"The McKenna Influence"

[kenny]

I only just discovered this on "Youtube" - it may have been mentioned here before, but a mere 183 "views" since the end of last year when it was posted would suggest otherwise.
https://youtu.be/eUnWL_cE31Q
Have a look.

[Steve Bliven]

It's at least 184 views now. Thanks Kenny.

Best wishes.

Steve

[Jayhawk]

Great stuff! Thanks for sharing.

Eric

[Terry McGee]

Mighty, thanks Kenny. Only had time so far for a quick look, but a few thoughts:

- who undertakes to make a list of the tunes and their start times to save the rest of us the trouble? And perhaps post them to the Youtube notes for those who follow?
- sounds to me they are playing a little on the sharp side. The tuning slides are not much extended. Are they doing that purposefully to emulate the times?
- Interesting that McKenna had picked up a US-made flute and that's what Liam is playing. It's certainly pulling its weight.

[Mr.Gumby]

- Interesting that McKenna had picked up a US-made flute and that's what Liam is playing. It's certainly pulling its weight.

It has been posted and discussed here before but Hammy talked about that flute : McKenna's flute

[Terry McGee]

Hmmm, that's a very English-looking flute. I'd have been inclined to think it was a flute "made for the trade" (ie unstamped) and exported to the US. Even if we found similar examples stamped with the US company name, it doesn't necessarily prove they made it. It just confirms they got around to having a stamp made! Hard to know how to go about proving where it was made. I wonder if any of the keys are stamped underneath?

The cap is bothering me - where have I seen that design before? Monzani? Anyone?

Hmmm. Do we think the keys look like silver, but the cap and barrel slide cover look like Nickel Silver? What about the rings?

[Steve Bliven]

In the article accompanying the photo above, Jon Cornia postulates that the flute might have been made by Asa Hopkins from Fluteville in Litchfield, CT, USA.

Best wishes.

Steve

[Terry McGee]

And it may well have been. I'm just surprised how "English" it looks, particularly the saltspoon keys. This is more what I expect of a US made flute (this one an Asa Hopkins restored by Patrick Olwell):



Note the flattened tops to the keycups. I have seen other Asa Hopkins-marked flutes with saltspoon keys, but again, do we know if he made them or if he imported and stamped them? As I've harped on about before, much more work needed on US-made flutes!

[bigsciota]

Lovely playing! I play the 2nd barndance in the "Ballroom Favorite" set a ton, heard it at a session in Belfast a while ago appended to the end of another set of tunes from McKenna's recordings, "Up and Away" and "The Merry Girl" (sometimes I've heard them called "John McKenna's polkas"). Anyway, the first two I've heard played a decent bit, but I have so far never run into someone else who knows that 2nd "Ballroom Favorite" tune, and it's a pity because it's wonderful.

Got the Buck from the Mountain CDs at Custy's when it came out, any flute player who doesn't have a copy should get one immediately, or at the very least listen to the tracks online.

[paddler]

Terry, there are a lot of American made flutes that look like McKenna's, and a lot really were made over here, not imported.
I agree that, at least superficially, they do look quite English, but when you get into the details they are recognizably American.
I think some of the similarities may stem from the fact that some of the early American makers, such as John Firth and Edward Riley,
for example, actually were English and emigrated to America after having been exposed to English flute making. Flute making in
America was a large and thriving industry, in parallel to that in Britain and elsewhere.

I am currently working on two American flutes made by Chabrier Peloubet, in his factory in Bloomfield, New Jersey, USA. Note, this
is very close to New York, where McKenna lived, and where Peloubet also had business property. Both these flutes
look quite similar to McKenna's flute. I've attached a picture of each of them (taken this evening). The first one in particular shares
quite a few details, as well as some general similarities, with the McKenna flute. I could easily see McKenna's flute having been made
by Peloubet, but there were other makers around the same region and era who also made very similar looking flutes.




And thank you Kenny! I love following the links you post! How do you come up with all this stuff?

[paddler]

There are some more details about the first of those Peloubet flutes here:

http://jonathanwalpole.com/c-peloubet-8-key

You can read a lot more detail about Peloubet, his flutes, and the scale of his business, here:

http://jonathanwalpole.com/wp-content/u ... rticle.pdf

And this article contains some background information about several of the other well known American flute makers of the time:

An Early American Family of Flutists

[Terry McGee]

Very good, Paddler. I haven't had a chance to dip deeply into those resources, but I think that more than answers my quibbles about the bodies looking so English.

Where do you think the ivory heads came from? I know a lot of period German flutes had ivory heads, but not that many English ones. Not that many pachyderms roaming the suburbs of London in those days? But not that many in Germany or the US either. And whoever got the idea that the ideal starting point for a longish straight cylindrical head would be the curved tooth of a creature from the other side of the planet? I guess the density (and the fineness) is the attraction, 1.8 to 1.9 compared to 1 for boxwood, 1 to 1.2 for cocus. Should we be revisiting ivory (or at least the substitutes!)? Is it the density or the fineness? In a metal lined head, it's hard to imagine it's the density. If it's the fineness should we be revisiting ivory (substitute) lined embouchure holes? (Is no antique ivory billiard ball safe from these fiends?)

And the jet blackness of the body in your image and the video? We are familiar with the dark-stained cocus often used by English makers in the day, but this looks darker. Indian Ebony, African Blackwood? You get some free with every shipment of elephant tusks?

Sigh, I still remember coming across a Scottish bagpipe maker in his own shop in London in 1974. I pointed to the gorgeous rings on an instrument on display and said where do you get those from? And he reached into a drawer and pulled out an elephant tusk....

And note that the double rings are all on the sockets, not the other section ends. Additional anti-splitting support for the thin wood of the sockets?

[an seanduine]

Terry, I would submit there is no overwhelming evidence this is elephant ivory. Many of the German Ivory head pieces were wrought from Marine Ivory. The Germans had a lively trade in marine mammals for lamp oil, and had a particular fondness for narwhal tusks, in addition to walrus, for ivory. It almost goes without saying the New England States had a lively whaling industry, and associated exploitation of other marine mammals.

Bob

[Terry McGee]

That would certainly get it a lot closer to home than elephant ivory, an seanduine. I wonder how we could tell the difference? On a quick look, I appear to only have one flute with ivory head here - a German 8-key with Cocobolo body. (Interestingly, the lower end of the head has the double rings we saw on Paddler's flute, whereas the rest of the rings on this flute are more typical German.)

The head feels heavy, it's extremely fine - I can't make out any grain pattern under the zoom microscope at full gain (4.5 with 10X/20 eyepieces, so a magnification of 45), but certainly no pores either, so I don't think it's bone. It is of course cracked, and even the edges of the crack look perfect! The material of the head matches the ivory bands on my Bilton boxwood flute in colour and fineness.

Looking at it with the naked eye, you can make out some mild patterns that suggest it was originally curved, i.e. they don't follow the bore. But maybe that doesn't tell us anything useful?

Ah, I did turn up another ivory head, also on a German flute. This one even more dramatically cracked, right through the embouchure and opened up full length by about 1.5mm. But otherwise similar to the other head in weight, fineness and colour (yellowed).

[Mr.Gumby]

I wonder how we could tell the difference?

There's this:
Cites identification guide for ivory and ivory substitutes