Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Musical Instrument Collections and Library Sigla
- Glossary of Terms Applied to the Flageolet
- Note on the Text
- 1 The Flageolet Prior to 1660
- 2 The Flageolet in the Seventeenth Century
- 3 The Flageolet in the Eighteenth Century
- 4 The English Single Flageolet 1800–1850
- 5 The English Single Flageolet 1850–1914
- 6 The Double Flageolet
- 7 The Triple Flageolet and the Flute-Flageolet
- 8 The French Flageolet
- 9 The Flageolet in Music and Society
- Appendix 1 Checklist of Instruments Illustrated
- Appendix 2 Bibliographical Data on Tutors
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The Double Flageolet
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Musical Instrument Collections and Library Sigla
- Glossary of Terms Applied to the Flageolet
- Note on the Text
- 1 The Flageolet Prior to 1660
- 2 The Flageolet in the Seventeenth Century
- 3 The Flageolet in the Eighteenth Century
- 4 The English Single Flageolet 1800–1850
- 5 The English Single Flageolet 1850–1914
- 6 The Double Flageolet
- 7 The Triple Flageolet and the Flute-Flageolet
- 8 The French Flageolet
- 9 The Flageolet in Music and Society
- Appendix 1 Checklist of Instruments Illustrated
- Appendix 2 Bibliographical Data on Tutors
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Double wind instruments, both in the form of reed pipes and of duct flutes, have existed since antiquity, the classical example of the double reed pipe being the Greek aulos (plural auloi) which may be found as early as 700 BC. However, of greater relevance to the student of the double flageolet is the existence of double duct flutes and double recorders. Sybil Marcuse relates that double duct flutes have existed in Europe since the fourteenth century and describes duct flutes (recorders) in the sixteenth century with pipes of different lengths bored in a single block of wood and thus sounding at different pitches. The Amsterdam maker Michiel Parent (1692) advertised ‘a combination of two recorders … with which two different parts can be played at once’, and such practice continued into the eighteenth century.
Although the double flageolet came to prominence in England in the first decade of the nineteenth century, there is some evidence to suggest that Samuel Pepys played two flageolets together. In 1667–8 Pepys had two flageolets made, one loud and one soft, so that they could be fastened together:
I did stop at Drumbleby’s, the pipe-maker, there to advise about the making of a flageolet to go low and soft, and he to shew me a way which to do, and also a fashion of having two pipes of the same note fastened together, so as I can play on one, and then echo it on the other, which is mighty pretty.
The pair of flageolets was designed to produce an echo effect rather than harmony as produced by the double recorders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries or the double flageolets of the nineteenth.
The earliest account of the use of a double flageolet in the nineteenth century appears in 1804, when the virtuoso player John Parry performed on two of Bainbridge’s flageolets fixed together on a frame. Many years later Parry described his performance in a letter to The Harmonicon in 1830:
In the year 1804, Mr. Parry fixed two of Bainbridge’s flageolets in a frame, and performed duets on them, and shortly after added a third, and played ‘Here’s a health to all good lasses,’ in three distinct parts, at Covent Garden Theatre, for Blanchard’s benefit.
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- Information
- The Flageolet in England, 1660-1914 , pp. 79 - 96Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020