Story of the Flute
head-joint is a solid block of wood, containing two bores, connected together at the cork-end (Page 89, Fig. 1). The finger-holes are about double as far apart as on an ordinary flute, but they are brought within reach by means of keys. It measures about forty-three inches in all, the turned back portion being about twelve inches. Macgregor sometimes made the connection between the turned back head and the main body of the flute by means of a semi-circular metal pipe, the two tubes standing slightly apart.
Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopœdia (Paris, 1751-80) has a woodcut of a so-called bass flute in G with four open keys, covering the B G F♯ and E holes, and a closed key for D♯ (Page 89, Fig. 2). It is very slightly conoidal, with an ornamental bulb-end, and is bent back at the top with a small semi-circular tube of brass at the end. It is in four joints. A very similar flute, which is now in the Paris Conservatoire, was made by Charles Delusse, a Parisian flautist and composer (c. 1758). It measures fifty inches, and is of dark-stained boxwood, with ivory tips and brass keys.
There is in the Museo Civico at Verona a so-called bass flute of the seventeenth century, pitched in E♭, and measuring nearly three feet seven inches from the cork to the end. As the lowest hole is thirty and a half inches from the mouth-hole, no person of ordinary stature could finger the lower holes. Those for the little fingers are double.
The alto or tenor flute (sometimes called Flauto di Voce) occasionally has a large hole at the side near
88
