Paisible's Echo Flute, Bononcini's Flauti Eco, and Bach's Fiauti d'Echo

Author(s): David Lasocki

Source: The Galpin Society Journal , Mar., 1992, Vol. 45 (Mar., 1992), pp. 59-66
Published by: Galpin Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/842261

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 DAVID LASOCKI

Paisible's Echo Flute,

Bononcini's Flauti Eco
and Bach's Fiauti d'Ech
N his note in GSJ XXXIX on 'Bach's "Fiauti d'Ech
restates his earlier opinion2 (presented as an answer
Thurston Dart3) that the instrument Bach scored for in h
burg Concerto 'was most likely the standard treble recor
on to suggest that, rather than specifying a 'distinct typ
Bach may rather have meant to describe the way in whic
(Flauto) was to be played'. Taking his cue from a recent p
concerto by the Concentus Musicus of Vienna, Higbee
off-stage echo effect is 'the most likely answer to the rid
d'Echo'. I believe that Higbee may be moving in the rig
present evidence here that tends to support his gener
believe it is time to re-examine, in the light of recent re

of the arguments of Dart that have never been seriou

When all is said and done, there have been (and are)
avenues of approach to the fiauti d'echo: (1) that B
instruments called 'echo flutes' - some size or sizes of the common
instruments of the flute family (recorder, flageolet, flute) or different
from them in some special way; (2) that Bach intended plainfiauti (treble
recorders) and the appendage 'd'echo' referred to an echo effect, either
literal or figurative.
Taking the first approach, we should ask at the outset whether any
instruments named 'echo flutes' are mentioned by Bach's contemporaries.
The answer is 'yes', as Dart discussed in his article. First, he showed that an
instrument called the 'echo flute' was known in England during the 1710s.
Concerts in London in the early part ofthe eighteenth century were often
advertised in the newspapers. The advertisements generally gave only the
type of piece performed ('a solo', 'a concerto') and only occasionally the
names of the composers. They did, however, take some pains to list the
principal performers - the main attractions of the concerts, after all - and
any unusual instruments they played.
A concert at London's premiere venue for such events, Hickford's
Room, on 25 March 1713 included 'a solo on the echo flute by Mr Peasible,

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accompanied by Mr [William] Babell Jun. on the harpsichord', as well
as 'several new concertos for the hautboy, flute, German flute, trumpet,
and other instruments, composed by Mr [William] Corbett, and
performed by him and the best Masters in the Opera'.5 James Paisible (to
use the original, French spelling of his name) was the best-known
recorder player in England at that time.6 Note that the advertisement
distinguishes the echo flute from both the recorder ('flute') and the
transverse flute ('German flute'). A further concert at Hickford's Room
promoted by Corbett on 28 April the following year included 'variety
of pieces on the echo flute, hautboy, German flute [and] trumpet', the
echo flute presumably being played by Paisible.
A couple of years later Paisible became a member of the orchestra of
the Drury Lane Theatre and a featured performer during the
'entertainments' - in effect little concerts - that were given there
during the intervals of the plays. In such entertainments, on 28 April
1715 he played unspecified music for the echo flute, on 2 June a 'solo on
the echo flute', and on 2 November and 20 December 'a piece for the
echo flute'?
In 1717, Paisible took part in a series of subscription concerts at
Stationers Hall. The advertisement for the second concert of the series
on 13 March mentions the echo flute, which was presumably played by
him. In a further concert at Stationers Hall on 23 December that year,
he performed 'a piece for the echo flute'? On 12 March the following
year, he again performed 'a piece for the echo flute' at a concert at The
Tennis Court, Haymarket; back at Stationers Hall on 23 December, 'a
piece for the small echo flute'. Finally, at Drury Lane on 9 May 1719,
for his last advertised performance, Paisible played 'a new piece for the
echo flute'.1' He died two years later, and the echo flute is not
mentioned again in advertisements.
Secondly, Dart took a look at the flageolet - a six-holed fipple flute
similar to the recorder. He discussed its popularity in England in the
1650s to 1680s and its renewed popularity from about 1708 to 1720. The
flageolet was made in two sizes, d" andg", the latter being known as the
'bird-flageolet'. Dart pointed out that advertisements and reports of the
1710s contain new designations for fipple flutes - 'flauto piccolo', 'French
flutes', 'octave flute', 'little flute', and of course 'echo flute'. He
expressed his belief that all of these instruments were in fact flageolets.
Thirdly, Dart discussed some interesting connections between
London and Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg at that time.
The most significant of these is that in 1716 one of the Margrave's
musicians ('Signior Giorgio Giacomo Besivillibald') gave a concert in
London in which 'the best Masters of the Opera' took part. Dart
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suggests that Besivillibald may have taken a bird-flageolet back with
him to Germany, and that two years later he may have been one of the
musicians who played chamber music for the Margrave during Bach's
visit. Thus Bach would have known about bird-flageolets and the use of
them made in the Margrave's orchestra.
Let us reconsider Dart's points. First, there is no question that an
instrument called the 'echo flute' made its appearance on the London
concert scene between about 1713 and 1719 in the hands of James
Paisible. Paisible, an expatriate Frenchman, kept in touch with France
and he was a friend of Peter Bressan, the famous French recorder maker
who also lived in London at that time." If the French makers or Bressan
had come up with a new fipple flute, Paisible would presumably have
heard about it.
What Dart did not know is that two days after Paisible's burial, on 19
August 1721, an inventory was taken of his possessions by one of his
executors.'2 The only woodwind instruments listed in it are 'two voice
flutes, one consort flute and two small ones, an old hautboy and an old
cane flute'. The voice flute was a tenor recorder in d'; the consort flute,
a treble recorder; the small flutes presumably 'fifth flutes', 'sixth flutes'
(recorders in c" and d"), and/or sopranino recorders; the cane flute, a
recorder in the shape of a walking stick. The executor that took the
inventory was none other than Peter Bressan. He was, of course, quite
familiar with different sizes of recorders - in fact, he probably made the
ones that Paisible played - and he made no mention of any echo flutes
(large or small) or flageolets. Clearly, the echo flutes that Paisible played
were similar enough to ordinary recorders for Bressan not to call them
by a different name.
Secondly, Dart may have been correct in equating 'flauto piccolo' and
'French flutes' with flageolets - at least in some cases - and perhaps
even the 'octave flute' was a flageolet rather than a sopranino recorder.
But he seems to have been wrong about 'little flute'. When the
concertos for fifth flute and sixth flute by William Babell, John Baston,
and Robert Woodcock were published, their title pages and the
transpositions required made it clear that those instruments were
intended.'3 Baston (another well-known recorder player)14 and Paisible
were frequently advertised as performing concertos for the 'little flute'
during the 1710s, Woodcock being one of the named composers;
moreover, Babell's concertos are said on their title page to have been
'performed at the theatre to great applause'. Thus, 'little flute' almost
certainly refers to the fifth flute and sixth flute.
The managers of the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, where Baston
worked, knew the difference between 'little flute' and flageolet,
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because they advertised a concerto by Pepusch for the latter in 1717.17
The managers of the Drury Lane Theatre, where Paisible worked,
advertised him as playing both 'little flute' and 'echo flute', so that these
two instruments can apparently be distinguished. Thus neither 'echo
flute' nor 'little flute' can be equated with each other or with the
flageolet.
Thirdly, the proven connections between London and the Margrave
of Brandenburg could well mean that instruments were taken from
London by, or to, the Margrave's musicians. Contrary to Dart's
assumption, there is no evidence that Bach visited Berlin in 1718 and
heard the Margrave's chamber musicians. He did visit the city the next
year, however, in order to collect a harpsichord, when, according to his
own testimony (in the dedication to the Brandenburg Concertos), he
appeared before the Margrave. It is not inconceivable that he heard or
saw the Margrave's musicians on that visit. Thus, although the evidence
is weaker than Dart believed, Paisible's 'echo flute' may have found its
way to Berlin and to Bach.
The question now remains: was Paisible's echo flute identical to the
recorder or was it modified in some way? It does not make sense that the
promoters of his concerts would have drawn attention over and over
again to a plain recorder, a common feature of the London musical
scene. Yet, as we have seen, the instruments that Paisible owned were
described by Bressan as recorders. A modification of the recorder is
therefore plausible.
A promising line of study was opened up ten years ago by Jeremy
Montagu,'6 who suggested that fiauti d'echo 'may have been recorders
with some additional mechanical device allowing them to play loud and
soft without going out of tune. If such instruments existed, they have not
survived; nor has any mention of them'. Soon Montagu reported a
response from Cary Karp, the curator at the Stockholm Musikmuseet:
He reminded me of the Dolmetsch chin key which opens a small hole opposite
the mouth of a recorder, increases the area of open hole, raising the pitch and
thus demanding softer blowing to get back in tune. There is a flate d'accord
[double recorder] in the Stockholm collection by Veyrat (eighteenth century)
with a key for the lower thumb which could be just such a device (the holes it
covers are roughly opposite the mouths [lips]), though it may be an octave key;
the instrument doesn't work well enough to be sure. So, just possibly,
something like the Dolmetsch key was known in Brandenburg?"'7

As Montagu wrote to me on the question, 'Since the instrument doesn't

work, we have no definite proof, but at least as a hypothesis it's a great
deal nearer to answering [the question of what fiauti d'echo' were] than
anything else'.18

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 Montagu has written to me more recently, however: 'When I was in
New York... a couple or so years ago, we visited Bob Rosenbaum, and
he had in his collection an instrument identical to that which Cary refers
to, with such a key. It doesn't do what Cary thought it might. So the
question is still wide open, though Cary's idea of something equivalent
to Dolmetsch's chin-key still seems to me to be probable'.19
An even more promising hypothesis has recently been put forward by
John Martin.20 He notes that Samuel Pepys, in his diary entry for 20
January 1667/8, wrote:
Up, and all the morning at the office very busy, and at noon by coach to
Westminster, to the 'Chequer, about a warrant for Tangier money. In my way
both coming and going I did stop at Drumbleby's, the pipe-maker, there to
advise about the making of a flageolet to go low and soft, and he do show me a
way which do do, and also a fashion of having two pipes of the same note
fastened together, so as I can play on one, and then echo it on the other, which is
mighty pretty.

Martin then suggests the possibility that Drumbleby made an "echo

flute" by fastening together a loud and a soft recorder. When Paisible
arrived in London a few years later he would naturally have met the
local instrument makers, and might well have bought an echo flute. He
would have played it for friends, but only brought it into the public
arena late in his career, as a novelty'.
Martin's hypothesis is considerably strengthened by two pieces of
evidence he does not mention. First, Anthony " Wood describes the
Court violinist John Banister I as playing on 'a little pipe or flagellet in
consort' at a concert in Oxford in 1666.? Secondly, Sir John Hawkins
reports that Banister's son, John Banister II (1662-1736),22 'was famous
for playing on two flutes [recorders] at once'.23 Now Hawkins, in
writing about early-eighteenth-century musicians, sometimes gets
details wrong24 and perhaps he should have referred to Paisible rather
than Banister. But in any case, Banister often played with Paisible at the
theatre and in public concerts, so that Paisible would certainly have been
familiar with the practice of fastening recorders together.
To sum up this discussion so far, one approach to Bach'sfiauti d'echo is
that they were particular members of the flute family. James Paisible, a
well-known recorder player in London, played an instrument called the
'echo flute' in the second decade of the eighteenth century which seems
to have been a recorder or a subtle modification of it. John Martin has
plausibly suggested that Paisible's echo flute consisted of two recorders,
loud and soft, fastened together. In any case, Paisible's echo flute could
well have found its way to Germany.
The second approach to thefiauti d'echo, as mentioned above, is that

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fiauti were plain recorders and 'd'echo' referred to a literal or figurative
echo effect. Some interesting light on this approach has recently been
shed by Ernst Kubitschek?5 He reports that Giovanni Bononcini, an
Italian composer working in Vienna, called for '2 Flauti' and '2 Flauti
Eco' in an aria in his opera Ilfiore delle eroine (1704):
While both [sets of] Flauti are used with the singer, the Flauti Eco always
imitate the phrase endings of the normal recorders. The identical range (a2-d3,
notated in treble clef) allows one to think that all the recorders are the same
type of instrument and that the designation Flauti Eco is to be understood also as
a manner of use. This designation in the score can possibly even be imagined as
a separate location, perhaps on stage [as opposed to in the orchestra pit].?6
In a footnote, Kubitschek adds that in his serenata Euleofesteggiante nel
ritorno d'Alessandro Magno dall'Indie (1699) Bononcini also called for '2
Trombe Ecco', 'which imitate the musical pairing of tenor and solo
trumpet'.
Thus Higbee's suggestion seems to have some foundation in
contemporaneous evidence. Of course, the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto
has only one pair offiauti d'echo, which often play together in thirds,
so that there can be no question of spatial separation of the recorders
from one another. The Concentus Musicus' solution of having the
recorders off-stage only for the second movement (in which they and
the solo violin keep 'echoing' phrases of the orchestra) does make them
into spatially-echoing instruments. But why only in the second
movement, and if so, why not include the violin? It does not make sense
to me.

It might be, then, that we should consider the recorders fig

'echoing' the solo violin. Here I must let readers know about th
Ph.D. dissertation on the Brandenburg Concertos by Michael M
His discussion - based on an intimate knowledge of Bach'
scripts, musical style and notational practice - is by far the b
seen on the identity of the 'fiauti d'echo' (although his main pu
to use that identity as the basis for a social interpretation of t
and style of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto). Suffice it to say her
shows thatfiauti d'echo were almost certainly treble recorders,
is unlikely to have intended them to play loud and soft, and th
he probably had in mind a figurative echo.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for the help and support given me in the prepa

by Maurice Byrne, Andreas Giger, Michael Marissen, and m
Indiana University Libraries, especially David Fenske an

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 NOTES

1GSJ XXXIX (1986), p. 133. In another recent article ('Echoes f

Past', The Recorder: Journal of the Victorian Recorder Guild IX [Februa
pp. 1-3), John Martin attempts to collect together the variety of opin
the identity of the 'fiauti d'echo'. He does not, however, include th
Karp, Kubitschek, and Lasocki referred to in the present article.
2 'Bach's "Fiauti d'Echo" ' (letter to the editor), Music and Letter
(April 1962), pp. 192-193.
3'Bach's "Fiauti d'Echo" ', Music and Letters XLI/4 (October 1
pp. 331-341.
4 In his letter of 1962 Higbee challenged Dart's arguments that th
d'echo were octave-transposing instruments pitched in G.
5 The London Stage, 1660-1800 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Uni
Press, 1960-79) [hereinafter referred to as 'LS'], vol. II/1, p. 298
Tilmouth, 'A Calendar of References to Music in Newspapers Pub
London and the Provinces (1660-1719)', Royal Musical Association R
Chronicle I (1961) [hereinafter referred to as 'TC'], p. 84.
6 For a comprehensive biography of Paisible, see David
'Professional Recorder Players in England, 1540-1740' (Ph.
University of Iowa, 1983), vol. II, pp. 780-815.
7 LS, vol. II/1, pp. 353, 358, 374, 381.
8 TC, p. 97.
9 LS, vol. 11/2, p. 475; TC, p. 100.
10 LS, vol. 11/2, p. 539.
11 On Bressan's life, see Maurice Byrne's articles 'Pierre Jaillard, Peter
Bressan', GSJ XXXVI (1983), pp. 2-28; and 'More on Bressan', XXXVIII
(1984), pp. 102-111.
12 London, Public Record Office, PROB 3/21/112. The entire inventory is
transcribed in Lasocki, 'Professional Recorder Players', vol. II, pp. 983-985.
14 See David Lasocki and Helen Neate, 'The Life and Works of Robert
Woodcock, 1690-1728', The American Recorder XXIX/3 (August 1988),
pp. 92-104.
14 On Baston's life, see Lasocki, 'Professional Recorder Players', vol. II, pp.
850-853.

15 TC, p. 88.
16 'What was the flauto d'echo?', FoMRHI Quarterly XXIII (April 1981)
pp. 20-21.
17 FoMRHI Quarterly XXV (October 1981), p. 9.
1s Letter to David Lasocki, 24 May 1982.
19 Letter to David Lasocki, 12 June 1990.
20 In his contribution to Fred Morgan, John Martin and Malcolm Tattersall,
'Echoes Resounding', The Recorder: Journal of the Victorian Recorder Guild X
(December 1989), pp. 19-24.
21 See The Life and Times of Anthony a Wood, Antiquary of Oxford, 1632-95,
Described by Himself, ed. Andrew Clark (Oxford, 1891-1900), vol. II, p. 69.

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 22 For a biography of Banister, see Lasocki, 'Professional Recorder Players',
vol. II, pp. 816-829.
23 A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776; ed.
Charles Cudworth, New York: Dover, 1963), II, 824.
24 See my article, 'Burney and Hawkins as Biographers of Early 18th-
Century Musicians: Four Cautionary Examples', The Musical Times (forth-
coming).
25 Ernst Kubitschek, 'Block- und Querflte im Umkreis von Johann Joseph
Fux - Versuch einer OJbersicht', in Johann Joseph Fux und die barocke
Bldsertradition: Kongressbericht Graz 1985, ed. Bernhard Habla (Tutzing: Hans
Schneider, 1987), pp. 103-104.
26 'WWdhrend die beiden Flauti gemeinsam mit dem Sdnger eingesetzt sind, imitieren

die Flauti Eco nur stets die Schlusswendung der normalen Fl'ten. Der identische Umfang
(a2-d3, aufgezeichnet im G 2Schliissel) liisst bei allen Fldten an denselben Instrumenten-
typ denken und die Bezeichnung Flauti Eco also zusdtzliche Anwendungscharakreris-
ierung verstehen. Die Anweisung in der Partitur liesse eventuell auch auf eine dislozierte
Aufstellung, etwa in Kulissen, denken.'
27 'Scoring, Structure, and Signification in J. S. Bach's Brandenburg
Concertos' (Ph.D. Diss., Brandeis University, 1991). Marissen intends to
publish the chapter on the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto as an article soon.
(Letters to David Lasocki, 23 June and 9 July 1990.)

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