A Pratten and a ......

Irish Flute
1

Heh heh, a quick quiz. What’s the difference between these two flutes?

Easy, you might say. Top one is a Pratten’s Perfected style, the lower one a large-holed Rudall. Do I win a prize?

Sorry, no coconut. They’re both Prattens, just that the lower one has the long body split into two separate sections, and a short D foot integrated into the Right Hand section.

And why do that, you might ask? Because it allows you to rotate the two body sections to differing degrees, which might suit some people. Note that it’s only possible to split the Prattens body into separate left and right hand sections if you don’t have a G# key. Finding a better location for the G# key was probably one of Siccama’s goals when he introduced his long body Diatonic flute. And Pratten sensibly kept it that way when he revised Siccama’s 10-key design back to an 8-key.

There are other differences, but seeing them might depend on your screen resolution. The top flute is made from wood, our usual African Blackwood (a.k.a mpingo, grenadilla, or Dalbergia Melanoxylon). The lower flute is Delrin (acetyl).

And the lower flute has a C thumb hole, but of course you can’t see that from this angle!

One interesting thing I found is that, despite not having played a flute with a c thumb hole for years, I was immediately prompted to use it, both for playing c, and for sharpening c#. Funny thing, the brain. What’s left of it…

2

I look at the subject line and all I can think of is “So, a Pratten and a Rabbi and a Priest walk into a bar…” Fill in the rest of the joke yourself.

Best wishes.

Steve

3

Actually, the best story relating to Pratten I’ve heard about was that, when he embarked on an overseas performing tour, he took with him 7 concertinas, needed to cover all the pitches used at the time. Great time to be a concertina maker! “Will Sir be wanting a wheelbarrow with that order?”

To be fair, three of those pitches - Low Pitch as used for pianos, High Pitch being pushed by the Philharmonic movement, and the compromise Society of Arts pitch were all in use in England.

It would be nice to know if he took just one flute, or if he had more than one flute, or more than one body for his flute. He would have had the benefit of his well-tuned flute with a long tuning slide, but over the range of pitches that he would have encountered, he’d still need to do some pretty classy lipping to pull all the notes into tune. But I guess that’s what was expected of a flutist in those days.