Professional Documents
Culture Documents
BAte
BAte
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C~(O
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~g~' DI;
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GO
:D
FIG.2. Boehm's
closedGgaction.
AftermuchexperimentwithauthenticBoehmandotherwell-designed
flutesthe lateDaytonC. Millerconcludedthatthe open Ggis no more
difficultto masterthanthe closedversion,andthatit hascertainminor
advantages in somepartsof the scale.This,we shallsee later,is alsothe
opinion now reachedby Alex Murray.
While consideringBoehm'sbasicwork we must also look at the B
andBb arrangements for the left thumb.On the originalmodelof the
cylinder fluteof 1847Boehm providedno Bb thumblever.About1849,
48
49
The next point to which Murray directed his attention was the
anomaly of the closed Dg key which Boehm took over from the con-
ventional flute of his time-apparently without demur.4To quote again
from Murray'snotes:-
'The asymetricaluse of the little fingers, in particularthe necessityfor
maintaining the right little finger down much of the time struck me as
undesirableand I experimented with an open Dg by turning the foot-
joint until the D9 hole was within reach of my little finger. I unhooked
the spring and maintainedthe key open with an elastic band. The flute
became a little unstableto balancebut I solved this by sticking a wedge
of cork on the body above the right thumb (I no longer require this,
having learnt to balancethe instrumentwithout it). I felt that the action
of the key was an improvement on the closed Dg.
'At that time (1958) I was fortunate in meeting Albert Cooper, an
artist-flute-maker,formerly with Rudall Carte and who had left to
begin making flutes on his own. He agreed to construct a new foot
joint which would convert my flute to open Dg. The Cg, D, and Dg
keys were placed in line from an axle on the near-sideof the flute; the
Dg key was closed by both the other keys. The problem remained,how
to trill C-D or C#-D. When the little finger was removed from C or
Cg, Dg was the note sounded. In order to circumvent this a crescent-
shapedkey was built from the D key around the front of the ring-finger
key. This finger could then close both keys simultaneouslywhen required,
giving D?. Laterit was found better to have two parallelrollers so that
the ring finger could move easily from D to Dg in the same way that the
little finger moves from C to Cg on a flute with two rollers on the foot
joint.'
Fig. 3 is a sketch of the little finger arrangementsat the first stage of
development. A proposthe above-mentioned extension of the D key, we
may observe that while there are a number of referencesin the older
flute literature to crescentic touch-pieces associated with finger-holes,
and, though the cases may not be quite identical,it is interestingto note
50
0 0 0
C ? * * 0 0 6 0o 0 0*
0 0 0 0
B *
A * * * 0 * * o
0 0 0 *0
G *S *
G 0 0 0 0 0 *
F 0o 0 0 0 0 0 0
E o 0 0 0 0 0o 0 & 0
D 0oo 0 0 00 0o 00 0 00o0 0
D
C o0 o o o
D o o 0 0 0 0 0 0
c 0o o 0o 0 0 0 0 0
FIG. 4. ofthe3rdoctave:MurrayandBoehm(closed
Venting G#)compared.
A
* * * 0 * 0 *e * 0 0 0 0 0 * 0 0 0*
* * * * * * * * * * O 0 0 0 0 0
0 0
S * * 0 0 * 0 0 0 0 0 0 S
* 0 * * * * 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 * 0
* ** * * O*0 0 00 0 0 0 0 0 0 * *
o * * 0 0 0 0 * 0 0 0 0 0 0
o 0
0_ _oooo o 0o 0o0101oo
o
o"
o O
o
0o 0 S 0
hilL 00 0-
F1 0 iC c F
o o01(1)l
c : c• c
I 1 I/
?/ /K IF' o io
54
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PLATE III
TheMurrayFlute:detailof rightlittle-fingerkeys
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PLATE IV