G’day all,
I’ve bought a couple of old wooden flutes lately 
and I wonder if anyone could suggest a book that covers styles/makers/timbers and general information on Wooden Flutes that were made,say, from late 1700’s up to the early/mid 1900s ???
Something in easy to read/laymans terms would be nice…
Thanks…weedie…old Flute fancier…
email jon c. about that. i believe he has such a book. we were able to date my flute to the year (1864), by the overlapping changes of addresses and owners.
The book that daiv refers to is probably William Waterhouse’s extensive update of Langwill, now titled T_he New Langwill Index_ (London: Tony Bingham, 1993) which contains information such as dates of operation, historical addresses, maker’s marks, serial numbers and name changes/mergers for makers of all types of woodwind instruments. It is a hefty and expensive book for reference only, so feel free to email me if you want me to look something up for you. It is not a book most people would want to own.
The best general flute history I know is Ardal Powell’s The Flute (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) which is probably just what you are looking for. Ardal is a terrific maker of baroque and classical era flutes (Folkers and Powell) and has researched them extensively. The classic history is Philip Bate’s The Flute, which is interesting to own and read, but it is substantially out of date. Nancy Toff has several books for the more general reader dating back to the 1970s, but again, Powell supercedes them, IMHO.
Another of Ardal’s books is an annotated translation of Tromlitz’s The Keyed Flute (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). Although mostly about the Tromlitz flute, it has a very extensive historical introduction which is a good summary of the development of keyed flutes and the flute market in the early 19th century.
Folkers and Powell published a newsletter for a number of years, “Traverso,” the first ten volumes of which were eventually collected into a single bound volume. It contains all sorts of historical and performance information for players of historical flutes, up to roughtly 1800.
Hope this helps.
Thanks a lot Daiv and Herb,
Ardal Powell’s book sounds as though it will be a good one for me,I’ll make some enquiries here in Oz and see if I can get it…
bye for now…
you would do well well acquire a copy of Rockstro’s “A treatise on the flute”…
despite some of his own leanings…it’s one of the more comprehensive books out there. Published late 1800s then early 1900s 2nd Ed.
Also…A Word or Two On The Flute (WN James)…very nice, but Rockstro is much more scientific. James was of the grand period (c.1830).
Also Welch’s book is a grand read, though he was friends with Siccama (a nice antithesis to Rockstro’s hatred of him).
There are sections of Rockstro that i’ve read and re-read dozens of times and still cull something new.
dm