(2 of 2)
The object in which these artists find such rich resource is the most ancient of wind instruments. Unperforated flutes have been found among paleolithic remains, and neolithic man had already learned to puncture the sound tube and turn it elegantly tangent to his lips. In classical antiquity, "Phrygian pipes" were played by prostitutes, and during the Renaissance an epidemic of flute playing swept across Europe. Henry VIII owned 148 flutes and tootled several hours a day. Frederick the Great of Prussia caught flute fever as a boy, and hid his teacher in a closet to escape the wrath of his flute-hating father. Though Couperin, Telemann, Vivaldi, Bach and Handel wrote stacks of magnificent music for it, the flute in those days was easy to hate. ("You ask me what is worse than a flute?" Cherubini once snarled. "Two flutes!") Like most simple instruments it was difficult to play well, but so easy to play badly that almost everyone succeeded.
After 1847, when a German jeweler and flutist named Theobald Boehm perfected the sophisticated instrument now in use, the French eagerly adopted it. By World War I, flutists like Claude Paul Taffanel, Georges Barrere and Marcel Moyse had produced an impressive tradition of virtuosity. Oddly enough, the romantic composers could not find a place in their palette for the infinite colors of the flute, but Debussy and Ravel, the great impressionists, splashed patches of flute all over their sound paintings. Suddenly instrumentalists began to clamor for flute lessons. In Europe, the great teacher was Marcel Moyse; in the U.S. William Kincaid. Between them, these men developed almost all the important modern flutists—who in turn have badgered composers to write for the flute and musicologists to ransack the archives for flute music long forgotten. In the last ten years, flute repertory has been strenuously improved and enlarged—some 5,000 selections are now catalogued. In the same time, the number of amateur flute players in the U.S. has more than tripled. Says Flutist Baker: "The flute at last is taking center stage as a solo instrument. Who knows? In the next ten years, it may even catch up with the violin."