New Evidence on the Echo Flute

Author(s): George H. Goebel

Source: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 48 (Mar., 1995), pp. 205-207
Published by: Galpin Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/842814
Accessed: 11-01-2020 15:25 UTC

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 NEW EVIDENCE ON THE ECHO FLUTE

The meaning of the termfiauto d'echo, which appears in

Bach's fourth Brandenburg, has recently been discussed i
by David Lasocki and Michael Marissen.1 Both incline st
view that what Bach intended was simply standard treble
and that the qualification d'echo does not identify a distin
but merely refers in some way to the function of the re
concerto.2 Yet Lasocki himself shows clearly that at abou
was writing the Brandenburgs, James Paisible was perfor
concerts in London on a distinct instrument called the
which cannot be identified with any of the known vari
Since 'flute' at this time usually means 'recorder' and Pa
known as a recorder virtuoso, it seems likely that the echo
of recorder, but the qualification 'echo' presumably
production of echo effects. Since Paisible performed
instrument, it seems unlikely that it played only softly
conjecture is that it was somehow able to play both loud a
Such an instrument would seem to be just what one wa
persistent echo effects of the second movement of
Brandenburg, and it corresponds exactly with Jerem
conjectures about the nature of Bach's fiauto d'echo.3 St
object that Paisible's echo flute was an isolated novelty, an
no reason to think that Bach had ever heard of it, still less
of them at his disposal.
Recently, however, I came across a hitherto unno
evidence which shows, I think, that the 'echo flute' was
phenomenon at all, but was already known in France in t
the name flate d'echo. This term appears in itienne Louli
Principes de Musique, an elementary music treatise publish
the beginning of the third section (p.43), Loulih says that
can be harsh or sweet, loud or soft, high or low. His illu
first two contrasts are as follows:

Le Son de la Trompette Marine est different du Son de la Fldte, parce

Aigre, & que le deuxieme est Doux.
Les Sons de deux Flmtes d'Echo sont diferents, parce que l'un est F
est Foible.s

It seems clear that flate d'echo refers to something dis

plain flate, and something particularly apt for producing
trasted dynamics. The alternative, which is to take d'ech
cribing how the fltltes are played - 'two flutes in echo',
renders it6 - is an unlikely sense for the French, and it ma
this passage. If d'echo does not distinguish a type of fat
standard usage of the period, flate should mean 'recorder
does in the preceding paragraph - and one is left to exp

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should have chosen one of the least dynamically flexible of all baroque in-
struments to illustrate the contrast of loud and soft. The only reasonable
conclusion is thatflates d'cho are not 'echoing flutes', but 'echo flutes'.
Was Loulie's 'echo flute' the same as Paisible's? It seems very likely.
Both Paisible and his close friend, the instrument-maker Bressan, were
French by birth and training. Paisible was born in or near Paris, and at
least one close relation was a court musician.7 He probably first came to
England in 1673, but he is known to have been in France in 1693, and
there is evidence suggesting that he made other trips as well. Bressan did
not come until 1688, and it is clear that he remained in close contact
with his continental counterparts.8 It is very unlikely that these two men
would not have known about thefltte d'icho.
In the case of Bach's fiauto d'echo we can make no such personal
connections, but given the strong influence of French music on
Germany in this period, we hardly need to. Bach might well have been
unaware of an instrument invented only a few years earlier in London,
but it is quite unlikely that he would not have known of one that was
known - and well enough known to be used as an example in an
elementary music treatise - in Paris a good two decades earlier.
In short, there no longer appears to be any justification for regarding
Bach's fiauto d'echo as an isolated phenomenon; fiauto d'echo, echo flute,
and flte d'icho must be treated together. The Loulie evidence does not,
unfortunately, help in determining what it was,9 but that it was something
seems established beyond much doubt.
GEORGE H. GOEBEL

NOTES

? David Lasocki, 'Paisible's.Echo Flute, Bononcini's Flauti Ech

Fiauti d'Echo', GSJ XLV (1992), pp.59-66. Michael Marissen,
Questions and their Significance in J. S. Bach's Fourth Brandenb
Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society (hereafter JA
pp.5-52.
2 Despite the persistence with which this view reappears, no good parallel in
Bach's work or elsewhere for such 'decorative' labelling of an instrumental part
has ever been adduced. The labelflauti echo that appears in a score of Bononcini
serves a functional purpose in distinguishing one pair of 'flutes' - which produce
only echoes - from another pair; the situation in the fourth Brandenburg is quite
different.
3 FoMRHIQ XXIII (April 1981), pp.20-1 and again briefly in a letter in
response to Lasocki's article (GSJ XLVI, 1993, pp.218-20).
4 Etienne Loulie, lnments ou Principes de Musique mis dans un nouvel ordre (Paris:
Christophe Ballard, 1696; facsimile rpt. Geneva: Minkoff, 1971).
s The sound of the tromba marina is different from that of the recorder,
because the first is harsh and the second is sweet. The sounds of two flates d'echo
are different, because the one is loud and the other is soft.

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 6 Albert Cohen, trans., Etienne Loulii: Elements or Principles of Music, Musical
Theorists in Translation V (New York: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1965), p.39.
7For biographical details on Paisible, see David Lasocki, 'Professional
Recorder Players in England, 1540-1740' (Ph.D. Diss., University of Iowa,
1983), vol. II, pp.780-804.
1 For biographical details on Bressan, see Maurice Byrne, 'Pierre Jaillard,
Peter Bressan', GSJ XXXVI (1983), pp.2-28; and id., 'More on Bressan', GSJ
XXXVII (1984), pp.102-11. His up-to-dateness can be demonstrated in the case
of two innovations in the transverse flute: the division into four joints and the
provision of an extended foot joint to reach middle C. Quantz dates both
innovations to around 1720. (On Playing the Flute, trans. Edward R. Reilly, 2nd
edn [Schirmer: New York, 1985], pp.31, 34.) A four-piece flute by Bressan
survives, which must have been made before his death in 1731, and probably
considerably earlier (see Jane Bowers, 'New Light on the Development of the
Transverse Flute between about 1650 and about 1770', JAMIS III, 1977, p.33).
Byrne (1983, p.13) cites evidence from a contemporary diarist that almost
certainly indicates that he was making flutes with extended foot joints in 1725.
9 The most attractive hyp6thesis is John Martin's (in a letter in The Recorder X,
1989, pp.20-2), that thefiauto d'echo consisted of a pair of recorders voiced so that
one was loud and the other soft, and fixed together so that they could be played
alternately. Note that such a contrivance, which could be played loud or soft, but
not in between, makes a particularly good illustration for the point Louli& is
making.

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