Although Powell claims that The Flute “does not set out to extend the boundaries of scholarship any further by contributing new material” (ix), he often sheds new light on it because of the attention he pays to the interrelationship of the various categories of material he presents.  Moreover, his insistence that one should not view the history of changes in the instrument as “progress” or as an abstract line of  mechanical development may yet appear new to some readers.  Because of its broad subject matter the book is far too extensive to be adequately summarized in any review; yet, because each individual chapter tells a complex and interesting story all its own, I want to touch at least briefly on each, highlighting some of the matters I found most interesting or, in some cases, those most in need of further reflection or clarification.

            The Early Years.  In Chapter 1, “Shepherds, Monks, and Soldiers,” Powell discusses the transverse flute’s arrival in Western Europe, its physical aspects insofar as they can be deduced, its appearance in medieval literature and pictures, and the variety of ways in which it may have been used.  In addition, the bibliographical essay pertaining to the chapter points to useful sources for thinking about how to perform medieval music today, including the work of Christopher Page and Thomas Binkley.  One small quibble I have about the chapter, however, concerns Powell’s statement, perhaps based on what Jeremy Montagu wrote in Part I of the “Flute” article in the New Grove Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed., that “it is usually assumed that some kind of Indian flute became known in Byzantium around the tenth century, and was thence transmitted to Europe” (11).  To establish a connection between India and Europe, Powell draws on Liane Ehlich’s intriguing observations about perceived similarities between Indian flutes and flutes shown in medieval depictions of flute-playing. Yet, it may be too soon to make such an assumption, for Joachim Braun suggests in his article “Musical Instruments in Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts” that explaining the gap between depictions of the transverse flute during the ancient period, some of which are Indian, and the earliest known Byzantine iconographical sources which come from the tenth century remains a challenging task for organology (Early Music 8 [1980]: 315 and 327, n. 36).

            In Chapter 2, “The Flute at War and at Home,” Powell highlights the military flute or fife before turning to the transverse flute and its increasing use in secular music.  Powell notes that the city of Basel engaged fifers as early as 1374, and that a century later word of the success of Swiss infantry squadrons, which stepped precisely in time to the beat of a fife and drum, swept the continent, leading to the spread of Swiss mercenary troops across Europe along with the adoption  of flutes and drums as a permanent part of European infantry culture.  Although most current sources of information about the fife assign it only six fingerholes, Powell calls attention to some sixteenth-century illustrations that show fifes with seven or eight fingerholes, thus enlarging our idea of the possible differences between military flutes or fifes and the six-holed flutes used in playing consort music.  Powell then turns to sixteenth-century printed treatises about musical instruments that provide us with the first written technical information about the flute we have.  While most of what Powell says about these frequently confusing sources can be trusted, there are some inconsistencies or muddied descriptions.  For example, in tackling Martin Agricola’s Musica instrumentalis deudsch, in which three different sets of fingering charts for three sizes of flutes appear in two different editions of the treatise published in 1529 and 1545, Powell states with regard to Agricola’s first set of fingering charts (1529) that “a consort of flutes (sounding an octave higher than the written notes) can cover a range from D below the bass stave as far as E3 above the treble” (36).  But sixteenth-century flutes did not play as low as D on the third line of the bass stave, so that information is misleading.  Rather, as scholars Howard Brown, Anne Smith, and William Hettrick have pointed out, the three sizes of flutes for which Agricola provides fingering charts seem to have been meant to sound an octave and a fourth higher than the pitches illustrated in the charts, with the lowest note on the largest of these flutes thus being g in the bass clef.[1].  Indeed, Powell himself has stated this on an earlier page, although he confuses the issue by adding that “the fingering chart showing a D-A-E consort is really for a G-D-A consort transposing the notated music up a fifth” (34).  Brown explains the matter in a way that seems to reflect the situation more accurately (although it is still difficult to grasp), when he says that Agricola’s 1529 charts “could have been described as presenting scales transposed a fifth higher, even though they create sounds an octave and a fourth higher . . . than the notation would suggest” (25).  In the two other sets of fingering charts that appear in Agricola’s 1545 edition of  Musica instrumentalis deudsch, the first depicts the lowest pitches or fundamentals of the three sizes of flutes as being an octave and a fifth below the sounding pitches of the instruments, while the other depicts the “regular” lowest pitches or fundamentals as being two full octaves below their sounding pitches.  In Anne Smith’s attempt to make sense of the low range of all three of Agricola’s charts, she notes that the fundamentals understood by Agricola to represent the “regular” way of using flutes is an octave lower than those mentioned by other early writers, thus two octaves, rather than a single octave lower than flutes would normally play.  Smith surmises that this was due to some confusion on the part of Agricola related to the problems of transposition, as well as to his lack of personal knowledge about the normal octave difference between notated and sounding pitches on the renaissance flute.

            In Chapter 2 Powell next turns to Philibert Jambe de Fer’s L’Epitome musical de tons, sons et accordz, es voix humaines, fleustes d’Alleman, fleustes à neuf trous, violes, & violons of 1556, which mentions just two sizes of flutes–a bass flute in g and a tenor flute in d’–although only the fingering chart for the bass flute is complete in the sole extant copy of the treatise[2].  In addition to showing the modern reader how to interpret Jambe de Fer’s diagram of the scale, which “looks like a puzzle to modern eyes,” in a useful sidebar about the hexachord system (34), Powell makes the important point that for Jambe de Fer, the true basic scale of the renaissance flute was the Dorian scale rather than the major scale (35, 47).  However, Powell seems to make one error in his translation of a passage from Jambe de Fer about blowing the flute.  His translation reads, “One must have the skill and the courage to place the said flute right in the middle of the lower lip, blowing softly and moderately, increasing in strength little by little in ascending, and in going lower one must feint less and less [lit. gradually] according to the disposition of the music without being afraid to purse the lips” (42).  Powell explains that “feints” are notes that lie outside the flat hexachord and that they are less successful in the low register because they sound most uneven in tone there.  Anne Smith’s translation of the final portion of the same passage, which in its original version is “pour descendre, il la faut faindre de peu à peu selon l’assiete de la Musique,” reads, “for descending one must lessen it [the wind] little by little following the line of the music” (quoted in Powell, p. 295, n. 22).   Although Powell suggests that Smith has mistranslated the key verb faindre (which Powell translates as “feint”), the Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française (1884; rpt. New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1961) explains “faindre or feindre (se)” as “hésiter, manquer de courage” (3:702) (to hesitate, to lack courage).  Thus, it would appear that Smith’s translation, which proposes blowing less hard in the low register, makes more sense in the context of the passage than does Powell’s.

            In the remainder of the chapter, Powell traces the increasing use of the flute in small chamber consorts, Italian theatrical entertainments, and sacred compositions in the sixteenth century.  Powell also informs us about the astonishing numbers of flutes owned by various courts (for example, the Baden-Württemberg court had 220 in 1589, with some sets playing at different pitches a whole tone apart), and surveys all known surviving sixteenth-century flutes, most of which work best in flat modes.  Citing the work of Italian researcher and flute maker Filadelfio Puglisi in estimating the pitches of these instruments, Powell states that the most common pitch of extant renaissance flutes is a’=410, with a smaller group at a’=435.  This information corresponds closely with that provided by Boaz Berney in a talk given at the Renaissance Flute Days held in Basel, Switzerland, on September 6-8, 2002.  Although Berney argued that a’=408 seems the best pitch at which to play the lower-pitched group of flutes mentioned above, his survey of surviving renaissance flutes and transitional instruments from just a bit later included two instruments at a’=480, four at a’=460, eleven at a’=430, nineteen at a’=408, four at a’=380, two at a’=362, and five at still other pitches.

         In Chapter 3, entitled  “Consort and Solo: The Seventeenth Century,” Powell points out that the same three sizes of transverse flutes that appear in the Agricola treatise reappear in Michael Praetorius’s Syntagma Musicum of 1619–a bass in g, a tenor/alto in d’, and a discant in a’--although Praetorius presents their ranges at sounding pitch.  But only g and d’ flutes appear in Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle of 1636, which poses some major interpretive problems in its text, one of which concerns the nature of the flute’s internal bore.  Although Mersenne describes the flute as having a cylindrical bore (like that of the sixteenth-century flute), the first of three fingering charts for the flute and fife he includes assign the same fingerings to the fifth and sixth notes in the instrument’s second octave as to those in its first octave.  Thus, for the flute in g, the fingerings given for d” and e” are the same as those given for d’ and e’, even though on a cylindrically bored instrument they would produce notes that are too flat.  While Raymond Meylan conjectured in La Flûte (Lausanne: Payot, 1974, p. 70) that these fingerings, which had not appeared in earlier sources, indicate that a change from cylindrical to conical bore had already occurred in some flutes by this time, Powell suggests two additional explanations for the fingerings:  (1) that Mersenne could easily have been mistaken about the bore of the flute he described if it “contracted towards the foot and flared out again so that the ends of the tube were of the same diameter, as baroque flute bores typically did”; or (2) that the flute might have be able to overblow its fifth and sixth notes at the octave, even if its bore were cylindrical, “if the toneholes of the G flute or fife were much larger than those indicated by the dimensions” given by Mersenne (59).  Yet another intriguing hypothesis was proposed by Philippe Allain-Dupré in a talk, “Mersenne and his Contradictions,” presented at the September 2002 Renaissance Flute Days held in Basel--namely, that “Mersenne, in editing his work, exchanged the fingering chart for fife [the third of the three fingering charts provided by Mersenne] with . . . the first fingering chart for the flute” <http://www.enterag.ch/anne/renaissanceflute/mersenne/mersenne.html>; see also Allain-Dupré’s Les Flûtes de Claude Rafi, p. 51, n. 4.  This solution is supported by the elaborate fingerings given in the fife’s fingering chart, which do not resemble those “that one would expect of a simply fingered folk instrument.”  Moreover, the signs used to show fingerings in the second and third fingering charts, both for instruments in d’, “employ the same signs as those for the recorder,” while the typography of the fingering chart for the flute in g differs from the other two; “thus the fingering chart for the flute in g must come from a different source.” 

            Mersenne’s discussion of the flute includes the score of a four-part air de cour, of which the bass part must be played on another instrument if the piece is to be played at written pitch, since its range extends down to c in the bass clef.  Yet, Powell confusingly states that because the air is written in transposed clefs or chiavette, “it is meant to be played at written pitch on a normal G-D-D-D consort of flutes” (57)–that is, a bass in g and three alto/tenors in d’.  (A secondary confusion created by Powell is that while the air de cour is indeed written in clefs specified in Patrizio Barbieri’s article “Chiavette” in the New Grove, 2^nd ed., vol. 5, pp. 597-600, as appropriate for high clefs [G2, C2, C3, and F3], in a side-bar on clefs and transposing on page 53 Powell erroneously specifies the high clefs as G2, C1, C2, and F3.)  Perhaps what he really means to say is that the piece should be played an octave higher than written, rather than being transposed to another key.  This idea is reinforced in his side-bar on clefs and transposing, in which Powell states that violins and transverse flutes might have to transpose pieces in “chiavi naturali (low or natural clefs)” up a fourth to make them fit the instruments’ range, whereas in high clefs “flutes, cornetts, and violins would play them at the written pitch” (53).  Yet, this cannot literally be done in Mersenne’s air de cour, not only because the bass part lies too low but also because the tenor part is assigned notes too low for a flute in d’.  On the other hand, if the piece were to be played an octave higher than written, the soprano part would lie very high throughout and even touch briefly on one note above the highest pitch specified in Mersenne’s fingering chart for the flute in d’.  While transposing the air to another key would solve these problems, the most obvious solution would be to assign the bass part to an instrument other than the flute such as the sackbut or serpent, which Mersenne himself suggested was appropriate in flute consorts.  Then the tenor part might be played on a flute in g, and the alto and soprano parts on flutes in d’.

            After passing through these dangerous thickets, Powell elegantly traces the flute’s emergence as a prized instrument at the court of Louis XIV.  Not only did the instrument get used in new ways, appearing in intimate concerts in solo and chamber settings as well as in opera and ballet performances, but it also acquired a new character–one associated with sad, tender, and languishing feelings, and with love.  These changes were closely interrelated with structural changes being made in the tenor-sized instrument (the flute in d’), including changes in bore, numbers of pieces, shapes and sizes of embouchure and fingerholes, the thickness of walls, and the addition of an E= key.  After briefly discussing a handful of transitional instruments that exemplify a sort of intermediate ground between the sixteenth-century flute and the classic three-piece “baroque” flute that became fashionable in France early in the eighteenth century, Powell points to a three-piece flute marked with the name HOTTETERRE and an anchor stamp, now in the Landesmuseum in Graz, Austria, as the classic type of early baroque flute.  When he states that other flutes with similar maker’s marks in Berlin and St. Petersburg, long thought to have been made by a member of the Hotteterre family, “have recently been re-evaluated as nineteenth-century replicas” (67), Powell is being modest indeed, for it was Powell himself who startled the baroque woodwind world just a few years ago by convincingly demonstrating that these instruments were copies (see “The Hotteterre Flute: Six Replicas in Search of a Myth,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 49 [1996], 225-63).

            The Baroque Flute and Its Successors.  In Chapter 4, devoted to “The Early Eighteenth Century: The ‘Baroque’ Flute’s Golden Age,” Powell traces the change from “a closed world of private performances,” in which a handful of court flutists participated in France (68), to the larger and more public spaces in which a new class of flute virtuosi began to emerge.  Soon music for flute was being produced all over Europe in a variety of styles, beginning with Michel de La Barre’s Pièces pour la flûte traversière avec la basse-continue, the first published collection of pieces in the new solo style (1702), while Jacques Hotteterre’s Principes de la flûte traversière initiated the publication of instruction books devoted to playing the “baroque” flute (1707).  A variety of instrument styles, too, was being produced in flute makers’ workshops.  Although early eighteenth-century flutes commonly shared a conical bore and three-piece construction, the instrument’s acoustics were by no means standardized, for each maker “developed a personal concept of tone and intonation, and devised original technical means of achieving his ideas” (74).  Maximum bore diameters and bore tapers, for example, differed significantly, creating great differences in timbre, intonation, range, and flexibility of tone.  The pitch of early baroque flutes also differed, ranging from about a’=395 to a’=408, although from around 1715 attempts were made to establish a German standard pitch of a’=c410.  Powell next describes the subsequent division of the middle joint of the flute, giving it a new four-piece construction, beginning in the early 1720s, although instruments were not routinely made with a set of corps de rechanges, or upper middle joints of varying lengths, until the 1730s and 1740s.  He also notes attempts as early as the 1720s to extend the flute’s range downwards by a whole tone by providing a longer footjoint whose range extended to c’; then, too, flutes pitched around c’ without such an extension were also made, possibly for playing oboe parts.  Still longer flutes called flûtes d’amour were also made, although Powell’s discussion of them is a bit messy.  On page 67, he correctly calls a flute with the lowest note of B=, a major third below the standard flute, a flûte d’amour (although the term has been more frequently used to describe flutes pitched a minor third below the standard flute), but on page 81, citing a study by Peter Thalheimer, he mentions a concerto in B= major by Molter “for a flauto d’amore in A=,” along with other more numerous works for an “instrument in A.”   Because Powell rarely proposes elsewhere that we think of flutes with the lowest note of d’ as being “in C,” we may be led to believe that these flutes were pitched a fourth below the standard flute (the “instrument in A”) or an augmented fourth lower (the “flauto d’amore in A=”), although he is really referring to flutes with the lowest note of  B> or B=, hence a minor or major third below the standard flute.

            In addition to flutes and flute music, Powell refreshingly pays attention to flute players of both professional and amateur status in this chapter.  He also notes that German military bands provided some work for professional fifers, a distinction between the fife and flute having first been explicitly made when the one-keyed flute appeared.  Nevertheless, the fifes that appeared with drums at the Hanoverian accession to the English throne in 1714 were in a new form with a key like that of the flute (85).

            The flutist to whom Powell gives pride of place, however, is Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773), who constitutes the principal focus of the entire fifth chapter, “Quantz and the Operatic Style.”  Besides being an exemplary musician at the Dresden court for about a quarter of a century, Quantz authored the eighteenth-century’s most detailed manual on musical performance–the Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen of 1752, held the prestigious post of flute teacher to Frederick the Great of Prussia, built instruments to his own special design, and performed and composed a challenging repertoire for them.  In Powell’s own words, “Quantz’s threefold activities, as a composer-performer, an instrument maker, and a writer, place him at the heart of this book, as a persuasive example of its theme that the flute, its music, and its performance technique are all bound tightly together in a vital but fragile relationship” (88).  Relying heavily on the recent research of Mary Oleskiewicz and Edward Reilly’s earlier studies of Quantz, as well as Quantz’s own autobiographical sketch, Powell points to the relatively early use of flute specialists at the Dresden court and to the inclusion of virtuoso flute solos in Italian operas performed there.  He notes that flat tonalities such as E= were frequent in the Dresden opera repertoire and that after Quantz’s entry into the Hofkapelle, court composer Zelenka markedly increased his use of transverse flutes and employed ”keys as far from the flute’s easiest as E major and C minor, the latter linked with fugal techniques and chromaticism” (94).

            Powell suggests that the difficult keys in which the Dresden flutists were expected to play “gives a quite new aspect to Quantz’s interest in improving his flute’s intonation” (95).  Quantz had a second key added to his flute while he was in Paris in 1726–a key for D< in addition to the standard E= key--which he later explained in his Versuch (ch. 3, sect. 8) was due to the difference between large and small semitones (E= being a comma higher than D<) and his desire that in playing neither would have to tempered.  Since the D< key was used for only four pitches–d<’, a<’, d<”, and g<”, Quantz provided different fingerings for other enharmonic pairs of notes in his Versuch.  After becoming a flute maker in 1739, Quantz adopted another device that had been invented to make the flute’s intonation more precise–a screw-cork in the headjoint–although he did not adopt the index footjoint.  Quantz also built a tuning slide in the headjoint of his flutes to be extended a little more than half a centimeter in its normal position.  Although Quantz made instruments with sets of middle joints of differing lengths, he was opposed to it in principle, and the wear on surviving Quantz flutes indicates that only the longest middle joint, which provides a pitch of a’=c390, received regular use.

            Another indication of Quantz’s aesthetics appears in his description of ideal flute tone in the Versuch.  According to Oleskiewicz, Quantz was strongly influenced by the Italian vocal style and the sound of particular singers he heard during his formative years at Dresden, and that influenced his description of flute tone:  “In general the most pleasing tone quality (sonus) on the flute is that which more nearly resembles a Contraalt [a high tenor or a female alto] than a soprano, or which is similar to the range of singers that is called the chest voice.  One must strive as much as possible to acquire the tone quality of those flute players who can draw a bright, cutting, thick, round, masculine, but also pleasing sound from the instrument” (97).  According to Powell, Quantz designed the proportions of the flutes he built to aid in the production of such a tone, especially in the low register, using a larger and more sharply tapered bore than that of any other contemporary instruments as well as an elliptical rather than circular embouchure hole.  While Quantz’s flute music, along with that of his royal pupil Frederick the Great after Quantz moved to Berlin, has long been overlooked as dull and monotonous, Powell suggests that it is ready for re-evaluation in the light of Quantz’s instruments.  Moreover, knowledge of his instruments can also lead us to a new understanding of other works composed for Berlin, such as the C-minor trio sonata in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Musical Offering, which “Bach clearly wrote with the Quantz flute, as well as the Berlin taste and performance practice, in mind” (99). 

            In closing the chapter, Powell attempts to evaluate Quantz’s influence on later generations of flute players, suggesting that the group of students he attracted to Berlin in the 1750s constitute the first real “school” of flute-playing that can be identified anywhere in Europe.  Both Quantz’s own students and later generations of players in Berlin who could trace their lineage back to them were to retain a vivid sense of their heritage throughout the nineteenth century, believing that they had inherited something substantial and meaningful from Quantz, even though they “were among the least attached to conventional forms of the instrument, and among the first in Germany to accept the revolutionary Boehm flute” (106).  Powell refers to such beliefs as “myths of succession” (103).

            Next, Powell addresses technical innovations made in the design, mechanism, and sound ideal of the “classical flute” during the second half of the eighteenth century.  For example, new keys for F, B=, and G< were applied to the flute, as well as keys for low C< and C on flutes with a longer footjoint, especially by English makers.  Innovative Leipzig flute maker Johann George Tromlitz developed a model on which every semitone on the instrument was supplied with its own tonehole.  In Dresden August Grenser made flutes that were slimmer and lighter than baroque models, were tuned to favor sharp keys, and voiced with a less full but more penetrating tone.  As increasing numbers of dilettantes took up the flute, a vigorous musical instrument trade dealing in large quantities of instruments also developed.  Powell also points to an increased awareness on the part of listeners during this period, who for the first time could regularly hear traveling virtuoso flutists, each with an individual style of composition and performance.  We are introduced to Johann Baptist Wendling, flutist at the Mannheim court, whose clear and beautiful playing Mozart admired; Pietro Grassi Florio, renowned in England for his Adagio playing; J. G. Tromlitz, who was known for his powerful tone and perfect intonation; and blind virtuoso Friedrich Ludwig Dülon, who played a prelude before each movement.  Different opinions about the ideal flute tone were vociferously expressed, and Powell closes the chapter with a quotation from John Gunn that illustrates the opposing viewpoints that prevailed at the end of the eighteenth century in England.  According to Gunn, some thought that “an equal fullness of tone ought to be aimed at throughout; and this, when acquired, is thought to be the greatest excellence of which the instrument is capable”; while others thought “that this kind of tone is contrary to the very nature of a Flute; the character of which, from its affinity to the female voice, is softness, grace, and tender expression.”  According to Powell, “the question would not soon be settled” (126).

            In the following four chapters, Powell continues to trace these same matters from the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century.  As concert audiences broadened and became less exclusive, they demanded variety, and the playing of visiting flutists became the subject of increased commentary in the press.  Moreover, the idea that the performer had a separate and special role as a gifted interpreter of works not of his own composition also became more widespread, and in the climate of the Romantic movement the idea that a flutist could hold the status of a “great artist” emerged.  Dülon’s blindness, youth, and good looks, as well as the appearance of a similar fictional flutist in Romantic writer Jean Paul’s novel Hesperus of 1796, made him the earliest candidate for the title of “great artist.”  Reviews of his performances described his “artistic sorcery,” “divinely spirited breath,” and the “heavenly spirit” he breathed into “a melting Adagio” (131).  Flutists competed with violinists in their cultivation of a brilliant style of playing, their display of antics, an impressive volume of tone, and their use of special effects such as harmonics, the glide, and the “vibration” on sustained tones.  English flutist Charles Nicholson (1795-1837), whom Powell describes as “a one-man flute industry” (134), became noted for his powerful tone.  This was due not only to the larger toneholes on the instruments he played, but also to his embouchure, which featured firmness of both lips and directing the breath into the mouth-hole “in a vertical line to produce the lower notes with fullness and precision,” as Nicholson wrote in his flute method of 1836.  Yet, Nicholson emphasized striving for quality and purity of tone rather than loudness, recommending that “the tone ought to be as reedy as possible, as much like that of the hautboy as you can get it, but embodying the round mellowness of the clarionet” (134).  Aspects of Nicholson’s playing style, including his fondness for flat tonalities and his use of glides (the joining of two adjacent notes by a glissando), vibrations, trills, turns, appoggiaturas, octave slurs, harmonics, veiled tones, alternative fingerings, and dynamics ranging from ppp to ff, may be deduced by studying his fascinating version of Roslin Castle reproduced on page 142.  Another trait of Nicholson’s playing was his use of super-sharpened leading tones, called “sensitive notes,” whose use can be traced back at least to 1798, turning on its head the older idea that sharpened notes should be flatter than their enharmonic relatives.

            In Chapter 8, “Flute Mania,” Powell particularly addresses the increasing interest that arose during the early nineteenth century in reforming the mechanics and, to some extent, the sound of the flute.  Powell is quick to argue, however, that flutes of the period were not too defective to give an adequate account of its music, as some modern historians of the flute have alleged, or were not loud enough for orchestras of the time.  Among the concerns addressed by early nineteenth-century experimenters were simplifying fingerings, improving evenness of tone, achieving “equal” intonation, introducing mechanisms to facilitate the glide, extending the lower range of the flute as far as g, especially in Vienna, and experimenting with the size of the flute’s bore.  Heinrich Wilhelm Theodor Pottgiesser proposed a sweeping redesign of the flute that promoted the ideal of evenness of tone and “equal intonation”–that is, without enharmonic differences.  Claude Laurent made flutes of crystal that were less sensitive to temperature-related pitch changes.  Jean Daniel Holtzapffel replaced the three additional keys (B=, G<, and F>) of the standard French four-keyed flute with open holes for the left thumb, the left fifth finger, and the right thumb--although Powell has mixed up left and right hands in the case of the second and third open holes (147).  P. N. Petersen devised a lever that could raise and lower a pitch by an eighth of a tone while making a crescendo or decrescendo.  The flute’s bore was also a matter of concern, with some men arguing that although a wide bore produced a large sound, that sound was not easily altered, and thus a wide-bored flute was not suited to “artistic” playing.  By around 1820, most of Europe had adopted some kind of flute with eight or nine keys, with middle c as the lowest note, except for Paris, where the official flute of the Conservatoire remained the four-keyed flute.

            Then came the important work of Captain James Carel Gerhard Gordon (1791-1838), who was the first to design a flute based on an open-key system in collaboration with August Buffet jeune.  While precise details of that instrument are lacking, it appears that it made use of crescent touchpieces that could transmit key motion to holes beyond the reach of the fingers.  The next great step along these lines was to be taken by Theobald Boehm (1794-1881), who in 1832 designed a conically-bored ring-key flute that “located toneholes of the largest practical size in their ideal acoustical positions, many of which lay beyond the reach of the fingers, employing an open-key system operated by interlinked parallel rod-axles to close holes too large for the unaided finger” (157-58).  Although Boehm’s conical ring-key flute demonstrated a beautiful evenness of tone, well in tune arpeggios, and an easily produced tone of uncommon strength, many leading flutists felt that it had lost as much as it had gained, and some, such as Anton Bernhard Fürstenau, thought that its very evenness of tone destroyed the flute’s innate character.  In 1847, when Boehm introduced a metal, cylindrically bored flute that carried further the ideas he had introduced in 1832, its altered tone aroused still more deep-seated resistance than that of the ring-key flute.  John Clinton in England, for example, was harsh in his criticism of the metal flute, whose tone he deemed  “uncertain, harsh, and hollow in quality,” with “the pitch constantly and suddenly changing to the extent of nearly a semitone” (163).  All these mechanical innovations of the “flute mania” period are usefully summarized by Powell in a side-bar on pages 160-61.

            The Modern Flute and Late Nineteenth-Century Eclecticism.  In the ninth chapter, Powell investigates in greater detail the genesis of the brilliant and controversial innovations Theobald Boehm brought to the design of the flute in 1832 and 1847.  Even though present-day Boehm-system instruments differ in significant ways from the flutes Boehm and his contemporaries built and played, it was Boehm who virtually single-handedly invented the modern flute.  Just as he did for Quantz, Powell sketches out Boehm’s principal formative experiences such as his early work as a goldsmith, flute study with Johann Nepomuk Capeller, appointments as flutist at the Isartor Theater in Munich and the royal court, and a successful early concert tour.  The story of Boehm’s initial innovations, the commercial production of flutes made according to his design by manufacturers in different countries coupled with their own modifications, and the machinations and intrigues of those who attempted to deprive Boehm of the credit for his invention make for an informative chapter.  This is enhanced by an account of the acoustic studies Boehm began under the guidance of his friend Schafhäutl that led him to revise the most fundamental aspects of the flute’s design in his model of 1847; these revisions included the introduction of a cylindrical bore in the main part of the instrument, a so-called “parabolic” headjoint, a tube of metal (Boehm experimented with brass, copper, silver, and German silver), toneholes of the maximum possible size closed by padded keys, and a mechanism that built on the innovations of his 1832 pattern.  It is surprising to learn just how innovative Boehm’s use of metal in the flute’s construction was.  Before Boehm only one maker had done so--George Miller, who patented a two-jointed fife in brass for use in hot climates in 1810.  Boehm’s further experiments with different methods of playing B=, his design of a closed G< key arrangement of his own, his development of an alto flute in G, and his production of wooden cylindrical flutes are also mentioned.  Throughout the chapter, Powell’s presentation is clear, although a greater number of drawings and larger, clearer photographs would have helped the reader’s understanding.

            Following the introduction of Boehm-system flutes, still further controversies raged among flutists, composers, and conductors over the mechanism, tone, and character of the flute.  Powell addresses these matters in Chapter 10, “Nineteenth-Century Eclecticism,” along with further innovations made in the design and manufacture of flutes.  Innovations in “old-system” flutes continued, in part due to the growth of string sections in orchestras that called for more powerful flutes.  In 1853 Hanover maker Heinrich Friedrich Meyer began to build a new type of twelve-keyed flute that extended to low B and featured a metal-lined ivory or wood headjoint.  Meyer also altered the bore, toneholes, and mouth-hole in order to produce a greater volume of sound and facilitate the extreme high and low registers.  According to Powell, “the Meyer flute met the needs of ensemble flutists in Germany, Austria, Italy, Scandinavia, Russia, and even the U.S. well enough that it remained in use in some orchestras until around c1930 and still later in bands” (188).  In France Louis Lot began producing Boehm-system flutes with a thicker tube, larger toneholes, and a bigger, squarer embouchure, as well as a sturdier mechanism.  A useful chart of flute innovations made during this “eclectic period” appears on page 189, with greater detail being provided in the text.  As for the Boehm flute’s reception, we learn that in 1852 Richard Wagner and the Bavarian Court orchestra instructed Moritz Fürstenau, as a condition of his succeeding to the post of first flute, to abandon the Boehm flute and return to his traditional instrument.  In 1882 at performances of Parsifal at Bayreuth, Wagner was unsympathetic to Rudolf Tillmetz’s cylindrical flute, giving it the name “cannon.”  Even Boehm’s conical ring-key flute was criticized as being too assertive, monotonous, and emotionally cold by German orchestral flutists.  As for the metal flute, Emil Prill, solo flutist in the Berlin Royal Orchestra, articulated a common criticism when he said that it was “less suited to orchestral playing owing to the extremely clear metallic tone which forms too shrill a contrast to the rest of the woodwind instruments” (195).  Still, the Boehm flute got an early toehold in the United States, although Carl Fischer, as well as the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogues, offered old-system flutes as late as 1930.  Powell closes Chapter 10 with a comment about the emancipated spirit and “melting pot” atmosphere that characterized flute playing and flute making at the end of World War I in most of the Western hemisphere.  Although individual playing styles still prevailed, the market for instruments and flute-playing skills at the highest levels had effectively become international, and the technical advantages of modern flutes were gradually making them prevalent in orchestral work.

            Next, Powell turns to “The French Flute School,” first filling in some of the gaps in his earlier narrative so as to bring together in one place the historical roots of and the emergence of the style that would dominate flute-playing internationally for much of the twentieth century.  For Powell, the term French Flute School applies both to the French style of flute teaching and playing that originated with Claude-Paul Taffanel and his students at the Paris Conservatoire around the turn of the twentieth century, and the subsequent French-influenced style of flute playing that became dominant in Europe and America through the influence of Conservatoire-trained players.  The main attributes of that style are “the use of the French-style silver flute . . . , a preoccupation with tone, a standard repertoire, and a set of teaching materials in which the Taffanel-Gaubert method and the tone development exercises of Marcel Moyse . . . hold a central place” (208).  Yet, a clear understanding of the earlier school’s distinctive playing technique and style is elusive, because over the years myths and legends about the French Flute School were created and perpetuated, and mistaken assumptions were made, while the style continued to evolve.   I can still remember discussing the “French style” of playing with fellow students in my younger years, and my feeling of frustration that I could never quite get the hang of what the characteristics of the style were supposed to be–whether exemplified in the playing of Philadelphia Orchestra principal William Kincaid, my own teacher James Pappoutsakis (Boston Symphony Orchestra), or others.  Thus, I was delighted to read Powell’s examination of the mythic aspects of the French School in this chapter, which in its later years was primarily maintained through Marcel Moyse’s phenomenal popularity as a teacher in the 1960s and 1970s.

            Before turning to Taffanel, his students, and the traditions they helped develop and spread, Powell traces the development of French flute teaching at the Paris Conservatoire from its establishment in 1795 on.  (Parenthetically, let me say that Powell’s suggestion that I entitled my dissertation “The French Flute School from 1700 to 1760" [1971] because of a search for the Taffanel school’s obscure roots, is not the case; I simply used the term “school” in the sense of one of the definitions given in the Random House Dictionary--“the art and artists of a geographical location considered independently of stylistic similarity: the French school.”)  The first tutor to have been used at the Conservatoire was François Devienne’s Nouvelle méthode théorique et pratique pour la flûte.  Elsewhere I have argued that the foundation for the later French Flute School’s approach to embouchure and tone development lay in Devienne’s exercises for practicing the scale in long tones and lessons for playing different sizes of intervals, particularly as they were elaborated on and expanded in revised editions of the method issued after Devienne’s death.[3].  Thus, it is misleading to say, as Powell does on page 212, that within a few decades the contents of Devienne’s method were revised and altered so much that subsequent editions retained nothing of the original material.  One other correction to Powell’s discussion is that the bilingual French and German edition of the Devienne method that Powell states was issued in Hamburg in 1795 (following the tentative dating proposed by Dayton C. Miller in his Catalogue of Books and Literary Material Relating to the Flute and Other Musical Instruments [Cleveland: Privately Printed, 1935], 35) probably was not issued before 1812, since it includes new material not found in other editions published before that year. 

            Quibbles aside, this is a fascinating chapter.  I was happy to learn where the term “column of air” used in modern flute teaching originated–Hugot & Wunderlich’s Méthode de flûte du Conservatoire, which had succeeded Devienne’s method at the Conservatoire in 1804–even though it developed a different meaning.  The Hugot & Wunderlich method also expanded upon Devienne’s approach to tone development by paying assiduous attention to the practicing of sons filés, nuances, and scales in different intervals.  Then, after the development of the Boehm flute and in spite of resistance to it on the part of Conservatoire professor Jean-Louis Tulou, it became the official instrument of the Conservatoire when Dorus succeeded Tulou as professor of flute in 1860.  By the time Paul Taffanel (1814-1908) was appointed professor of flute in 1893, the Boehm flute had been used at the Conservatoire for over thirty years and Parisian orchestral players had brought about the compulsory adoption of the silver Boehm flute in state-subsidized orchestras.  For Taffanel, quality of tone was most important.  Louis Fleury wrote of his teacher’s priorities in an article on the flute that appeared in the Encyclopédie de la musique et Dictionnaire du Conservatoire: “We place at the head of the list of a flutist’s preoccupations the search for a good sound. . . .  All practising of technique that neglects the quality of sound is deadly” (quoted by Powell on page 219).  Then there is the matter of vibrato.  Although the Taffanel & Gaubert Méthode complète de flûte, which was completed by Philippe Gaubert after Taffanel’s death, opposed the use of vibrato, particularly in the classics, Taffanel himself employed “a light, almost imperceptible vibrato” according to Fleury.  Powell speculates that the key to this apparent paradox, noted in other sources as well, may be “found in the distinction the Taffanel school drew between what it called ‘vibrato’ and what [Adolphe] Hennebains . . . identified as ‘expression,’ a gentle enlivening of the flute’s tone that became perceptible only when compared with the entirely straight tone British and German players used at the time” (220).  In this chapter, Powell also gives an account of the new French repertoire for flute that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “hand in hand with an entirely fresh notion of what made music expressive.”  In that music, “a particular tone quality, playing style, and emotional sensibility, all entirely French in character, were intimately linked” (218-19).

            Early Recordings, the Early Music Revival, and the Postmodern Age.  The final chapters of The Flute deal with the influence of the technology of recording on flute playing, the flute in the early music revival, and the flute in the “postmodern age.”  In the first of these chapters, "The Flute in the Age of Recording," Powell takes stock of the influence of recording on flute preferences and flute playing, stating that “within a few decades of the first high-fidelity recordings [that is, by around the mid-1940s], previously distinct national fashions of playing had dramatically altered and begun to merge together into a new, recognizably modern shape . . . .  Once memory of the nineteenth century’s instrumental and tonal variety had vanished by about 1960, all but a handful of flutists in western Europe, North America, and Japan played a metal French-style Boehm flute–the only model by then available from the companies that had come to dominate flute production–with a relatively uniform technique and concept of style” (225).  The experience of British flutist Geoffrey Gilbert, who played a key role in the breach of English resistance to the French flute sound, may serve to illustrate that influence.  After noticing that London recording companies imported French flutists for solo and concerto recordings, Gilbert learned from the recording manager at His Master’s Voice that English flute playing generally was not acceptable to the gramophone company.  Soon thereafter he began taking lessons from René Le Roy, altered his embouchure and articulation, learned to use vibrato, and bought a Louis Lot silver flute (236). 

            Before such widespread standardization took place, however, early recorded performances illustrate a fascinating sound world quite different from our own, and here the companion CD to Powell’s book, The Flute on Record, is invaluable.  While it does not reproduce anything as old as 1890, by which time recordings of over a hundred solo and ensemble works with flute or piccolo had become available from the North American Phonograph Company, it does include recordings made throughout the first four decades of the twentieth century.  The earliest dates from 1902, with U.S. Marine Band flutist Frank Badollet and his “well-blended and vibrato-free trio of flutes” (226) playing an unidentified “Evening Song.”  Other very early recordings reproduced on The Flute on Record include Adolphe Hennebains playing the Badinerie from Bach’s B-Minor Suite (1905), Erika Stoltz playing Wilhelm Popp’s Carmen–Fantaisie brillante (1906), London Symphony Orchestra principal flutist Eli Hudson playing Theobald Boehm’s Variations sur un air allemande (1908), Australian flutist John Lemmone playing Giulio Briccialdi’s Il Vento (1910), and Amsterdam-born Albert Fransella playing a waltz from Benjamin Godard’s Suite, Op. 116 (1911).  Of these, I was especially struck by Lemmone’s fast, constant vibrato in slow sections of Il Vento; Hudson’s strong low notes, exceedingly fast arpeggios, and amazingly clean, rapid changes of register in Boehm’s Variations; Erika Stoltz’s enormously fast passage-work and double-tonguing in Popp’s Carmen Fantasy;  and Fransella’s big low register and fast, unvaried vibrato on long tones in Godard’s waltz.  Among the somewhat later examples are Philippe Gaubert playing his own Madrigal with a beautifully centered, soft tone enlivened by a light constant vibrato (1919); Berlin’s Royal Opera principal Emil Prill playing an Allegro from Frederick the Great’s Concerto No. 3 in C Major in an exaggeratedly straight-forward manner, except for very fast vibrato on long notes and sudden changes in dynamics (1924); New Zealander John Amadio playing Franz Doppler’s Fantaisie pastorale hongroise with blazing rapidity, breathtaking double- and triple-tonguing, trills, and tremolos, and an incredibly strong low c (1929); Georges Laurent playing the Largo e dolce from Bach’s B-Minor Sonata in a rhythmically regular, smooth legato fashion throughout (1934); and Carl Bartuzat with the other members of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Wind Quintet playing selections from Mozart’s Divertimento No. 14 in B Minor (c1928).  Even though Bartuzat had changed to the Boehm flute by the time of this recording, Powell commends it as “an extremely rare document of the touching and traditional sound German players prized, as well as their unique sense of rhythm, with less rubato but more Quantzian overdotting than other styles” (233).

           Speaking of vibrato, Powell draws on Robert Philip’s Early Recordings and Musical Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922) to point out that although continuous vibrato had become widespread before World War I as an acceptable way of enhancing tone, early recordings demonstrate that the flutists of the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras as well as those of  orchestras in Prague, Budapest, and Milan used little or no vibrato in the 1920s and 1930s, while that of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia played with absolutely none in the late 1940s.  By way of contrast, the Dresden State Opera’s flutist used a continuous and conspicuous vibrato in the late 1930's, while those in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra played closer to the French style, with a definite, fairly fast, and flexible vibrato.  In this chapter Powell also discusses the careers of flutists who were active in the early and mid-twentieth century, including jazz musicians, and the work of flute making firms such as the William S. Haynes Co., Verne Q. Powell, and Rudall, Carte & Co.  Although he laments the homogenization of the flute-making industry between the Depression and the post-war years, he has some good words for the recording industry’s impact on flute repertoire: it became more diverse, thanks to the industry’s stimulus of interest in little-known music, both new and old. 

            It is old repertoire that receives pride of place in Chapter 13, “The Flute in the Early Music Revival.”  As the early music revival began, musicians felt alienated from the earlier repertoire because the tradition of playing such music had been lost, and they felt that playing it required adjustments from the style they had developed for modern music.  Some also believed  that contemporary instruments themselves were unsuited to perform earlier repertoire.  Yet, they pressed forward, trying different approaches.  For example, in an “historic concert” Paul Taffanel gave at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889, he played his Boehm flute, although “modifying its tone to give the impression of the old recorders” (249), while at a handful of concerts given in the 1880s and 1890s by Maximilian Schwedler and an M. Dumon cited by George Bernard Shaw, both played on antique flutes to try to solve the problems of performing baroque music.  Later, of course, the early music movement came to include the publication of modern editions which attempted to reconstruct authoritative versions of early music, the issuing of facsimile editions of music and instrumental methods, the development of a replica-manufacturing industry, and attempts on the part of instrument makers to make copies of original instruments suitable for professional performance.  Pioneering musicians who put the “baroque” flute on the modern map through live concerts, radio, and recordings included Gustav Scheck, Hans-Martin Linde, Leopold Stastny, Frans Vester, Stephen Preston, and of course Frans Brággen, the “first star of the modern early music movement,” who “changed the playing and teaching of all the baroque woodwinds from an eccentric sideline into a respectable profession” (254).  Others, however, questioned the use of historical instruments in concert halls, like Hans-Peter Schmitz, who believed that since tonal and aesthetic ideals had changed, modern listeners had different expectations from early ones; thus, early music needed updating, much like theatrical revivals, rather than museum-like reconstruction.  Another critic was Marcel Moyse, who furiously rejected the movement’s “clean” musical editions.  When a student brought an “Urtext” edition of a Bach sonata to a lesson, Moyse angrily asked “Where are all the marks?” and proceeded to scrawl crescendos, diminuendos, mezzo-fortes, and fortes all over the music.  According to Powell, Moyse’s behavior suggested that he thought the purpose of notation was to transmit a “correct” interpretation of the music based on what he considered the traditional one, and that he believed that the arrival of Urtext editions struck at the authority of the tradition itself.  Then, within the early music movement itself, the early revolutionary ardor and experimental spirit of performers and teachers of the “baroque” flute were replaced by another sort of tradition.  For example,  Barthold Kuijken’s G. A. Rottenburgh flute of c1770 or later was widely copied as an hoc, standard “baroque”  flute, although its tonal qualities were different from those of earlier instruments.  Moreover, a certain standardized manner of performing baroque music became entrenched.

            In the final chapter of The Flute, “The Postmodern Age,” Powell presents an eclectic, properly postmodern mixture of topics, including the vast increase in numbers of amateur flutists; the expansion of flute teaching as the educational industry developed; the increased focus on physical aspects of playing such as embouchure, breathing, and sound production; and the continuing loss of tonal variety on the part of flutes and flute players.  In addition, Powell takes up changes pertaining to the design and manufacture of flutes: for example, the re-scaling of Boehm-style flutes in an attempt to solve intonation problems brought about by the rise of orchestral and band pitches from the earlier continental standard of a’=435 to a’=440 and higher; technical innovations initiated by Albert Cooper and Alexander Murray; and the design of radically new kinds of flutes such as a slide flute without toneholes invented by Greta Vermeulen, quarter-tone flutes made by Eva Kingma, and sub-bass and double-bass flutes an octave below the alto flute and two octaves below the concert flute.  Also within Powell’s purview are the development of “extended” playing techniques, the electronic manipulation of sounds, new uses of the flute in jazz and rock, the adoption of the eight-keyed flute by traditional musicians in Ireland once cheap and second-hand instruments became available, followed by its subsequent spread to other countries, and the influence of traditional flute-playing in other cultures.  But while variety seemed to rule in some quarters, Powell calls attention to a new “International style” that gained a stranglehold on flute-playing worldwide by the 1970s.  Among the aspects of the International style identified and deplored by Dutch flutist and scholar Frans Vester were the monotony of modern breathing technique with its exclusive focus on “long line playing,” a new sound that was “smoother, more empty, and less full of character” and used a stereotyped vibrato to conceal its lack of inner life, and an increasing focus on the technical aspects of flute-playing at the cost of musical content (269-70).  Vester called for better listening habits and greater musical knowledge on the part of flutists, respect for the composer’s work, and keeping vibrato attentively under control, and he published repertoire catalogues, facsimiles of flute methods, and editions of flute music all aimed at reviving inspiration-driven playing while counterbalancing “a capricious and subjective approach to interpretation” (275).  Yet, Powell ends The Flute on a positive note.  Increasing contact between flutists, teachers, and makers facilitated by the growth of flute societies, clubs, specialized magazines, and the internet, has diversified the information sources and range of musical stimulation currently available to flutists, and flutes may be purchased in a wide variety of modern models and materials.  Moreover, because changes to the flute and flute-playing since the 1970s have been as profound as in any thirty-year period in the past, “it would be unwise to conclude that the flute’s mechanical development for musical purposes seems essentially to have ceased” (281).

            Conclusion. Before concluding, I would like to issue a small warning to readers about a smattering of unclear or incorrect citations that appear in Powell’s otherwise excellent book. These include some personal names (for example, it is not Christophe Delusse whose L’Art de la flûte traversiere appeared in 1761, but the flutist, composer, and writer on music de Lusse whose first name does not appear in contemporary sources), titles and dates of sources, and other miscellaneous matters such as Powell’s interpretation of the term “tailles” specified in a “Prelude pour l’amour” in Lully’s Triomphe de l’Amour (1681).  Here, “tailles” certainly does not refer to violas, as Powell suggests, the part being clearly out of their range.  Rather, the “tailles” specified in the full rubric “tailles ou flutes d’Allemagne”--with the latter term indicating transverse flutes--must have referred to the same kinds of instruments specified in the lower parts as “quinte de flutes,” “petite basse de flutes,” and “grande basse de flutes”–namely, recorders of various sizes.  Jürgen Eppelsheim has in fact concluded that in Lully’s scores the term “taille” refers to the recorder in f’, or the alto recorder (see Das Orchester in den Werken Jean-Baptiste Lullys [Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1961], 77-78).   Moreover, while Powell’s method of citation is generally well designed and allows him to comment on a wide variety of sources without interrupting the flow of the narrative, readers who wish to check the sources of Powell’s information must engage in a good deal of page flipping back and forth between the text and the notes, while those wishing to locate complete bibliographical information for sources only briefly mentioned in the notes must run their eyes up to the bibliographical essay that precedes the notes for each chapter, or even occasionally search through a bibliographical essay connected to an earlier chapter.  It is a considerable help that the index (which is good overall) generally lists the principal references to authors’ names that appear in the bibliographical essays, making it easier to find full citations for sources.  Yet, this requires still further turning of pages back and forth between the text, the notes, the index, and the bibliographical essays.

        These are minor cavils, however.  Powell’s achievement is a tremendous one, and he is to be heartily congratulated and fulsomely thanked for doing such painstaking research and for presenting the story of the transverse flute, its players, its listeners, its makers, its teachers, its students, its scholars, and its repertoire in such a comprehensive and compelling fashion.  Powell is also to be commended for more clearly showing those of us who are scholarly researchers how much work still needs to be done to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.  Moreover, he has begun to correct a predominantly male-centered scholarship about the flute by giving women flute makers, players, and composers their due throughout.  Above all, this book is liberating.  If only all flute teachers, players, students, and admirers of the instrument were to read Powell’s book, there should be a collective freeing up from the relatively narrow traditions of flute playing in which most of us have been brought up, and the wider world of the flute that would open up to them should become yet more interesting and compelling.