I know that I will get roasted for this question, and I am new to the flute, but I must ask.
Why keys?
Why not half hole cross finger lip down or other things?
The baroque flutes have a key for the low note that they cannot hit, and that makes sense. Keys also help to stop the flute from rolling off the table.
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Baroque flutes have the D#/Eb key because you can’t half hole, lip down, etc. that note.
As for keys on an Irish flute, you really don’t need them for most Irish tunes, but for other forms of music, or if you have a penchant for playing Aires, the notes sound much better than half holed or cross fingered notes.
I like having them, and they are also necessary for some of the 3rd octave notes.
Plus, having multiple keys truly stablizes the flute when laid on a table…
Eric
Strange, I thought that the 3rd octave would use keys less.
I’ll take the bait and say it’s because of volume, the tempered scale, and ensemble playing. Those factors formed a sort of trinity in the development of the flute, and art music as a whole, in the 19th C. which ultimately lead to the development of the Boehm flute.
Because using keys is easier, faster, and more accurate.
Pretty much.
Keeps your flute from rolling off the table.
I always thought that the Baroque flutes have just the one key because that key is needed to finger some of the notes in the third octave. But I could be wrong there, because (a) I don’t play Baroque music or Baroque flute and (b) I don’t play any notes in the third octave (other than high harmonics which I do play in embouchure exercises sometimes). I also can’t see any reason why you couldn’t half hole a D#/Eb if you wanted to, although it might take some practice because that hole is rather small. OTOH, some people find smaller holes easier to half hole than larger holes.
Why keys? Well, in theory you don’t HAVE to have the keys to play chromatically in the lower two octaves. And some players are just brilliant at half-holing. I have a friend here named Michael Leslie who’s just a beautiful and instinctually musical player, and he can play rings around what I can do on a keyed flute on his keyless flute. He plays tunes in keys that I wouldn’t even attempt. So clearly he doesn’t need the keys. But I do, and so do many other players. So my question would be: If you can get them, why not have keys?
The Db/E# key is primarily to get the Eflat, but also does improve intonation on many of the notes, especially the F#s, Bflats, and in the third octave. The Eflat could in theory be half-holed, but the holes on a Baroque flute are so tiny that it would be incredibly weak. I have a small-holed Noy, which has holes about the same size as my Olwell Rudall and a somewhat larger bore. It cross-fingers everything nicely. It’s so much fun that I’ve ordered a foot with an Eflat key – that will give a fully chromatic one-key flute with MUCH greater volume than a Baroque flute. Peter did point out that the Eflat key will improve intonation, too.
Michael mastered half-holing when he was learning Baroque music but didn’t have a keyed flute. He can play Telemann much better on his keyless Olwell than I can on my traverso. For that matter, he can play Telemann much better on my traverso than I can. 
Nope, the half holed D#/Eb produces unacceptable volume and tone, due to the small size of the tone hole, so that’s the primary reason Baroque flutes have one key.
Loren
It’s worth adding that the big advantage of a six-key flute is the evenness of volume of the notes. On the one-key , the cross-fingered notes are veiled. That is, something like a G-sharp, (fingered XXO XXX) expecially in the lower octave, will have less volume than the G below it or the A above it. It’s possible to blow it up to full volume, but then it will have a muddy sound and will be unacceptably sharp. The best Baroque flute composers and players actually used this to their advantage, putting veiled notes where they led to good effect.
Thus keeping the baroque flute from becoming a b-roke flute… That is the key!
Traverso had a competitor: recorder. Recorder was better
in tune and brighter. While it’s possible to play a 1-key
flute in tune by cross-fingering and lipping notes, the result
is uneven both in tone and volume. At best the tone was
not particularly clear. String players and composers in the
early 18th century knew that winds in general were never
in tune.
One-key flutes were used through much of the 19th
century by amateurs. They were called “ordinary” flutes.
“Concert” flutes were another matter. They needed more
power than you could get from the small holes of a flute
that could be cross-fingered. They needed to be in tune,
always.
Keys mostly solved the problem of weak notes and bad
intonation. Larger holes (which came after keys) helped
make a louder instrument, although IMHO a larger bore
did more.
An 8-key flute is louder, more uniform in tone and
volume, and easier to play and play in tune. What’s not
to like? (The price.)
A Boehm flute is all of the above, and in many passages
easier to play, but has a very different tone and is really
an entirely different instrument.
I’ve played a keyless Irish-style flute in a classical
group, cross-fingering and half-holing and faking. I
imagine it would be almost as difficult on a traverso, if
more successful. I really wanted keys.
– Don
I wish I could remember Mozart’s famous quote on flutes. He had a notorious hatred for the instrument. One of his “flute” concertos was just his oboe concerto with oboe crossed out and flute written in in crayon. The approximate tuning of the traverso really makes me laugh when I read Quantz, you know, the guy who insisted on separate D# and Eflat keys and had such strong opinions on the sharp being 4/9 step up and the flat being 4/9 step down from their fundamental notes.
While I agree that recorders were in better tune than traversos, I wouldn’t say that a tenor recorder is brighter or carries better. Plus the fipple flute and transverse flute have always been different instruments filling different roles. Also, in the right hands, the right traverso can have a very clear sound. Heck, my wife was even saying the other night how clear the sound of my von Huene (with ME playing it) is. Silver flute clear? No, but a purer sound than my other flutes, and much purer than she gets from a tenor recorder.
Sometimes the keys do come in handy, the last couple of tunes I’ve been learning in my session class, there’s been a few extra suprises, like D# thrown in. And the latest tune is in F. Also, I find that I really enjoy using the C key. It adds a little something tactile(sp) to the playing.
Tjones
Clive Caterall makes an ‘ordinary flute,’ by the by.
I think we’ve got a review of one in the archives.
Because having one Flute for every key is too expensive.