos, the Incantada at Salonica, and a doorway at Patara. In one of the museums at Rome is a fine sarcophagus, the sides of which are sculptured with flutes in waved lines. The coronas of many of the Roman temples were carved with flutes. In medieval buildings, fluting was occasionally introduced in imitation of Roman work, as in the churches of central Syria and of Autun and Langres in France, but in the south of Italy and Sicily it would seem to have been brought in as a variety of treatment, in the decoration of the shafts carrying the arches of cloisters, as at Monreale in Sicily and in those of St John Lateran and St Paul-outside-the-Walls at Rome. (R. P. S.)
FLUX (Lat. fluxus, a flowing; this being also the meaning of the English term in medicine, &c.), in metallurgy, a substance introduced in the smelting of ores to promote fluidity, and to remove objectionable impurities in the form of a slag. The
- ↑ See Über den Flötenbau und die neuesten Verbesserungen desselben (Mainz, 1847); and W. S. Broadwood, An Essay on the Construction of Flutes originally written by Theobald Boehm, published with the addition of Correspondence and other Documents (London, 1882).
- ↑ Examen critique de la flûte ordinaire comparée à la flûte Boehm (Paris, 1838).
- ↑ They existed long before, however, in the Chinese Ty and the Japanese Fuye.
- ↑ The reader may consult with advantage Mr C. Welch’s History of the Boehm Flute (London, 1883), wherein all the documents relating to this interesting discussion have been collected with great impartiality.
- ↑ For further details see Kathleen Schlesinger, The Instruments of the Orchestra, part i. pp. 192-194, where an illustration is given, and Paul Wetzger, Die Flöte (Heilbronn, 1906), pp. 23-24, and Tafel iv. No. 20.
