Boehm’s stated goal was to develop a flute which had a large tone hole for each chromatic note of the scale, sized and placed optimally according to acoustic principles instead of merely what the fingers could reach and cover…the “Boehm schema.”
He began his career making good quality simple-system flutes. As he began to experiment, his first conical “Boehm system” flutes had a system of pads and rings.
He pretty much finalized the design for the metal flute as we know it now in 1847. There have been some minor changes since, but the vast majority of the instrument remains as he designed it.
@cork: Do you mean the yamaha fife? That is chromatic, but with lots of cross fingerings if I recall correctly? (I haven’t had mine out to play for a long time…)
Yes, I mean the little Yamaha, which technically is a flute because it has a conical bore, and although it’s a keyless piece of plastic, apparently it’s often used to prepare beginning students for the Boehm (Böhm) system flute, due to its fingering.
It’s certainly not a “perfect” little flute, but it does come close to the Boehm fingering system, and at the price it sells for is a genuine bargain!
BTW, Chris, I see that you’re in Germany, up north, in Hamburg. I once lived in Germany, nicht weit von Karlsruhe, but in American English the common spelling is Boehm, and not Böhm, with my apology to any German readers, here, especially as Böhm himself was German.
@cork:
I’m actually Scottish, but currently serving out my time in Hamburg… I tend to use Böhm or Boehm at random. Böhm is of course correct, but was replaced by Boehm due to the vagaries of typesetting before the computer age.
