Recorder: early 1700s Anon.
English Flageolets, mid 1700s
Picco Pipes, early 1800s
Ivory Flute, late 1700s
Flutes, mid 1800s
Duct Flutes
Duct flutes are easy to sound because the air stream is shaped and directed by the duct to the sound generating edge and they therefore require no lip control. This limits their expressive potential and, apart from the recorder, they have had little place in art music.
Pitch Pipes similar to organ pipes were used by nineteenth century choirmasters. A sliding piston changes the sounding length and the notes are set by a scale on its stem.
Tin whistles have remained unchanged for over a century. The wide holes give a bright sound but limit cross fingering. They are made in a wide range of keys. Like many other folk instruments, they are often played with the flat parts of the fingers rather than the finger tips.
Recorders are too familiar to need description. The fine early eighteenth century treble here preserves its attractive tone.
English Flageolets were a popular alternative to the recorder in the second half of the eighteenth century. They are essentially recorders which shared the styling of the true French Flageolet. Both had elongated wind chambers above the whistle and small ivory mouthpieces imitating the oboe reed and suggesting pastoral associations. The nineteenth century examples here range from unadorned instruments to those with decorative ivory trims and pegs.
Double English Flageolets are ingenious musical toys. They have a considerable amount of keywork giving full chromatic scales on each tube. Either tube can be sounded alone by means of metal flags to cut off the unwanted windway, and together they give attractive two-part harmony.
Combination Flageolet-flutes have alternative heads which enable them to be played as either type of instrument.
Picco Pipes, the Italian zuffoli, take their name from the blind Sardinian who popularised them as a novelty instrument in the nineteenth century. Although only three inches long with three finger holes, they can sound about thirty notes with a hand-stopping technique which also gives liquid warbles.
Ocarinas are small globular flutes, usually ceramic, developed in Italy in the mid nineteenth century from folk types. The name means 'little goose'. Notes are determined by the area of open hole and can be fingered in many ways. Unusually, the greater the venting, the lower the note.
Transverse Flutes
Transverse flutes are sounded from the side of the tube, with the air stream shaped and directed by the player's lips alone.
Fifes are small shrill flutes with a traditional military status. The older forms were made in a single piece and had a narrow cylindrical bore with six finger holes. The majority here are the nineteenth century remodelling, shorter and in two pieces, with a broader conical bore tapering towards the foot. They have an additional hole for D#, within reach of the little finger but often covered by a key.
Small Flutes here are elegant miniature copies of the full sized instrument. They usually have one key, but one by Dawkins has four.
Piccolos here are the late nineteenth century instruments for band use. They have several keys on rod axles, metal-lined heads and tuning slides.
Flutes form the largest group in the collection and only a few can be mentioned here. The oldest is by Lot of Paris and dates from the mid eighteenth century. It is the classic one-keyed instrument and like others of the period it has no trims in its design. The flute by Hale is a fine instrument from slightly later, with four keys and two corps de rechange. The most spectacular flute is the ivory six-keyed flute by Cahusac. Most of the many early nineteenth century flutes have gained the downward extensions for C and C#. These were often fitted during the early eighteenth century, but then dropped cut of favour until the end. They were usually fitted together, with the touch for the C overlapping onto the C# and taking it down. The need for simultaneous closure led to the popularity of pewter plug pads for at least these notes, and they were often fitted throughout. Various experiments in the nineteenth century took the compass still lower. A Rudall and Rose flute here has a low B, with three overlapping touches for the little finger and rollers to assist sliding. Several of the later instruments have large tone holes. A Clementi flute stamped 'G.Nicholson's Improved' acknowledges an English reformer. Most of the later flutes have metal-lined heads and tuning slides.
Oboes, late 1700s
Musettes , early 1800s
Bassoons, late 1700s
Double-Reed Instruments
Oboes The instrument by Bradbury is the only known example and is one of the earliest English oboes to have survived. It dates from 1710-30 and is the type of oboe which would have been familiar to Bach or Handel. It has bold turning and a massive bell with tuning holes. There is no octave vent: the upper notes were obtained by lip pressure on a large reed with a long scrape. It was purchased by Dr.Kirk from a family who had used it in their music hall act in Ireland at the turn of the century. It is fully described in The Galpin Society Journal IX. The Goulding oboe is en example of the English straight-topped variety from later in the century. The branched touch for C is vestigial, as the instrument is intended to be played with the right hand down and there is only one Eb key. The branched touch has disappeared from the elegant boxwood and ivory oboe, and the instrument has become slimmer and lighter. Its bore is narrower, making the sensational high register exploited by such virtuosi as Fischer and Ramm, for whom Mozart wrote his Oboe Quartet K.370, much more practicable. The Milhouse oboe is similar but has gained several additional keys. These include a low C#, previously obtained by the half closure of the C key, and a single strategically~placed octave key to improve the reliability of the upper register. The modern blackwood oboe by Cabart shows the plethora of keywork which is universal today.
Musettes These are small oboes pitched in G or F. It is assumed that they developed from the small bellows-blown bagpipe of the same name which was a sophisticated trapping of the French nobility's flirtation with Arcadie. The bagpipe's chanter could be detached and blown through a cap to protect the reed, as in the practice chanter here. When the cap was dispensed with and the reed taken between the lips, it became a small oboe. The short broad reed, wide bore and large tone holes gave an unrefined sound. The bell is often pear-shaped, with tuning holes, and an octave vent is often provided. The instrument developed comprehensive keywork, but became obsolete by the end of the nineteenth century.
Bassoons The bassoon is descended from the curtal, a deep double-reed instrument with a folded conical bore. It had six finger holes at the front, spaced in two groups of three and communicating with the bore through deeply slanting holes. The little finger of the lower hand controlled a key, and the compass was continued down by holes and keys for the thumbs in the return tube. Some time before the mid seventeenth century the curtal was remodelled as the jointed bassoon, with another thumb key extending the compass down still further. Much of the instrument's early history is unclear, partly because the term 'bason' was already applied to the curtal and the two instruments shared the name for many years. The first English expansion to 'bassoon' dates from 1706. The three-keyed bassoon, with keys for F', D and Bb, could be played with either hand down, but the addition of a fourth key for G# lying to the side of the F caused it to be played with the right hand down. The four-keyed bassoon was the normal instrument for much of the eighteenth century, but towards its end a closed Eb key for the left thumb and a closed F# for the right thumb were added. Three of the collection's bassoons are of this six-keyed pattern. Two are by Milhouse and represent his Newark and his London periods. The third is by Gerock. A fourth anonymous bassoon is broadly similar but has two additional thumb keys which give access to higher notes. Two instruments by Rudall Carte and Co. date from the late nineteenth century and are extensively mechanised.
Clarinets, mid C18
Single-Reed Instruments
Clarinets It is generally accepted that the clarinet was developed by the Denner family of Nuremberg about 1700 from a rustic instrument known under several names of which the commonest was chalumeau. Interest in the new instrument grew very gradually, and it did not begin to take a regular place in ensemble music till the mid century. As late as 1767 Diderot's encyclopaedia illustrated a keyed instrument and described it tersely and inaccurately as ‘Clarinette: espece d'hautbois’, though at the time it was a well-developed instrument with five keys. Most of the collection's clarinets are early nineteenth century instruments with five or six keys. During this period up to seven further keys were being added. Only two of the instruments here recognise this advance. They are both by the maker Key and have nine and twelve keys. Most of these instruments were probably intended for band use. Because of problems of fingering and intonation, clarinets were built in a range of keys, and already the Bb was emerging as the instrument for performance in flat keys, and the A for sharp keys. Most of the clarinets here, though, are in C. Their tone is brighter and more exciting than today's Bb and A instruments, yet less hectic than the small Eb. They remained popular until the mid century because, being a non-transposing instrument, they were easily 'doubled' by general wind players. Until the mid nineteenth century, clarinets were generally played with the reed uppermost, a habit which persisted among English bandsmen for some years more. The reeds tended to be shorter and narrower than today's, with a thick gouge but a lay extending the whole length, and they were bound to the mouthpiece with thread. Like the rest of the woodwind, the clarinet was redesigned several times in the nineteenth century. The most important reform was Klose and Buffet's system of 1844. This has come to be called the Bohem clarinet, by analogy with the Boehm flute, and its close similarity to the instruments of today can be seen from the example by Buffet jeune dating from 1870.