{"id":134,"date":"2021-09-29T10:09:25","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T08:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/?page_id=134"},"modified":"2021-10-04T18:29:47","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T16:29:47","slug":"1600-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/?page_id=134","title":{"rendered":"1600"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Long Military Flutes of the Sixteenth Century<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Ardal Powel, Folkers & Powell, Makers of Historical Flutes, Hudson NY, USA, hielt am 7. September 2002 an den „Renaissance Flute Days“ in Basel einen Vortrag mit dem Titel \u00abLong Military Flutes of the Sixteenth Century\u00bb.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An earlier version of this presentation was given at the American Musical Instrument Society’s annual meeting in Poughkeepsie NY on 18 June 1999. A handout for this presentation contains some dates of historic significance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Basel Piccolo<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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One day each February or March at four o\u2019clock in the morning the city of Basel turns into a fife and drum Carnival. Companies of players like this in elaborate costumes and masks march through the streets for a three-day celebration of Fasnacht. I\u2019ve never seen it but it sounds like my idea of fun.
The Basel Piccolo they play is a modern instrument, and was only recently brought into the Fasnacht celebrations, as you\u2019ll see towards the end of the handout. The same instrument is used in ceremonies by the Papal Swiss guard at the Vatican, which had a fife and drum corps from its foundation in 1505 until it was replaced by bugles, as in most other European armies, in 1814. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Four flute-playing soldiers by Urs Graf 1521<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Let\u2019s start with this familiar Pen and ink drawing of four flute-playing soldiers by Urs Graf\u2013made in 1523 and still right here in Basel at the \u00d6ffentliche Kunstsammlung. These men are apparently playing an ordinary 4-part consort, and there seems to be nothing particularly military about the picture except for the men\u2019s costumes, which indicate that two of them are Swiss and two German. Their instruments seem to be a bass in G, two tenors in D, and a discant in A or G. The hand spacing of the player on the right looks like an odd fit with any of the consort flutes we know of. And notice that all five of the hands in view have the little finger tucked under the flute body.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Player on horseback 1512<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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These guys were quite clearly off-duty when their picture was taken, and now here\u2019s another group of players, in an unusual situation: they are playing on horseback, usually reserved for trumpets and kettledrums while fifes and drums slogged along the ground with the infantry. This in any case is an imaginary ceremonial setting conceived in about 1512 for Hans Burgkmair\u2019s Triumph of Maximilian I. The man with the banner is the Emperor\u2019s personal fifer, Anthony of Dornst\u00e4tt, who accompanied him everywhere it seems.
You see that the nearest fifer has a case for at least three sizes of instrument, but all three men appear to be playing instruments of the same length. They don\u2019t have their fingers tucked under because they need them to cover a fourth fingerhole for each hand, so there are eight in all on each of the flutes. Another woodcut by Burgkmair, in Der Weisskunig, the one with the emperor surrounded by his musicans and their instruments, shows a flute with seven holes. And there are other images of fifes with more than six fingerholes by artists such as Breughel the Elder (1528-1569) which there\u2019s no time to go into now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Fife and drum were used for signalling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In any case, no matter how many holes thay may have had, these instruments of ceremonial and consort use seem to be exceptional. Fifes were used on the battlefield in a quite different way from the settings we\u2019ve seen so far. Here\u2019s an illustration of about 1485, which is confirmed by written descriptions, showing how a fife and drum were used for signalling. At two important battles in 1476, Swiss infantry squadrons won famous victories using a highly trained formation bristling with nasty sharp things on long poles. Inside the formation were other men shooting out projectiles from crossbows and firearms, as well as one man playing a flute and another a drum. All the troops stepped in time to the fife and drum\u2019s beat, and you can see in the picture that the flute and drum are prominently shown and all the soldiers are on the same foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once the Swiss infantry had use these effective and disciplined tactics to defeat the supposedly invincible Burgundian heavy cavalry in the 1470s they were soon hired out as mercenaries to teach first the German and French, then Spanish and Italian forces, and the fife and drum signals went with them. For example in 1494 the French military provisioning department was making payments to tambourins suisses, and shortly thereafter the French king established his own fife and drum corps, the phiffres et tabourins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Drums<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Now, although the men in the infantry formations stood and marched close together, the sounds of the military flute must have been extremely penetrating to be audible in a battle situation. We might immediately think of the fife we have heard in bands consisting of the Basel piccolo, or in the U.S. and Canada, of the shrill little colonial era instruments. The first mention of this instrument I\u2019ve come across is by Thoinot Arbeau, who wrote in his dance manual Orchesographie of 1589 that the fife was \u2018a little transverse flute with six holes, used by the Germans and the Swiss, and, as the bore is very narrow, only the thickness of a pistol bullet, it has a shrill note.\u2019 He also noted that the fife was played with extremely large drums, two and a half feet in diameter.
The drums Praetorius illustrated in 1619 were 2 feet in diameter, which is still very large for a side drum, and in fact bigger than even the bass drums normally used in marching bands today. They had a heavy snare on the lower head and a black spot on the batter head,which may have been to help the drum produce a tunable ringing tone. Praetorius\u2019s Schweitzer Pfeiffen (at number 3) have sounding lengths of 10 inches and 1 foot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The position of the players\u2019 hands<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This woodcut by Jost Amman from the mid-16th century shows Landsknechte, German mercenaries who imitated the Swiss infantry. The flute is about two feet long and the drum is maybe a few inches larger. See that the fifer has a case slung over his left shoulder to hold several instruments. And his left little finger is tucked under the flute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In this and the next four slides<\/strong> I want to draw your attention not only to the length of the flute but to the position of the players\u2019 hands, which are widely spaced so that the left hand seems too high up the tube.  Specifically, it seems that the players have their right third finger at a point at or near the middle of the tube, near where the first finger goes on a normal flute. We can\u2019t be sure of course that any one of these is an accurate representation of what the artist actually saw\u2013and in fact this slide and the next one could well have been composed from a common model. But there is a certain consitency here and as I hope you\u2019ll see, it isn\u2019t completely implausible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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This woodcut by Jost Amman from the mid-16th century shows Landsknechte, German mercenaries who imitated the Swiss infantry. The flute is about two feet long and the drum is maybe a few inches larger. See that the fifer has a case slung over his left shoulder to hold several instruments. And his left little finger is tucked under the flute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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This anonymous woodcut from a German manual of military discipline published in 1555 shows a better view of a fifer with a case for four instruments slung over his shoulder. Again there\u2019s the very large drum, and a long, narrow flute, and again his right little finger is tucked under. In this image you can clearly see the very wide hand spacing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Here\u2019s a painting by Breughel the Elder, The Three Soldiers, c1568 (New York: Frick Collection 65.1.163) Sorry for the terrible reproduction\u2013you can\u2019t even see that there\u2019s a third figure raising a banner between the two musicians. I\u2019m showing it so you can see that this artist too illustrated the wide hand spacing on a two-foot fife and the absolutely huge field drum with a snare on the lower head.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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To add to Swiss, German and Flemish sources, here we have a French one that shows two flutes played together with four large drums. Perhaps these are the tambourins Suisses of the French court establishment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

All right, if these military flutes were two feet long and had oddly-spaced fingerholes, what might they have sounded like?<\/strong>
To perform their function effectively in battle they must obviously have played clearly understood musical signals, but the signals first recorded are of no help since they came in the Swiss federal drum ordinances as late as 1819. Signalling aside, only one 16th-century source tells us much about what sort of music the military flute played. Arbeau wrote that: \u2018Those who play improvise to please themselves and it suffices for them to keep time with the sound of the drum,\u2019 The examples he gives of fife improvisation style consist mostly of diatonic  noodling, I can\u2019t think what else to call them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A<\/strong> little about the flute. Because of its peculiar hole spacing, its fingering is not diatonic, like a shawm, but harmonic, like a tabor pipe or a trombone. It overblows at the 12th, and the first 11 notes can be played using only the lowest three holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00dcbersicht Daten<\/a><\/strong>
Zusammengestellt von Ardal Powell<\/em>, Folkers & Powell, Makers of Historical Flutes<\/em>, aus Anlass der „Renaissance Flute Days, Basel, 7 September 2002.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

12. Jahrhundert: Herkunft aus dem Osten<\/a> \u2013 1511: Sebastian Virdung<\/a> \u2013 1528 und 1545: Martin Agricola <\/a>\u2013 1555: Clement Janequin <\/a>\u2013 1588: Thoinot Arbeau <\/a>\u2013 16. Jahrhundert: Milit\u00e4rfl\u00f6te <\/a>\u2013 1619\/20: Michael Praetorius <\/a>\u2013 1636: Marin Mersenne <\/a>\u2013 18. Jahrhundert: \u00c4nderung der Quellenlage <\/a>\u2013 18. Jh.: Piccolo im deutschen Raum <\/a>\u2013 Ende 19. Jh.: Piccolo an der Fasnacht <\/a>\u2013 Exkurs: Trommeln im Historischen Museum in Basel<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long Military Flutes of the Sixteenth Century Ardal Powel, Folkers & Powell, Makers of Historical Flutes, Hudson NY, USA, hielt am 7. September 2002 an den „Renaissance Flute Days“ in Basel einen Vortrag mit dem Titel \u00abLong Military Flutes of the Sixteenth Century\u00bb. An earlier version of this presentation was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":69,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-134","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/134\/revisions\/376"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pfyffersyte.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}