I have a wooden flute that I’ve had for years. I’ve just recently gotten into playing it but I would like to know more about it. The name stamped on it is Martin Fres. It has a bee or a fly symbol stamped on it too. It has 6 holes and 6 keys with a metel tuning slide in the head joint. It is a D scale although with the keys it is a chromatic flute. It breaks down into 5 pieces and seems to be made out of Rosewood. If anyone knows about this flute please write. I’m really getting into it. I’m finding that classical music written in the 1700s is easier to play with this flute because it was written to be played on it.
thanks
kc
It’s actually martin freres, do a google search on that and you’ll come up with a lot of pages. Add “flute” into the search, he made a lot of wooden clarinets as well. Looks to be mid to late 19th century, French maker.
John
Hi mate, I happen to own one of them nearly identical except for the fact that mine has 5 keys. There’s a friend of mine who has a six-keyed by Martin Brothers (I think that’s the meaning of Martin Freres.)
Not well up onto the subject really, but I think it could be around 1850 or so. Mine was given to me in an utterly poor and unplayable condition. Thanks to friendly collaboration now is maybe not a top player (still some minor tuning issues); however, it’s easy to blow and has a smooth tone, not very Irish actually.
There’s a number of Martin Freres flutes out there, which leads me to think that they had some semi-industrial making process.
Who minds, it’s always a good thing bringing life to an old instrument isn’t it?
Established by three brothers, Jean-Baptiste, Claude Eugene and Felix Martin in about 1840. The factory was (as usual) in La Couture, the showroom in Paris. Were making flutes by steam by 1905.
Terry