Theobald Boehm - The Flute and Flute Playing

IN ACOUSTICAL, TECHNICAL,
AND ARTISTIC ASPECTS

by

THEOBALD BOEHM

Royal Bavarian Court-Musician

Translated by

DAYTON C. MILLER

With a new introduction by

SAMUEL BARON

Flutist, New York Woodwind Quintet and
New York Chamber Soloists

NEW YORK
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Copyright

Copyright 1964, 2011 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 1964 and reprinted in 2011, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the second revised and enlarged edition published by Dayton C. Miller in 1922. This Dover edition also contains an Introduction by Samuel Baron.

International Standard Book Number

eISBN-13: 978-0-48617-271-2

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
21259919
www.doverpublications.com

Theobald Boehm had a unique combination of skills. He was a master flutist, a master gold- and silversmith, and a keen student of physics and acoustics as they apply to the flute. The master flutist and musician realized what was lacking in the flute of his day: his ear was dissatisfied with the poor intonation, limited range and uneven tonal response of his chosen instrument. The keen student of physics and acoustics considered what might be the causes, what might be the improvements. And finally the mechanic, the man who could make things and make them work, created the forms that could realize his ideas.

All of this is known from history, and we flutists know it best of all, for we play on a Boehm flute virtually unchanged from his work bench of 1847 to the present day. There have been fine flute makers since, and many splendid flutes have been built, but the design, the proportions and the theory of the flute come from this book, which is as valid today as it ever was.

Reading Boehms book is an absorbing experience in following the progress of an idea. But it is more than that, too. The view of the man himself is enlightening and endearing. He writes in a most objective style but he cannot conceal the mellowness of a hard-won wisdom. This wisdom is shared openly with all who are interested. It is the ideal attitude of the scientist who says, We are all working to penetrate the unknown. My contribution may help someone else; it may throw some light on a seemingly unrelated problem; it may have an application that I dont think of. Let anyone who is interested know my work!

In addition there is an attitude about the old man that stamps him as a great teacher. To Boehm, the creative man is the one who teaches himself something. It follows from this that he can teach others too. Notice the emphasis on the rational process and the rational ideal in the following words of Boehm:

for he alone is capable of carrying out a rational work, who can give a complete account of the why and wherefore of every detail from the conception to the completion.

(An Essay on the Construction of Flutes)

This emphasis is carried through his work.

Boehms respect for the practical and the pragmatic is very strong. Again and again he finds the solution to his problem by trying many ways. For example: how to determine the shortening of the tube necessary to give the chromatic intervals of the bottom octave. Boehms solution:

The simplest and shortest method is, naturally, successively to cut off from the lower end of the flute tube so much as will make the length of the air column correspond to each tone of the chromatic scale. In order that these proportions might be accurately verified, I made a tube in which all the twelve tone sections could be taken off and again put together. (The Flute and Flute-Playing, p. )

When he had accomplished this much he found that the placement of the tone holes did not exactly correspond to the cutting off of the tube, so he endeavored to find the relationship between the two systems:

For the exact determination of these positions and the other tuning proportions, I had a flute made with movable holes, and was thus enabled to adjust all the tones higher or lower at pleasure. (The Flute and Flute-Playing, p. )

At this point I ask the reader, just what is a flute with movable tone holes ? To my unmechanical mind, such an ingenious gadget should win prizes for its inventor, but for Boehm it was merely a means to an end. It was a step along the wayhe never mentions it again.

So we have here a very interesting man, one who had the patience and courage, not to mention the ingenuity, to see his work through from the conception to the completion even though he was going against the beliefs of his time. For in Boehms day musicians and instrument makers believed that the holes should be bored into the flute at points where the players fingers could easily cover them. This was considered to be common sense as well as humanistic. Boehm said, in effect, Let us put the holes where they belong, according to science and the tempered scale. If the fingers cannot reach them, let us use our brain to invent some system for controlling the opening and shutting of the tone holes. This was uncommon sense, and humanistic on a higher plane.

A flutist of international reputation, he did not hesitate, at the age of thirty-eight, to redesign his own instrument, endangering, as he says,

my facility in playing which had been acquired by twenty years of practice. (The Flute and Flute-Playing, p. )

And when the new instrument was not completely satisfactory to him, he did not shrink from taking two years for the study of physics and acoustics (at the age of fifty-two) and utilizing what he then learned to make still more drastic revisions in his design. At no point did he allow himself to be swayed by the comments of his fellow professionals who might have said, Look here! Arent you really ruining the business for us? Our students are going to take this new flute, as you call it, and do better than we canand we have given our lives to the flute!

All who are interested in the flute should visit the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., which houses the flute collection of Dayton C. Miller, translator and editor of this book. There on display are many of the best flutes of pre-Boehm days. What monstrosities of frustrated ingenuity are to be seen there! One maker devised a Rube Goldberg key to trill C to D. Another figured out three ways to play F natural and built them all onto the instrument. A hodge-podge of keys and levers seems to grow in baroque profusion over the simple flute of Quantzbut to little avail. The instrument is still limited in range, still out of tune, and clumsy to play in the remote keys. By contrast, Boehms flute, which put an end to this lets add a key here and another there mentality how simple ! how functional ! how really well it plays !

How satisfying is the triumph of a rational work !

S AMUEL B ARON

April, 1964.

Munich, August 6th, 1908

Dear Mr. Miller:

I wish to express my, and my sisters, great pleasure and satisfaction for your labor of love, which you have undertaken in the good intention to honor my grandfather. For this we can be only very thankful to you; and I believe I express the sentiment of the whole family of my grandfather in giving you our approval of the publishing of your translation of his book: Die Flte und das Fltenspiel.