This page has been validated.
Story of the Flute
earlier pictures, being of various sizes (a new feature) and at various distances. It has some ornamentation of the woodwork at either end. Mersenne also gives a table of the fingering of nineteen notes, from low D
up to the top A♮
which last note is produced by closing all the holes except the G hole. The only accidentals given are F♯ (which is the same in all three octaves) and the C♯ (all open in the first octave; the D and E holes closed in the second octave). It was therefore probably used solely as a diatonic instrument, and was very imperfect even as such; the holes, as in all these early flutes, being placed solely to suit the lie of the fingers, and therefore not in their proper acoustical positions. Mersenne suggested additional holes for other semitones, however. We learn from Salomon de Caus' Institution Harmonique (Frankfort, 1615) that semitones were produced by partial opening or closing of the holes, an unsatisfactory system which prevailed at a very much later date. Mersenne also treats of music suitable for the various kinds of flutes, and gives a quartett for four transverse flutes of various pitches. This little piece is entitled an "Air de Cour," and was composed by Henry Le Jeune. A MS. dated 1562, in the Abbey of St. Gall, contains a picture of a quartett of transverse flutes played by angels. Father Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia Universalis (1650) is practically a copy of
32
