Flute

The flute is a musical instrument.^[1] A person who plays the flute is called a flautist.

There are many kinds of flutes.^[2] The most common concert flute is on C tuning. In addition, there are other flutes like piccolos, alto flutes, and bass flutes.

Flutes have changed over time. Pan flutes were made for many centuries. Later, the "Renaissance flute" came into use. In Baroque music flute means recorder, so flutes were called traverso in order not to confuse them. A Bavarian flute maker named Boehm reformed flutes largely to enlarge the volume and improve the way of using the chromatic scale. Later improvements created the modern flute.

There is a large repertoire of music for the flute. Baroque composers used them in their orchestras, usually in pairs, and composed concertos, chamber music and solo music for them. This has continued to the present day. Orchestras have at least 2 flutes each, sometimes three or four. Sometimes there is 1 piccolo which plays an octave higher, or an alto flute which plays a fifth lower than the flute.

The flute sounds very bright and cheerful playing high notes. Please listen, for example, to the Badinerie from Bach's Orchestral Suite no 2. It can also sound very thoughtful or sad when playing in its lowest register. A good example is the opening of Debussy's Prélude à l'après midi d'un faune also flutes Andre a brass instrument and can make a really low pitch.

1. ↑ Toff, Nancy (1996). The Flute Book: A Complete Guide for Students and Performers. Oxford University Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-19-510502-5.
2. ↑ Sugita.co.jp, フルートの選び方 (Choice of flute) Archived 2012-05-18 at the Wayback Machine; retrieved 2012-6-19.