Historical & Modern Flutist
Historical Flutes
Renaissance Tenor Flute
This copy was made by Friedrich von Huene, most likely based off of the Schnitzer renaissance flutes.
The original Schnitzer flutes, two tenor flutes and a bass all marked "AA," are currently located among a collection of renaissance transverse flutes in Verona at the Biblioteca Capitolare. The current best estimate dates these original instruments to the second quarter of the sixteenth century.
The originals play at A=428 Hz, but this copy has been scaled up to play at A=440 Hz.
Friedrich von Huene, immigrated from Germany and founded his New England workshop in 1960. A pioneer in the reproduction of historical woodwinds for over half a century, the von Huene workshop continues to create flutes and recorders under Patrick von Huene and Roy Sansom.
https://www.vonhuene.com/
Hotteterre Flute
The Hotteterre family was a celebrated family of wind instrument makers and wind performers in France. Only a small number of the many woodwinds made by the family survive, including this three-piece flute currently at the Landesmuseum in Graz, Austria.
This copy is made by Thijs van Baarsel in his workshop in Bellegarde, France. A recorder and traverso player, Thijs van Baarsel also used to teach historical woodwind instrument making in the Oskar-Walcker Schule in Ludwigsburg, Germany, one of the very few schools in Europe teaching this subject so crucial to the historical performance movement.
The original instrument plays at A=395 Hz, this copy has been scaled down to play at the common modern French pitch of A=392 Hz.
This type of instrument is ideal for playing Hotteterre, de la Barre, Marais, Lully, and other French repertoire of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Four-part Naust
The original of this early four-part flute is in a private collection in Germany. The original is stamped with the French flute maker Naust’s stamp, a lion rampant. The Naust workshop was founded by Pierre Naust, but as he died in 1709 is unlikely he ever made a four-part flute, as the transition from three-part to four part flutes seem to have taken place between 1710 and 1720 which was after Pierre Naust’s death.The original was potentially made by Antoine Delerablée, a partner in the Naust workshop, or Pierre Naust’s widow Barbe Pelletier as they both continued making instruments using the “Naust” stamp after Pierre’s death.
Like other early four-part originals such as those made by Denner, Bressan and I.H. Rottenburg, this model very versatile, and works well for both early and high baroque repertoire such as Blavet, Leclair, Couperin, Telemann and J.S. Bach.
The original pitch is A=398 with extra middle joints or “corps de rechange”
for A=392 or A=415.
My copy is made by the Montréal based historical flute maker Boaz Berney. In addition to making flutes Boaz Berney is a researcher and performer. He plays regularly with the Modena Consort on renaissance traverso performing the repertoire of late fifteenth and sixteenth-century music, and has an extensive list of publications and articles.