Henry Beck's Flute Book (1786) now available for download

[walrii]

it seems the person who hand wrote all the tunes was not too particular about spellings

I should point out that the idea of their being a "right" and "wrong" way to spell a word didn't exist in the 18th century. A person might spell the same word three different ways in the same paragraph. And this doesn't imply an uneducated person, because highly educated people did that too, simply because the notion of there being a one-and-only way to spell a word had never existed.

This post got me to thinking about the recent spelling-and-grammar-thread, here. Are we going back to a more free-form version of written English? Is the new technology taking us back to someplace old?

[I.D.10-t]

This post got me to thinking about the recent spelling-and-grammar-thread, here. Are we going back to a more free-form version of written English? Is the new technology taking us back to someplace old?

I think with the rise of the internet people have been writing often but informally. Back when I would write letters, I would spellcheck, have a heading, signature line, etc. These days half of my E-mails are one line notifications not worth proof reading. Kind of like the difference between a conversation and a speech.

That said, many of the tunes in this book have straight up errors and I think that it lacked proper editing.

[whistlecollector]

So . . . is the book still available for download somewhere?? The original link is broken. I figured the thread was revived because of continued relevance, so I thought I'd ask again!

[OBrien]

It's here:

https://archive.org/details/FluteBook

[whistlecollector]

It's here:

https://archive.org/details/FluteBook

Ah, thanks much!