Flute manuscripts from the middle of the nineteenth century show that Scottish tunes and chamber music remained the preferred repertoire collected by flute players, with
69 The key is only used for specific notes on the one-keyed flute, unlike on the modern flute when it is depressed for nearly every note. It is not used for low D on either flute.
an emphasis on dances and marches. Details of instruments gleaned from these later manuscripts suggest that the one-keyed flute was played into the nineteenth century; the one-keyed flute was not immediately unpopular with flute players once the multi-keyed flute was developed, and some players undoubtedly clung to their old instruments for financial or sentimental reasons.70
A set of manuscripts owned by James Simpson of Dundee dated from 1828 to 1830 were discovered at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2002.71 The contents of the three volumes include church music, Scottish tunes, chamber music, and song
transcriptions. Much of the music comes from Wragg’s Improved Flute Preceptor,72 which has instructions for the keyed flute. Simpson’s manuscript has a partial fingering chart beginning with C-sharp above the staff and continuing to the B-flat five ledger lines above the staff, with a variety of fingering options for each note.73 Bizarrely, there is no chart for the first octave and a half; it possibly fell out of the book, but the fingering chart is on the last endpaper of the book, pasted onto the back cover, facing the page containing Simpson’s signature, and no pages seem to be missing.74
Because of the variety of fingerings possible for any note on any type of flute, it is impossible to determine from Simpson’s manuscripts what sort of flute he played.
A manuscript owned by Andrew Small, originally a draper from Angus who worked and lived in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, dated 1835 is housed at the National Library of Scotland (GB-En MS 21738). This manuscript consists predominantly of Irish tunes, and while it may have been compiled while Small was living in Ireland, he moved back and forth between Scotland and Ireland between the 1830s and 1850s, before
70 Keys make technical music in keys with a great deal of flats and sharps easier to manage, but offer no advantage in the simple tunes found in the manuscripts discussed here.
71 Karen E. McAulay, “Nineteenth-Century Dundonian Flute Manuscripts Found at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama”, Royal Music Association Research Chronicle, No. 38 (2005), 99–141. 72 McAulay, “Nineteenth-Century Dundonian Flute Manuscripts,” 104.
73 This is copied from Wragg. Jacob Wragg, Wragg’s Improved Flute Preceptor, London, 1806, 5. 74 Many thanks to Dr Karen McAulay, who examined the manuscript on my behalf.
emigrating to the United States, so there is a definite Scottish connection to the manuscript. The Irish music could be a consequence of Small’s residence in Ireland, but Irish tunes are also common in other Scottish manuscripts of the period.75 The music is within the range and scope of the one-keyed flute.
GB-Gu MS Farmer 193 is a manuscript tutor for the flute, from Glasgow, dating from 1838 or 1839. Following instructions for a one-keyed flute, the music consists of marches, dances, song transcriptions, and Scottish tunes. It is almost identical to earlier manuscripts in including a fingering chart and dance music and Scottish music, rather than transcriptions of contemporary sonatas, indicating that repertoire changed little for flute players well into the nineteenth century, and that the one-keyed flute was played in Scotland well after it had been almost completely abandoned by the rest of Europe.76 These later manuscripts suggest that there was no great change in flute playing or repertoire in Scotland by the 1830s.
7.13 Conclusion
Manuscripts can provide insight into repertoire, ability levels, pedagogy, and instruments of flute players in Scotland across the eighteenth century. Alexander Bruce’s manuscript of Valentine duets—the earliest known manuscript for the transverse flute in Scotland as well the earliest evidence for the instrument in Scotland77—shows that the repertoire in the early part of the eighteenth century included sonatas, and that Bruce at
75 Stuart Eydmann, From Glen to Glen: Musical Resonance Between Antrim and Argyll, unpublished typescript (Ulster Historical Foundation: Belfast, 2015).
76 Following the addition of keys by Potter around 1780, other makers began changing the design of the flute, and a variety of styles of flute co-existed until Boehm’s design, the basis of the modern concert flute, was universally adopted in the early twentieth century. Boehm’s flute was first known around 1847. Powell calls this period of invention and instability in the flute making world “the flute mania period”. Ardal Powell, The Flute (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 160–161.
least could play very high, but shows nothing else about the flute and flute repertoire in the first quarter of the eighteenth century in Scotland.
Manuscripts tell a slightly more conservative story than printed music: their repertoire shows the prevalence of a taste for Scottish tunes as well as popular song transcriptions as repertoire for amateur flute players, with notably fewer examples of sonatas or non-Scottish repertoire. Barring a nationalistic tendency, this could have something to do with ability levels of flute players, most of whom were amateurs, and the context in which the flute was played: Scottish tunes are less technically challenging than most sonatas, and provide better unaccompanied music for amateur musicians to play, especially in social settings. Accompanied sonatas more likely existed in music collections in their published editions rather than in manuscript books. The two people known to have had predominantly Italianate music in their manuscript books were both gentlemen players, whereas nothing is known about the owners of the other manuscripts. Although this might suggest that people who played Italianate sonatas had money and leisure time and those who preferred Scottish tunes and transcriptions of Handel arias did not, the evidence for this is very shaky.78 No other manuscripts owned by Alexander Bruce are known, but the music collection at Brucefield is vast and may yet yield more discoveries; the manuscripts preserved in Scottish libraries may have components in other places showing other
repertoire. Reid’s manuscript collection is intact, and unique amongst the manuscripts studied here for its lack of Scottish repertoire, but Reid and his music collection may not be representative of Scottish flute players at large. A possible conclusion is that the more up-to-date repertoire was circulated in print.
The pedagogical implications of the manuscripts are equally vague. Only two show potential indications of lesson fees and payments, and those only once each and
78 Countryfolk such as William Nicholson played flute and Niel Gow played Corelli; Scottish tunes are preserved in the manuscripts of wealthy country house libraries.
without details, and they could be scribbles unrelated to the music. The variety of handwriting in the Mitchell Library’s flute tutor, GB-Gm 788.51521 (2), as well the terribly vague instructions leads one to hope that the student who used the manuscript had a teacher of some sort for practical guidance.
Surprisingly, the manuscripts examined do not show the expected change in flute design across the century. The one-keyed flute is generally considered to have become obsolete by 1800, yet the evidence shows that in Scotland it continued to be played well into the nineteenth century. The limitations of this survey, however, could mean that manuscripts showing more advancement in flute technology may have been excluded.
The evidence of flute players also playing pipes from GB-En Adv. MS. 5.2.20 expands on what is known of flute players and pipers sharing repertoire, to show that the worlds of flute playing and piping were not necessarily separate and that musicians played both instruments. Much more information needs to be discovered to develop a full picture of the overlaps between flute playing and piping in eighteenth-century Scotland.
Even considering the possible exclusions and limitations, this survey of eighteenth- century manuscripts for flute from Scotland shows that there were very few changes in the musical taste of flute players that can be discerned from manuscripts across the century. The decline of the recorder, the presence of either of the flageolet or the voice flute, as well as the continued use of the one-keyed flute well into the nineteenth-century show which instruments may have been in use in Scotland in amateur music-making in the eighteenth century.
8. Instruments
8.1 Introduction
Instruments in use in eighteenth-century Scotland included the recorder, the fife, something called the Scots flute,1 and the transverse flute, commonly called the flute, German flute, one-keyed flute, or, in modern terminology, the traverso.2 These
instruments fall under the Hornbostel-Sachs classification number 421.121.12, side-blown flutes with fingerholes.3 Although “flute” in the eighteenth century could also refer to the recorder, in this chapter, because the terminology of museum records now exclusively uses flute to refer to the transverse instruments including fifes and piccolos, flute will be
understood in that sense. Additionally, consultation of makers’ surviving recorders in The
New Langwill Index shows the makers below to have been active as transverse flute
makers.4
This chapter will explore eighteenth-century transverse flutes in museum
collections in Scotland, flutes purchased by Scottish players in London and Scotland, flutes available in Scottish shops, and Scottish flute makers, including potential overlap with bagpipe makers. Flutes reached Scotland in the eighteenth century in a variety of ways, including imports from mainland Europe, purchase in London either by the players themselves or on their behalf by music dealers, and purchase in Scottish shops.
1 See Chapter 5, ‘Professional musicians’, for further discussion of the elusive Scots flute, mentioned only once in references to the flute in eighteenth-century Scotland.
2 This is possibly more so the case in the United States.
3 Erich M. von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, ‘Classification of Musical Instruments,’ trans. by Anthony Baines and Klaus P. Wachsmann, The Galpin Society Journal, vol 14 (Mar 1961): 3-29, 24-25, accessed 7 March 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/842168.
4 William Waterhouse, The New Langwill Index: A Dictionary of Musical Wind-Instrument Makers and