The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #74421 Message #1300183
Posted By: Bob Bolton
18-Oct-04 - 08:42 PM
Thread Name: Folklore: Germanies, 17th Century, Folk Flutes?
Subject: RE: Folklore: Germanies, 17th Century, Folk Flutes?
G'day eleanor c,
Melody instruments probably don't come any older than transverse flutes ... archeologists (and paleo-musicologists ... ?) have been arguing about the odd straight bone with a few holes bored in what looks like the right places for a prehistoric transverse flute.
Just as I have made a workable flute from a length of bamboo - with seven holes (embouchure and six finger holes) bored and finished off with a penknife - some cave-dweller with a bit of spare time (or a religious need for music) and an idea of what they were doing could use simple (if laborious) bone-working techniques to form and trim an embouchure ... then position the holes in roughly suitable positions and tune them by starting small and reaming out until each desired pitch was attained.
By the mediaeval period a small wooden flute ... or whistle ... wasn't beyond the capabilities of a determined woodworker. I've watched a Sicilian traditional maker turn out simple 6-holed whistles with little more than a saw, a knife, an awl and a reamer ... and sell them to passers-by!
The difference between making a simple transverse flute or a simple whistle is fairly small ... and mostly decided by local custom / preference. Either would be appropriate for Teresa's " ... little peasant boy in the Thirty Years War ... " and the deciding factor might be that the lad is shown a tin whistle - so the locally-made equivalent is a simple 6-hole whistle, rather than its upper-class relative, a Renaissance recorder.
As well, the Renaissance style of recorder had a rather different mouthpiece from the familiar "beaked" mouthpiece of the Baroque recorder - or a simple whistle. There is a horizontal slot below the top, into which the player blows while keeping the intrument fairly vertical. The air goes through a right angle down to a labium in the expected position. I think this difference is enough to suggest that a lad who had seen a modern tin whistle would opt for something more like a simple peasant whistle as the closest local (temporal ... ?) match.