The history of flageolets and tin whistles

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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by an seanduine »

Earlier there was some mention of Robert Louis Stevenson, and a fine photograph (Thank you Mr. Gumby). Stevenson played what has come to be called an English Flageolet. I have a four key example of one in D. Here is a link to a site dedicated to these instruments and a little more info on Stevenson:http://flageolets.com/biographies/stevenson.php
If you purchase one, say through Evilbay, you will most commonly find the mouthpiece missing or much eroded. This can be remedied with a pipe mouthpiece in pseudo amber. Mine is from the brand name Medico. They do require good breath support and control. In spite of a somewhat recorderish style of fingering, a lot of fun.

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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by Mr.Gumby »

There was a whole bunch of instruments that looked like they sat somewhere between the flageolet and the whistle. Especially French whistles of ate 19th century retained shapes more or less rooted in the flageolets. Charles Mathieu in Paris had a whole range of them and related instruments ( my great-grandfather had a Mathieu ocarina that I still have somewhere). Somewhat strange hybrids too, at times, like this one .

Here are a few more (sorry for recycling those images again. And look, extended chimneys, now there's a novel idea.. :D ) :

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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by paddler »

Nanohedron wrote: Wed Jun 08, 2022 12:35 pm
Mr.Gumby wrote: Wed Jun 08, 2022 12:24 pm
the dearth of physical evidence due to more ancient fippled instruments being largely made from such easily-gotten yet ephemeral materials.
The oldest known examples are mostly bone and they are very old indeed. In fact the oldest known musical instrument is a vulture bone flute (the Hohe Fels flute), estimated around 40000 years old
Not to deny them their considerable due, but aren't those notched flutes? I'm suspecting that for the longest time, the fipple (as we know and think of it) was more often readily and easily served by making it from wood-and-bark construction.
Fipple flutes have a very long history in the Americas. Some of the examples that exist in museums today date
back thousands of years. The best preserved ones were made from ceramics. For example, here is an example of
a double bored, double fipple, flute from Mexico that dates back to the period 300 BCE - 250 CE. There are many
others.

Colima Double Duct flute

I have often wondered whether the development of the recorder and flageolet in Europe was influenced by the
exposure Europeans had to civilizations in the Americas post Columbus. I know a lot of people claim the opposite,
regarding development of Native American flutes, i..e, that they only came into existence after native Americans
saw Europeans playing flageolets, but there is a mountain of evidence to show that Americans made extensive use
of all kinds of flutes dating back thousands of years. In contrast, there is very little evidence of early fipple flutes
(recorders, flageolets or whistles) in Europe that pre-dates Columbus.

Of course, that could easily be a result of wooden artifacts not surviving. But there are numerous examples of wooden
flutes (rim blown ones) that survived for well over 1000 years in the arid southwestern desert areas of North America,
and many ceramic fipple flutes.
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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by Mr.Gumby »

Remains of whistles found in Ireland go back at least a thousand years. Wooden and bone ones from excavations of Viking Dublin at Wood Quay and 12th century ones from Cork.



That sort of thing was pretty much universal. It's probably also a bit outside a history of tin whistles.
Last edited by Mr.Gumby on Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by an seanduine »

What arouses my curiousity is the preference of tapered vs. straight bores. The keyed flageolets seemed to be predominantly tapered bore instruments, or is this a false judgement? The wooden ones for sale in America in the late 1800´s to early 1900´s were, and I believe Mr. G. has at least one keyed metal flageolet. Am I wrong in remembering the metal one as being taper-bored , Peter?

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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by Mr.Gumby »

Am I wrong in remembering the metal one as being taper-bored , Peter?

Yes, the keyed whistle is a straight, all metal tube.

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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by paddler »

For me, the main distinction between flageolets and whistles is that flageolets have a slow air chamber between the windway
and the blade, whereas whistles do not. This tends to mellow out the tone as well as change the way they are played. The
less strident tone is a desirable property for a flageolet, and is mentioned in the article cited, when distinguishing the fife and
flageolet. So I'm not convinced that it is really appropriate to lump flageolets and whistles into a single category with a shared
history. I've always considered whistles, flageolets and fifes to be three distinct classes of instrument, and that is without bringing
materials into the equation. If materials are what is most relevant here, then all the old flageolets I have seen (French of English)
have been made from wood, and often have a bone mouthpiece. So they are hardly tin whistles.

Whistles, both musical and non-musical, are an ancient technology in many cultures. The use of metal for non-musical whistles
likely predates the "invention" of tin whistle as a musical instrument by a long period. Whistles probably predate flageolets, if you
define a flageolet as having a slow air chamber. To my knowledge, flageolets have only been around for a few hundred years,
whereas examples of whistles date back well over 1000 years.

I think it would help to have a clearer definition of what counts and what doesn't count in this discussion. Is the focus on the use
of a fipple mechanism? A slow air chamber? The use of metal? The use of tin, specifically? The name? The ready availability of an
inexpensive, mass-produced instrument? ...
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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by Nanohedron »

paddler wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:21 pm Is the focus on the use of a fipple mechanism?
It has been for me. I'm always a bit amazed that someone would ever have come up with the concept at all; to me, everything else - fingering, conical/cylindrical, slow air chamber/direct blown, materials - are just extranea, and we're still playing with it. Yes, these things make important differences, but in the end you can't get away from the fipple in any of them. The fipple drives them all. I would love to know what sort of mind came up with the idea.
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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by an seanduine »

Hmmm, we seem to have strayed into the realm of ¨Lumpers and Splitters¨https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters.
To my mind, Flageolets have fipples and Windcaps. Whistles have fipples and no windcaps.
Volume, shrill-ness, sweetness or other tonal characteristics are a function primarily of voicing. . .which is strictly in the dimensions of the windway, window, and blade. I have encountered both loud and quiet windcap equiped fipple instruments.

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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by paddler »

My first reading of the thread also had me thinking that we were talking about the history of fipple flutes,
which is why I included the reference to ancient flutes from the Americas. There is evidence (i.e., surviving artifacts)
of flutes with and without fipples, and fipple-flutes with and without windcaps, going back thousands of years.
Similarly, there are surviving examples of duct flutes and whistles in Europe dating back a thousand years or more.
In both cases instruments in this class (fipple flutes) pre-dated Columbian contact in 1492, and hence any of these
could have had an influence on instruments designed later. Much of the evidence discussed regarding flageolets
and whistles dates much later than Columbian contact.

Anyhow, I'm not really trying to argue one way or the other in terms of a specific causal relationship. But I am also
not sure why Mr Grumpy said that my previous post is "probably also a bit outside a history of tin whistles". It made
me wonder what was in scope for a discussion of "history of tin whistles". To my mind, any fipple flutes that pre-date
the instruments we are talking about (whatever they are) could be part of the history. Of course, different people have
different things in mind when they use the term "history". I guess my view of "history" in this case is mostly concerned
with the evolution of ideas/designs and the influences that drove them.
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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by stringbed »

Flageolets — in the sense we are using the term — initially had recorder-type “beaks,” not windcaps. That device came later to hold a piece of absorbent material that prevented moisture from entering the windway. Later still, metal instruments were made with the characteristic appearance of the windcap but without its initial functionality.

All variants are “internal duct flutes” in the classification system most commonly used in academic contexts. As has already been pointed out in this discussion, such instruments are “universal” — a concept that is fundamental to the historiography of manufactured objects. A universal construct is one that can be encountered at any time in any place, without need for explaining how it got there. To be sure, invention and transmission also weigh into the process, but not in any manner that makes it meaningful to discuss where six-holed whistles first appeared.
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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by david_h »

Nanohedron wrote: Sun Jun 12, 2022 9:08 pm I'm always a bit amazed that someone would ever have come up with the concept at all <snip> I would love to know what sort of mind came up with the idea.
stringbed wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:02 amA universal construct is one that can be encountered at any time in any place, without need for explaining how it got there.
So "amazing and difficult" from one viewpoint but "could spring up anywhere" from another. I know Nano was referring to the fipple and stringbed about 6-holed whistles in general but that's quite a contrast.

On this one I can't see a huge discontinuity along a (branching) line from blowing across a cut-off reed, reeds of different lengths, one bamboo with holes (e.g. washint), same with a notch (e.g. quena), replicating the lips plus notch geometry in the bamboo (as recently illustrated but deleted by MrG) and on to a recorder fipple.

I'll reserve amazing for things like metal smelting - which probably took longer to hit on than the first few steps towards a whistle.
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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by Nanohedron »

david_h wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:17 am So "amazing and difficult" from one viewpoint ...
Not to split hairs, but I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth: I didn't say difficult. The fipple's a relatively simple concept, but in engineering terms it's a lot more complex than the simplicity of a quena's notch. I'm sure it dawned on early flute makers that splitting the wind jet was the operative principle - and you take it from there - but for as obvious as it is in retrospect, that's an angle that my poor brain would have taken a lifetime to arrive at, if at all. Now if that's the difficult part, I'll accept the projection up to a point, but it wasn't relevant to me; my interest lies in the sort of mind that was even able to get there in the first place, and seemingly out of the blue. But of course that's something we'll never know.

As a universal construct, the fipple in particular is all the more amazing to me because it has little if any bearing on survival unlike fire mastery, agriculture, or the bow and arrow.
david_h wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:17 am I'll reserve amazing for things like metal smelting - which probably took longer to hit on than the first few steps towards a whistle.
Well, they're both pretty amazing to me, and I can assure you that from what I've learned of myself, I probably would never, ever be the one to have even dreamt of either of them. That's the sort of thing that inspires one to a degree of reverence.
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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by stringbed »

I was once asked to reconstruct a bone flute recovered from a medieval archeological site in Uppsala, Sweden. The original was an extensive fragment made from a sheep tibia and I was given a half dozen fresh bones that matched it. I made the blocks out of beeswax, which was a material I knew to be available at the time and readily worked without the skill necessary to fit, say, a wooden block. (I had dealt with the latter task for years as part of my day job and wasn’t simply shying away from it.)

From the perspective of what is now called experimental archeology, the results were quite satisfactory. The Swedish Radio, which initiated the entire exercise, devoted a half-hour program to the upshot. I’m not suggesting that the initial perception of this technology can be safely extrapolated from what I had done. However, it does support the surmise that figuring out how to fit an edge-blown instrument with an internal duct was not a daunting challenge.
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Re: The history of flageolets and tin whistles

Post by Nanohedron »

stringbed wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 11:58 am However, it does support the surmise that figuring out how to fit an edge-blown instrument with an internal duct was not a daunting challenge.
It certainly eliminates the problem of needing to develop an embouchure, and if ever you peruse the Flute Forum, it soon becomes evident that the complaint's a recurring and timeless topic.

How did the beeswax hold up?
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