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A very interesting letter
from the inventor of the Boehm flute to his friend and customer in
London, Walter Broadwood. Broadwood was later to publish Boehm's
1847 Essay in English.
We have included some
explanations [in square brackets]; otherwise the text is original.
We wish to thank Ludwig Böhm, Theobald Boehm's descendant, for kindly
providing a copy of the letter and for permission to publish it.
Capital letters on personal
nouns and pronouns are as used by Boehm.
Walter
Broadwood, Esq.re
3 Queens Gate Gardens,
South Kensington, London
Munich, March 17th, 1866
Dear
Mr. Broadwood!
I am
very glad to learn, You are still satisfied with Your flute. As to the
lever for Bb I had my reasons for altering it. - If the key for C2 and
[the Bb]
lever move on the same axle, the Charnière, little tube must be divided
in two parts (a) and (b) and it becomes too small to resist the pressure
upwards, which is by most players given with the thumb.
Therefore the C2 key gets very often shaky - loose - and the key is no
more sure to stop the C2 hole sure and perfect. The key is too long in
proportion to the small tube. As I make it the key is sure to stop, and
as I want in one way as in the other [German
for “one way or another”!] a separate piece as a lever, it is
more solid to give to both, to the key and the lever a longer piece of
Charnière. I prefer what is more solid and sure.
[The tubes referred to are clearly the bearing tubes for the keys in
question. It is true that if these are made too short wear is
accelerated and the key can get off line and fail to seat reliably.
Boehm has evidently altered his arrangement to get around this by making
the bearing tubes longer and using a longer axle to suit]
As to
the shakes [C1 - Bb1, C2 - Bb2],
[Hazy
sketch of musical notation for these two shakes omitted]
They
are just as easy, as You are not obliged to shake the lever with the C2
key. Take the Bb with the first finger of the right hand, and You have
to shake only the C2 key, just as You do with Bb. You might say, that
the C2 gets influenced by holding the Bb key stopped, but you may be
sure, that nobody has yet heard, that the C2 is an Idea
[an iota?] lower during the shake. - [He’s
saying that in the context of a shake, keeping the Bb key closed doesn’t
affect things in any audible sense]
[The next bit is
very
interesting - here we find Boehm’s views on English High Pitch!! He
disapproves, and apparently Broadwood agrees with him!]
What
You write about the pitch is a more serious matter. You are right, it
is a nonsense to force the pitch up so much, and it proves only that
English ears in general are not very sensible for quality of tone.
A wind instrument with tone-holes can only be correctly tuned in one
sort of pitch. If You make the column of air longer or shorter, all the
distances of the holes must change in proportion. If you draw out a
good flute more than | |
[about
3-4 mm]
or if
You cut shorter the head piece of [by]
so much, You may still play correct, but if you go on farther, the
tuning gets worse with every Millimeter, because the influence is just
twice as much on the second c2 - (in a flute) than on the low C1.
[Boehm is exactly right - the c under the
thumb key is about half-way up the flute from the open foot, which gives
low C] Therefore if you draw out until the a1 gets right p. ex.
[by comparison?] with the low
Paris-Normal-pitch [the Diapason Normale of
A=435], which is 8 Millimeter,
the upper notes from the a1 become just so much lower to the a1, as the
lower notes become sharper.
[a perhaps convoluted way of saying that drawing out a flute built for
English High Pitch to give an a1 at Continental Pitch will throw the
tuning out by making the upper notes relatively flatter and the lower
notes relatively sharper by comparison with an a1 tuned to the lower
pitch]
If the
difference by a1 is 8 mm it is by c2 only 7 mm and by e2 14 mm and all
the holes between must be altered in their distances from the cork in
the head in a geometrical proportion. [i.e.
you would need a different slide extension to tune each note to the
lower pitch] Therefore a much shorter head will never do. You
may shorten it for [by] about 4-5 mm
but no more. Even by making another middle piece to the flute, You can
get only the tuning perfect down till e1, but the lower notes will be no
more perfect, but the eb1 more flat than the eb, the d1 still a little
more and e1 sharp and eb1 more the previous coming notes. -
[It looks as if Broadwood was asking about
getting his new Boehm flute up to English High Pitch and asked if this
could be done simply by making a new head joint or a new body section
for the flute. The second approach would still leave the foot out of
whack]. It is not so much, that a good player could not correct
these notes by his Embouchure, but I should not like to play a solo with
such a flute. - You have marked the difference of length from the cork
to the a1 like A.........B
[indicating
a distance of about 11 mm]
by which you probably mean that the head ought to be so much shorter.
Please do try it in this way: Draw your flute out until your Bb is
perfect [ly] equal in tune with the a1
of the orchestra pitch. Then cut a slip of strong paper, |///| that it
fits exactly in the space between the head and the middle piece. If You
after that will send me the that paper or give the exact measurement in
Millimeters, then I know at once how much the differences must be for
all the holes.
P.
Ex. [?? For example? Per Exemplar?] On
Your flute the centre of the A1 hole is 337.08 Millimeter distant from
the Cork in the head, and the Bb is 315.36, the C2 275.50 and the end of
the flute - 605.00 mm.
[Boehm
seems to be asking Broadwood for the information he would need to use
his
Schema
to
calculate the new hole positions for High Pitch. Indeed, his
description of how the schema works includes that same trick of tuning A
down to Bb (as the head is too long to take it up to High Pitch A).
It
would be easy for us who routinely use tuning meters to forget that
neither Boehm nor Broadwood would have ready access to such things.
A mechanical measurement of the extension needed to produce the pitch
required is something Broadwood could achieve and Boehm could work from.
Boehm
starts this next paragraph estimating what would need to be cut off the
head of Broadwood's current flute to get the A up to High Pitch, and
demonstrating mathematically the sad consequences to tuning that would
bring.]
Now to
come near to Your measurement, let me say, you would be obliged to draw
out 6 mm for making your Bb1 equal to the a1 of the high pitch. Then
the centre of the a1 hole must be Bb1 (315.36) + 6 = 321.36 mm - which
is less, or shorter than on Your flute for
[by] 337.08 - 321.36 = 16.72 mm and consequently the c2 must be
shorter 13.60 and the c1 30.00 mm. You see, that by cutting the head
16.7 mm the c2 would be too low down for [by]
3.12 and the end too high up for [by]
13.60 mm, consequently the first much too flat and the last much too
sharp to the a1. - The difference is so very great, that I think one of
my flutes tuned after the P. [Paris]
normal Diapason would do quite well for half a note, but then the
transposing would not do for You, though I was obliged to play from
1821 - 1824 in our Italian Opera all half a tone lower, as the
difference with the German Opera was so much.
[Now
that’s one way of dealing with High Pitch - use a flute built for
Continental pitch and transpose everything up a half tone! Or vice
versa, as in Boehm’s own earlier case……those Germans must have sung
pretty low! Boehm says here that one of his flutes at Continental Pitch
would play pretty well at English High Pitch if everything was
transposed up half a tone, but concedes that Broadwood might not enjoy
doing this.]
If Mr.
Carte had read or had not forgotten what I had written in my brochure on
flute making and improvements 1847 – of which he refused in a shameful
way to return me my English translation as you will remember yourself
–
he
might know that I had said: - As the holes must substitute the cuttings
of the tube, they ought to be as large as possible. You may be sure
that I have tried everything years before and much more, as Carte and
such will think upon!
[Boehm
touches on two very interesting issues in this last paragraph.
Firstly, he is clearly critical of a failure by Carte (now head of
Rudall & Carte) to publish or return the English translation of Boehm's
essay that Boehm had provided Rudall 19 years earlier. We go
further into that issue in
The Saga of Boehm’s (Böhm's)
1847 “Essay”.
Secondly he seems to be critical of Carte for forgetting that he, Boehm,
had already pointed out the desirability of holes being as large as
possible (in the very Essay), in order to emulate best the cutting off
of the tube at that point. Since this is aimed at Carte, we assume
it's in reference to Rudall & Carte's Rockstro model, which came out
about 2 years prior to this letter. The expression "as Carte
and such [implied: like Carte]" suggests Boehm does not hold Carte in
significant esteem as a flute designer.]
With my
best wishes,
Yours
very sincerely,
Theobald Boehm
N.B - I
have already made piccolos of cocuswood with silver keys like the flutes
for the Orchestras in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe &c. which are very good.
The price is £6. - but it would be £7. - as I am obliged to make a model
if in so high a pitch.
[obviously, Broadwood had asked him about
getting a cocuswood piccolo made at high Pitch. There would be extra
work involved in devising such a model, hence the price increase]
You
ought to get from Schott: Über den Flötenbau und die neuesten
Verbesserungen desselben, von Th. Boehm. Mainz, B Schotts Söhne, 1847
because you seem not to remember it.
[Here he is reminding Broadwood that his “Essay”
is
available in German, a fact which Broadwood appears to have forgotten.
Once again, we see Boehm’s reliance upon that work to explain his design
approach as well as his frustration that his work is not available in
English!!] |