Lissieu flute

Home page		The original of this flute in two joints is kept in Wien N.187. It is marked Lissieu, so it may have been made by a maker with the same name working in Lyon and mentioned in 1672 as a very skilled maker in a treatise on the musette by Piere Borjon. The original was not in working conditions, at least in 1982 when I got its measurements. But judging from speaking length, its pitch should be around A465. When redesigned at A440 or A415, it comes out as an outstanding instrument, with a clean sound attack and the feeling of a precise sound emission. The small mouth-hole is characteristically oriented the other way in respect to classical renaissance flute: it is oval as usual, but with its main axis parallel to flute main axis. This calls for a different emission technique, similar to the later baroque flute: lips are probably meant to be more streched and the air stream less round. The resulting sound is richer in higher harmonics. Moreover, since it is in two joints, fingerhole axis and mouth-hole axis need not to be aligned: Should I say the renaissance flute is becoming a bit more human, allowing player’s adjustements? The fingering is basically the normal renaissance fingering, but with an easier emission in fork fingering the second octave Fsharp, which makes a bit easier to use this flute as a D instrument. The feeling, after listening to it, is that it is not anymore a consort instrument, but it has become a solo flute. I insist in making this flute in maple for two reasons: the first is that I personally was never be able to detect an absolutely positive difference in sound with european boxwood. The second is that in so doing the flute is much cheaper, because kgs of boxwood must be trown out before locating a decent log 40 cm long without bothering knots, while at most one or two maple woodlogs do very fine. And wood perfection, in these days of flute professionals travelling so often up and down nations in different climates, is fundamental. If you add to this that more or less a third of surviving renaissance flutes are in maple or at least are not in boxwood, there is no reason why maple should not obtain more favor in flute making when beauty is not the main issue, but sound and reliability.