Sorry if that has been discussed before, but what is the place of the flute in the Scottish tradition? Are 'sessions' part of the Scottish tradition, or something adopted from the Irish?
Hi Emily - Nigel Gatherer, who is also a member here, talks about this on his very informative website: http://www.nigelgatherer.com/index.html
It's in there somewhere, possibly in the whistle section. It's all worth a read anyway.
Flutes are probably a part of tradition everywhere. Irish music seems to be the best at keeping it alive . . . except where I live?! Anyhoo found this little bit about the history in Scotland. http://www.theflow.org.uk/styles/styles_scotland.html
As far as the Irish tradition of sessions being adopted elsewhere I always (try to) defer to the wisdom of Jerry Holland. In an interview he discusses playing in Irish sessions vs the capers version of a session. I keep trying to get people to read his interview.
I'm not an expert, but I doubt that the flute is a part of Scottish tradition. Of course, there are flute players from Scotland, but most of them mainly play Irish music. When they play Scots music, they often switch to the whistle(s).
"Ptarmigan" once told me that "sessions" in Edinburgh was synonymous with "Irish music sessions" at one time. But now Scots folk music is coming back to the scene thanks to a bunch of young talented musicians. Oh, poor old generation Scots musicians who haven't learned many Scots tunes!
I don't know if Chris Norman ever visits this site, but he plays quite a bit of old Scottish music on the wooden flute. I went to see him in concert once (great show BTW) and he claimed that the flute was once much more common in Scottish Trad music, before, as he put it, "the military took over the music" and established "rules" as to what was "correct of or incorrect" based on the military piping tradition.
As far as sessions go, I think you'll find even Irish music sessions are a relatively recent phenomenon.
There are certainly plenty of sessions here in Scotland that feature Scots music although plenty also lean towards Irish music. In terms of the flute in Scotland you do see it in sessions and there is a great flute maker here in George Ormiston. It is probably true to say that it is not as popular here as it is in Ireland.
Some great Scottish flute players would include Iain MacDonald (The Whaler), Niall Kenny, Kevin O'Neill, Hamish Napier and of course, as has already been said Kenny from this site. There are of course more, but I am suffering a mind blank. Remember of course that individuals like Cathal MacConnell, Nuala Kennedy and Claire Mann are all resident flute players in Scotland now even if they came from elsewhere before.
It is true though that flutes do not appear in as many of the professional bands here as in Ireland. There is definately a greater popularity with the fiddle. Whistles are also popular with many of the pipers playing them.
Forgive my pedantry, but I was of the view that:
Scotch - refers to the drink, ie whisky. Also an older, more Victorian term for the following....
Scots - refers to the language, ie the cant, Doric, Lallands. Also refers to persons, ie a Scotsman.
Scottish - near enough everything else, including the music. Except:
Scotts = porridge.
But I could be wrong.
Nowt to forgive. You are of course right. I just got caught up in it because slainte used the term 'Scots'. I did think at the time that use of the term with the music was out of the ordinary but 'what if it is right?' :-S
I went with the crowd. I was, momentarilly a sheep! It will not happen again.
On the other hand, not wanting to be pedantic, but 'Lallans' would be the more correct spelling and not 'Lallands', although I can see that some people spell it this way.
One thing to keep in mind is that the flute was not equally popular in all areas of Ireland. In some regions the fiddle was king and there was little in the way of a "wind" tradition (flutes and pipes). Other areas- Clare comes to mind- had a very strong flute tradition.
If you look at the places where the Scots settled, such as Donegal, Cape Breton Island, and North Carolina, you will see mainly fiddle-based traditions with some Highland piping as well. Blaming the British military for the lack of a flute tradition is absurd- there were a lot more flutes than fiddles used in the military, and we see fiddles everywhere there was Scottish influence.
the fiddle replaced the bagpipes during the clearings when the pipes were outlawed (along with kilts and tartan) as the instrument of choice because the gentry already knew how to play them and that migrated to the country folk
The fiddle’s always been played in Scotland. The Pipes were banned in 1746 after the failed Jacobite uprising of 1745.The old mediaeval fiddle with a simple structure and a short bow, as elsewhere in Europe was replaced by the violin, and by the 18th century the violin was well established in the highlands. After the pipes were banned the pipe music was preserved in fiddle playing. As in Ireland, it was common to play both instruments anyway, and many pipers took up the fiddle after the ban on pipes. According to Aonghas Grant the great west highland fiddler writes: “In the Highlands, even to the present day, many fiddlers play the pipes and vice versa.” From: The Scots Fiddle (volume 3): Tunes, Tales and Traditions of the Western Highlands, Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland, by J.Murray Neil, page 94 The highly pipey West Highland fiddle style may have become more pronouncedly pipey due to the 1746 ban, but, according to Alastair Hardie, the style was in existence prior to the earlier 1715 Jacobite uprising. (see Hardie’s book The Caledonian Companion, page 118).
Very few Scots settled in Donegal, the movement went quite the other way. Donegal itself experienced extensive clearances to make way for sheep. Scottish influence on Donegal music came mainly from Donegal folk doing seasonal work in Scotland rather any movement of Scottish people there. Into the 20th century war pipes and uilleann pipes were played in Donegal but the tradition largely died out there in favour of the fiddle.
The transverse flute (as opposed to the whistle) is a recent addition to Irish traditional music. According to Hammy Hamilton, it was practically unheard of before 1850. What stands in need of explanation is rather the adoption of the flute by Irish musicians, rather than its comparative absence from Scottish music. The flute’s absence from Scottish traditional music (until comparatively recently) is accidental as far as I can see.
One of my favourite Scottish flautists is Eddie McGuire, an avant-garde classical composer, who plays Scottish music on a wooden Boehm-system flute with “The Whistlebinkies.” (They are a remarkable band, who dig up old gems from Scottish musical history and also compose music in the Scottish style that is really worth listening to!) And Eddie McGuire’s playing is full of very crisp snaps, grace notes and trills, nice!
I think that flute playing goes back pretty far in Ireland. It is very likely that in the mid 19th c. it was not difficult to come by a wooden flute. The classical musicians were willing to give them up once Theobald Boehm introduced his improvements. The 'traditional' musicians (farmers, carpenters . . .) probably grabbed the undesirable instruments ~ "for a song". These were interesting times for music.
For sure, they became available when they became practically obsolete. But they did seem to be taken on board in a big way in Ireland. They must also have been available in Scotland, but don’t seem to have made much of a dent in the tradition. Is it that Irish musicians were perhaps more cosmopolitan in their choice of instruments? Or is it perhaps that fiddles were increasingly hard to come by in Ireland?
I’ve just come across this discussion, having been away for 10 days, so here’s a belated contribution, if you’re still around Emily.
As Gordon Turnbull’s website says, the late Ronnie Williamson of “The Corries” was probably the first Scot to record traditional music on a wooden flute. I learned both “The Munster Cloak” and the hornpipe generally known as “Dinny O’Brien’s” from a recording the made probably in the late 1960s. One of the Corries’ records has him on the front cover playing a boxwood flute. I actually came across a copy of that very record in a charity shop yesterday . He learned much of his flute and whistle playing from Finbar Furey who was a good friend, and lived in Edinburgh at that time. Apart from these 2 tunes, and the occasional song accompaniment, he didn’t play it on stage or record very much, though, and I’m not aware of him playing a Scottish jig or reel on any of the Corries recordings. A few months after he died, there was an auction of some of his instruments, and I went to it hoping maybe to pick up one of his flutes, but they certainly weren’t selling the good ones. I think I did bid on 2, but was outbid, as most of the instruments seemed to be being bought up by fans. His favourite Bb whistle – a brass Generation on which he’d scratched his initials - sold for £260.
I began taking an interest in Irish and then Scottish traditional music around 1970. There were only 2 prominent flute players on the Scottish scene at that time, but both played metal Boehm system flutes – they were Eddie McGuire, still playing with “The Whistlebinkies”, and also Sean O’Rourke of the folk-rock band, “The JSD Band”. Cathal McConnell arrived in Edinburgh around 1971 and started playing both Irish and Shetland tunes on flute with “The Boys Of The Lough”, and he very quickly gained a large number of admirers. I was lucky enough to get hold of a flute in an Aberdeen junk shop for £10.00, and if Ronnie Williamson was the first Scot to play wooden flute in a long time, I reckon, through pure luck in being able to find an instrument, I was the second.
At this time, I’m sure there would have been flute-players in the Irish communities of both Glasgow and Edinburgh, but they would have played almost exclusively Irish music and not Scottish. If you want to stretch a point, there were certainly hundreds of flute players in the Orange flute bands found mainly in the west coast of Scotland. There are also to this day one or two flute bands existing some 40 miles North of Aberdeen, associated with the temperance movement I think from around the 1940s.
These last 2 groups play Bb fifes, and not the concert-pitch flutes associated with traditional music today.
The big leap forward in flute playing in Scotland came when Matt Molloy became well-known through “The Bothy Band”, and in particular after he recorded his first solo album. Phil Smillie, who had recorded on the very first “Tannahill Weavers” album switched from Boehm-system to wooden simple-system at that time. Another prominent player was Jimmy Young in Edinburgh, now resident in New Zealand.
Sean O’Rourke switched to wooden flute I’d guess around 1975, and made an LP record along with bagpipes and fiddle, and the late Tony Cuffe on guitar. The group was called “Alba”, and that would be one of the first records to feature the wooden flute in an equal role along with fiddle and pipes, although I’m not 100% sure, but I think the “Whistlebinkies” might have made a record before that, so they were possibly the first.
There are quite a few omissions from the list on Gordon’s website, and I must contact him sometime to have them added. John Gahagan played flute when he was with the “Battlefield Band”, Brendan Hyde in Edinburgh has always been an excellent player, and recorded with a band called “Malin Head”, which at one time also included Iain McDonald. The late George Jackson played flute when with “Ossian”, and his brother Billy plays as well. Malcolm Reavell, here in Aberdeen , has been playing flute in ceilidh bands for years. There are several fine players in the various branches of Comhaltas in Glasgow and Motherwell, and these days many pipers in particular also “double-up” on flute. There are also many players around who aren’t that well-known outside of Scotland but have been playing constantly in sessions at festivals over the years.
There are probably more musicians playing traditional music on wooden flute in Scotland at the present time than ever before, which is very encouraging, but we’ve still a long way to go before we catch up with Ireland.
Hope this has been of interest. Good luck.
Emily linked me the discussion, a subject which is very fascinating to me. My motive is utterly ulterior - I'm trying to convince her to play some Scottish tunes with me!
I'm a new member, but have been playing Scottish music for a few years with a fiddle instructor whose main interest is 18th century music, and reenacting as well, so the concept of "tradition" to me has a bit further historical horizon.
Kenny's remarks are all quite true, but they're looking to the recent past. If one looks at the 18th century Scottish tune collections, the title will often run along the lines of "A Curious Collection of 36 Scottish Airs and Melodies arranged for..." followed by a list of instruments. And it's not at all uncommon that these lists include "German Flute". The "German Flute", or Traversos, now called the "baroque flute", entered Scotland from the continent in the 1720s or so (around the same time as the Guittern/English Guitar). As such, it is certain that the instrument was known in the cities, and was considered appropriate for the playing of Strathspeys, reels, and jigs, at least in the ballroom-influenced style of the major cities. The continental influence on 18th century ballroom style of Scottish music was considerable - a dance card would often begin with a minuet, and then follow the rest of the evening with native dances. As such, an orchestral instrument like the wooden flute would have not been at all alien. That said, this was still very much a fiddle/cello (later fiddle/pianoforte) tradition. I've seen no references to flutes per se in the Highlands. The gap in its use from the 18th century on probably has as much to do with the overwhelming dominance of the fiddle in the 19th century, and its largely being replaced by the accordion in the 20th, until the fiddle revivals of recent decades. David Johnson's "Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century" touches on the variety of instruments played during this period.
(Oh, and a clarification or two: neddiescotus, the pipes were never banned or really even suppressed by the disarming acts - John Gibson's "Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping ,1745-1945" deals with this in considerable detail. And Key Maniac Lad, your definitions are correct but modern. In older writings, the spellings and terms you list were often quite interchangable!).
German Flutes are actually later instruments than Baroque/Traverso Flutes. German/Early/Romantic Flutes had tuning slide, eight keys or more (sometimes less) while Traversos had only one key, three piece body and no tuning slide. Traversos are asociated with late 17th C. and 18th C. while German Flutes appeared early 19th C.
javivr, that may be the modern naming convention, but I have a CD-ROM copy of James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, the first volume of which was published 1743, and it's explicitly for the "German Flute" (the violin isn't even mentioned until later volumes). So I'm pretty sure that in 1743 "German Flute" was synonymous with "traversos".
I have a copy of that CDROM too and thinking of it carefully you must be right but as Romantic flutes developed naturally from traversos I do think the name German Flute went from one instrument to another. I´m not sure but I think traversos went out of use during the 19th century as Romantic flutes were used all over Europe in their different shapes, pitches and number of keys.
Most of the 8-key flute old methods I have name it "German Flute"
flutes in Scottish music
flutes in Scottish music
Sorry if that has been discussed before, but what is the place of the flute in the Scottish tradition? Are 'sessions' part of the Scottish tradition, or something adopted from the Irish?
Thanks!
Emily
# Posted on September 14th 2007 by emily_bmore
Re: flutes in Scottish music
Hi Emily - Nigel Gatherer, who is also a member here, talks about this on his very informative website:
http://www.nigelgatherer.com/index.html
It's in there somewhere, possibly in the whistle section. It's all worth a read anyway.
# Posted on September 14th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: flutes in Scottish music
Flutes are probably a part of tradition everywhere. Irish music seems to be the best at keeping it alive . . . except where I live?! Anyhoo found this little bit about the history in Scotland. http://www.theflow.org.uk/styles/styles_scotland.html
As far as the Irish tradition of sessions being adopted elsewhere I always (try to) defer to the wisdom of Jerry Holland. In an interview he discusses playing in Irish sessions vs the capers version of a session. I keep trying to get people to read his interview.
# Posted on September 14th 2007 by Random_notes
Re: flutes in Scottish music
Picture of "our" Kenny there!
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: flutes in Scottish music
I'm not an expert, but I doubt that the flute is a part of Scottish tradition. Of course, there are flute players from Scotland, but most of them mainly play Irish music. When they play Scots music, they often switch to the whistle(s).
"Ptarmigan" once told me that "sessions" in Edinburgh was synonymous with "Irish music sessions" at one time. But now Scots folk music is coming back to the scene thanks to a bunch of young talented musicians. Oh, poor old generation Scots musicians who haven't learned many Scots tunes!
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by slainte
Re: flutes in Scottish music
I don't know if Chris Norman ever visits this site, but he plays quite a bit of old Scottish music on the wooden flute. I went to see him in concert once (great show BTW) and he claimed that the flute was once much more common in Scottish Trad music, before, as he put it, "the military took over the music" and established "rules" as to what was "correct of or incorrect" based on the military piping tradition.
As far as sessions go, I think you'll find even Irish music sessions are a relatively recent phenomenon.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by Murph
Re: flutes in Scottish music
There are certainly plenty of sessions here in Scotland that feature Scots music although plenty also lean towards Irish music. In terms of the flute in Scotland you do see it in sessions and there is a great flute maker here in George Ormiston. It is probably true to say that it is not as popular here as it is in Ireland.
Some great Scottish flute players would include Iain MacDonald (The Whaler), Niall Kenny, Kevin O'Neill, Hamish Napier and of course, as has already been said Kenny from this site. There are of course more, but I am suffering a mind blank. Remember of course that individuals like Cathal MacConnell, Nuala Kennedy and Claire Mann are all resident flute players in Scotland now even if they came from elsewhere before.
It is true though that flutes do not appear in as many of the professional bands here as in Ireland. There is definately a greater popularity with the fiddle. Whistles are also popular with many of the pipers playing them.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: flutes in Scottish music
Forgive my pedantry, but I was of the view that:
Scotch - refers to the drink, ie whisky. Also an older, more Victorian term for the following....
Scots - refers to the language, ie the cant, Doric, Lallands. Also refers to persons, ie a Scotsman.
Scottish - near enough everything else, including the music. Except:
Scotts = porridge.
But I could be wrong.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: flutes in Scottish music
Nowt to forgive. You are of course right. I just got caught up in it because slainte used the term 'Scots'. I did think at the time that use of the term with the music was out of the ordinary but 'what if it is right?' :-S
I went with the crowd. I was, momentarilly a sheep! It will not happen again.
On the other hand, not wanting to be pedantic, but 'Lallans' would be the more correct spelling and not 'Lallands', although I can see that some people spell it this way.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: flutes in Scottish music
Yes, I do believe you are correct in this instance, Professor Alarm.
# Posted on September 16th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: flutes in Scottish music
One thing to keep in mind is that the flute was not equally popular in all areas of Ireland. In some regions the fiddle was king and there was little in the way of a "wind" tradition (flutes and pipes). Other areas- Clare comes to mind- had a very strong flute tradition.
If you look at the places where the Scots settled, such as Donegal, Cape Breton Island, and North Carolina, you will see mainly fiddle-based traditions with some Highland piping as well. Blaming the British military for the lack of a flute tradition is absurd- there were a lot more flutes than fiddles used in the military, and we see fiddles everywhere there was Scottish influence.
# Posted on September 16th 2007 by Richard D Cook
Re: flutes in Scottish music
the fiddle replaced the bagpipes during the clearings when the pipes were outlawed (along with kilts and tartan) as the instrument of choice because the gentry already knew how to play them and that migrated to the country folk
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Sunnybear
Re: Flutes in Scottish music
The fiddle’s always been played in Scotland. The Pipes were banned in 1746 after the failed Jacobite uprising of 1745.The old mediaeval fiddle with a simple structure and a short bow, as elsewhere in Europe was replaced by the violin, and by the 18th century the violin was well established in the highlands. After the pipes were banned the pipe music was preserved in fiddle playing. As in Ireland, it was common to play both instruments anyway, and many pipers took up the fiddle after the ban on pipes. According to Aonghas Grant the great west highland fiddler writes: “In the Highlands, even to the present day, many fiddlers play the pipes and vice versa.” From: The Scots Fiddle (volume 3): Tunes, Tales and Traditions of the Western Highlands, Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland, by J.Murray Neil, page 94 The highly pipey West Highland fiddle style may have become more pronouncedly pipey due to the 1746 ban, but, according to Alastair Hardie, the style was in existence prior to the earlier 1715 Jacobite uprising. (see Hardie’s book The Caledonian Companion, page 118).
Very few Scots settled in Donegal, the movement went quite the other way. Donegal itself experienced extensive clearances to make way for sheep. Scottish influence on Donegal music came mainly from Donegal folk doing seasonal work in Scotland rather any movement of Scottish people there. Into the 20th century war pipes and uilleann pipes were played in Donegal but the tradition largely died out there in favour of the fiddle.
The transverse flute (as opposed to the whistle) is a recent addition to Irish traditional music. According to Hammy Hamilton, it was practically unheard of before 1850. What stands in need of explanation is rather the adoption of the flute by Irish musicians, rather than its comparative absence from Scottish music. The flute’s absence from Scottish traditional music (until comparatively recently) is accidental as far as I can see.
One of my favourite Scottish flautists is Eddie McGuire, an avant-garde classical composer, who plays Scottish music on a wooden Boehm-system flute with “The Whistlebinkies.” (They are a remarkable band, who dig up old gems from Scottish musical history and also compose music in the Scottish style that is really worth listening to!) And Eddie McGuire’s playing is full of very crisp snaps, grace notes and trills, nice!
# Posted on September 19th 2007 by neddiescotus
Re: flutes in Scottish music
I think that flute playing goes back pretty far in Ireland. It is very likely that in the mid 19th c. it was not difficult to come by a wooden flute. The classical musicians were willing to give them up once Theobald Boehm introduced his improvements. The 'traditional' musicians (farmers, carpenters . . .) probably grabbed the undesirable instruments ~ "for a song". These were interesting times for music.
# Posted on September 19th 2007 by Random_notes
Re: Flutes in Scottish music
For sure, they became available when they became practically obsolete. But they did seem to be taken on board in a big way in Ireland. They must also have been available in Scotland, but don’t seem to have made much of a dent in the tradition. Is it that Irish musicians were perhaps more cosmopolitan in their choice of instruments? Or is it perhaps that fiddles were increasingly hard to come by in Ireland?
# Posted on September 20th 2007 by neddiescotus
Re: flutes in Scottish music
I’ve just come across this discussion, having been away for 10 days, so here’s a belated contribution, if you’re still around Emily.
As Gordon Turnbull’s website says, the late Ronnie Williamson of “The Corries” was probably the first Scot to record traditional music on a wooden flute. I learned both “The Munster Cloak” and the hornpipe generally known as “Dinny O’Brien’s” from a recording the made probably in the late 1960s. One of the Corries’ records has him on the front cover playing a boxwood flute. I actually came across a copy of that very record in a charity shop yesterday . He learned much of his flute and whistle playing from Finbar Furey who was a good friend, and lived in Edinburgh at that time. Apart from these 2 tunes, and the occasional song accompaniment, he didn’t play it on stage or record very much, though, and I’m not aware of him playing a Scottish jig or reel on any of the Corries recordings. A few months after he died, there was an auction of some of his instruments, and I went to it hoping maybe to pick up one of his flutes, but they certainly weren’t selling the good ones. I think I did bid on 2, but was outbid, as most of the instruments seemed to be being bought up by fans. His favourite Bb whistle – a brass Generation on which he’d scratched his initials - sold for £260.
I began taking an interest in Irish and then Scottish traditional music around 1970. There were only 2 prominent flute players on the Scottish scene at that time, but both played metal Boehm system flutes – they were Eddie McGuire, still playing with “The Whistlebinkies”, and also Sean O’Rourke of the folk-rock band, “The JSD Band”. Cathal McConnell arrived in Edinburgh around 1971 and started playing both Irish and Shetland tunes on flute with “The Boys Of The Lough”, and he very quickly gained a large number of admirers. I was lucky enough to get hold of a flute in an Aberdeen junk shop for £10.00, and if Ronnie Williamson was the first Scot to play wooden flute in a long time, I reckon, through pure luck in being able to find an instrument, I was the second.
At this time, I’m sure there would have been flute-players in the Irish communities of both Glasgow and Edinburgh, but they would have played almost exclusively Irish music and not Scottish. If you want to stretch a point, there were certainly hundreds of flute players in the Orange flute bands found mainly in the west coast of Scotland. There are also to this day one or two flute bands existing some 40 miles North of Aberdeen, associated with the temperance movement I think from around the 1940s.
These last 2 groups play Bb fifes, and not the concert-pitch flutes associated with traditional music today.
The big leap forward in flute playing in Scotland came when Matt Molloy became well-known through “The Bothy Band”, and in particular after he recorded his first solo album. Phil Smillie, who had recorded on the very first “Tannahill Weavers” album switched from Boehm-system to wooden simple-system at that time. Another prominent player was Jimmy Young in Edinburgh, now resident in New Zealand.
Sean O’Rourke switched to wooden flute I’d guess around 1975, and made an LP record along with bagpipes and fiddle, and the late Tony Cuffe on guitar. The group was called “Alba”, and that would be one of the first records to feature the wooden flute in an equal role along with fiddle and pipes, although I’m not 100% sure, but I think the “Whistlebinkies” might have made a record before that, so they were possibly the first.
There are quite a few omissions from the list on Gordon’s website, and I must contact him sometime to have them added. John Gahagan played flute when he was with the “Battlefield Band”, Brendan Hyde in Edinburgh has always been an excellent player, and recorded with a band called “Malin Head”, which at one time also included Iain McDonald. The late George Jackson played flute when with “Ossian”, and his brother Billy plays as well. Malcolm Reavell, here in Aberdeen , has been playing flute in ceilidh bands for years. There are several fine players in the various branches of Comhaltas in Glasgow and Motherwell, and these days many pipers in particular also “double-up” on flute. There are also many players around who aren’t that well-known outside of Scotland but have been playing constantly in sessions at festivals over the years.
There are probably more musicians playing traditional music on wooden flute in Scotland at the present time than ever before, which is very encouraging, but we’ve still a long way to go before we catch up with Ireland.
Hope this has been of interest. Good luck.
# Posted on September 27th 2007 by Kenny
jaysus Kenny, you're fecking brilliant.
# Posted on September 28th 2007 by emily_bmore
Re: flutes in Scottish music
Emily linked me the discussion, a subject which is very fascinating to me. My motive is utterly ulterior - I'm trying to convince her to play some Scottish tunes with me!
I'm a new member, but have been playing Scottish music for a few years with a fiddle instructor whose main interest is 18th century music, and reenacting as well, so the concept of "tradition" to me has a bit further historical horizon.
Kenny's remarks are all quite true, but they're looking to the recent past. If one looks at the 18th century Scottish tune collections, the title will often run along the lines of "A Curious Collection of 36 Scottish Airs and Melodies arranged for..." followed by a list of instruments. And it's not at all uncommon that these lists include "German Flute". The "German Flute", or Traversos, now called the "baroque flute", entered Scotland from the continent in the 1720s or so (around the same time as the Guittern/English Guitar). As such, it is certain that the instrument was known in the cities, and was considered appropriate for the playing of Strathspeys, reels, and jigs, at least in the ballroom-influenced style of the major cities. The continental influence on 18th century ballroom style of Scottish music was considerable - a dance card would often begin with a minuet, and then follow the rest of the evening with native dances. As such, an orchestral instrument like the wooden flute would have not been at all alien. That said, this was still very much a fiddle/cello (later fiddle/pianoforte) tradition. I've seen no references to flutes per se in the Highlands. The gap in its use from the 18th century on probably has as much to do with the overwhelming dominance of the fiddle in the 19th century, and its largely being replaced by the accordion in the 20th, until the fiddle revivals of recent decades. David Johnson's "Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century" touches on the variety of instruments played during this period.
(Oh, and a clarification or two: neddiescotus, the pipes were never banned or really even suppressed by the disarming acts - John Gibson's "Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping ,1745-1945" deals with this in considerable detail. And Key Maniac Lad, your definitions are correct but modern. In older writings, the spellings and terms you list were often quite interchangable!).
# Posted on September 28th 2007 by Peter_Walker
Re: flutes in Scottish music
German Flutes are actually later instruments than Baroque/Traverso Flutes. German/Early/Romantic Flutes had tuning slide, eight keys or more (sometimes less) while Traversos had only one key, three piece body and no tuning slide. Traversos are asociated with late 17th C. and 18th C. while German Flutes appeared early 19th C.
Read more at www.oldflutes.com
# Posted on October 31st 2007 by javivr
Re: flutes in Scottish music
javivr, that may be the modern naming convention, but I have a CD-ROM copy of James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, the first volume of which was published 1743, and it's explicitly for the "German Flute" (the violin isn't even mentioned until later volumes). So I'm pretty sure that in 1743 "German Flute" was synonymous with "traversos".
# Posted on February 27th 2008 by Peter_Walker
Re: flutes in Scottish music
I have a copy of that CDROM too and thinking of it carefully you must be right but as Romantic flutes developed naturally from traversos I do think the name German Flute went from one instrument to another. I´m not sure but I think traversos went out of use during the 19th century as Romantic flutes were used all over Europe in their different shapes, pitches and number of keys.
Most of the 8-key flute old methods I have name it "German Flute"
Have a look at some of them here: http://www.oldflutes.com/facsimiles/index.htm
# Posted on July 24th 2008 by javivr