The Atlantic Flute Society

Powell, Ardal.  The Flute (Yale Musical Instrument Series).  New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.

Companion CD: The Flute on Record, 1902-1940.  Hudson, NY: Folkers and Powell, 2002.

-- Review by Jennifer Publicover

In the summer of 1999 I had the pleasure of attending lectures and performances given by Ardal Powell and Cathy Folkers at Boxwood, a flute festival which takes place yearly in the seaside town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.  Partners in business as well as in marriage, they form the company Folkers & Powell, Makers of Historical Flutes, located in Hudson, New York.  Educated at Cambridge University and Koninklijk Conservatorium, The Netherlands, Ardal Powell has written extensively about flutes and flutists from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.  Upon hearing in the summer of 2002 about the release of The Flute and its companion compact disc, The Flute on Record, 1902-1940, I looked forward to receiving my set and delved eagerly in when it arrived.

Mr. Powell is an extremely articulate and thoughtful writer and, whatever view he takes on any particular issue, his research is impeccable.  The extensive section of notes and references at the back can be as interesting to read as the main text itself, and certainly early music specialists will find plenty of material therein to carry forward their own research.  However, the book appeals to a much wider audience than the already "historically informed", and indeed it has the voice of a writer who feels that he has an important message to bring to the general flute world from the perspective of an early music specialist.  A certain level of musical literacy and general awareness of some of the highlights in the history of the flute in western culture is presumed of the reader.  This is the sort of publication that college music majors should be interested in and which teachers of flute at the university level will want to have close at hand for reference -- and indeed, it is a "good read" for anyone with a love of the flute and its music.

It should be noted that the scope of The Flute is rather more specific than such a general title might imply.  (The title itself may well have been set by the Yale Musical Instrument Series, as other titles in the projected series are equally general, such as Timpani and Percussion and The Piano.)  He has chosen to focus on the last millennium of the flute in western culture -- that is to say, European culture and its transplants in North America, Australia, etc.  His scope is also qualitatively narrowed down to a history of flutes and flutists in a social context.  This includes fifteenth-century military fifes and flutes; Renaissance consorts; Baroque and Classical flutes and flutists such as Blavet, Quantz, and Tromlitz; the major design innovations of the nineteenth century; the French School; and the movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries of which we are a part today.  The influences of professional and amateur flutists alike are included.  Styles, performance practices and repertoire are tied into this chronicle -- enough to give the reader a taste for more, and to wish that space constraints could open up and allow the author to explore these particular areas in greater detail.  Taking advantage of the most recent scholarship and methodology to bring the past to life on its own terms, rather than on our modern ones, Mr. Powell gives the reader wonderful glimpses back to see flutes, musicians and manufacturers as they were perceived in their own time.

This way of capturing history is a relatively recent one.  Many writers in the past have taken a more "evolutionary" approach -- that is to say, the histories of flutes and other instruments have been constructed in such a way as to imply that all changes of design, style, repertoire, etc. have been steps along a Darwinian path towards ever better and improved models, culminating in the products of the present day.  Such an approach to history is now perceived to be a bit short-sighted, and in some cases even arrogant.  Mr. Powell takes a very clear position that in order to truly appreciate the music and/or the instrument of a given period, we must understand it as it was understood in its own day, with the standards and expectations of that time, which requires us to open up our own perspective.  This is a natural and well-defended opinion from a person who manufactures replicas of historical instruments, and indeed is the driving impetus behind the early music movement of the last few decades.

In fact, Mr. Powell so enthusiastically fills in the void in the historical record from this perspective that he very nearly -- but not quite -- goes overboard.  He cites so many complaints from nineteenth-century flutists about the Boehm flute that one begins to wonder why the blessed thing was ever adopted in the first place!  On the other hand, his perspective is invaluable because it shows what a long, gradual process it was as the Boehm flute replaced the simple-system flute and its other alternatives in the standard orchestra, how certain perceived advantages were gained by its adoption and how certain nuances were lost, nuances that were idiosyncratic to the simple-system flute and part of its perceived character and beauty.  (The story of the controversy between Captain J.C.C. Gordon and Theobald Boehm surrounding the true origins of what is now known as the Boehm flute is also tragically fascinating.)

It is true that one can never completely return to the time and place when a particular piece was first performed or a particular flute first played.  Even the act of trying to reconstruct music of the past is a different process from the playing of it was when it was new.  One leans more toward preservation, the other, toward innovation.  Where self-expression and audience reception fit into the picture are other very important parameters.  One could conceivably give two performances of a given piece of music from an earlier period, the first on an original instrument with strict adherence to the practices of the time, the other on the latest model from Brannen or Muramatsu with a somewhat looser interpretation of period practices, and both performances could potentially be equally moving to the listener in their different ways.  Whether or not one agrees with Mr. Powell that much flute playing in our day has become relatively sterile and uniform, we must consider ourselves lucky to live in a time and place where we have access to so many different ways of making music, both geographically outside of western culture and temporally back into earlier eras.  We have scholars like him to help us recognize how our present thoughts about the flute came about, and then to transcend them and expand our perceptive horizons.  As he states at the end of the Introduction, we all must take the responsibility to find our own artistic paths:

[F]inding a way to put such a diversity of historical information to use in present-day interpretation poses a personal challenge to each musician: everyone has to choose for him- or herself how much to use, and whether to use it out of a genuine conviction that it is musically compelling, or merely because we have been told it is historical or traditional.  Accepting this challenge strengthens our understanding by forcing us to adjust our perspectives frequently.  Thus we can learn to sense creative possibilities in our own moment that would otherwise remain blocked or hidden.  Those creative possibilities, rather than the mere factual information that inspires them, are the rewards that await flutists willing to follow the thread as the flute 'transforms itself' again and again.

The companion CD The Flute on Record, 1902-1940 is a scratchily fascinating look back at playing styles and tastes of the early part of an era relatively familiar to us, when the automobile, the telephone, and mass production so radically changed western society.  A range of artists from different nationalities, including women, are represented, with an emphasis on those whose recordings are not readily available already -- for which reason Marcel Moyse is not included.  Chamber ensembles, while difficult to record in the old acoustical manner, also are featured.  It is interesting to note how vibratos vary from one player to the next, ranging from the very fast and jagged to the non-existent, and everything in between.  There are limits to what the listener can ascertain about tone and nuance because of the original recording quality, and some of the repertoire is admittedly of the fluffy sort which was fashionable to record at the time.  Nonetheless, the sounds that come from this disc are enlightening in a way that words never quite can be.

Ardal Powell is also the author of the website Flutehistory.com, a valuable resource for all flutists.  Ordering information for his book The Flute and its companion compact disc The Flute on Record, 1902-1940 can be found there as well.  He and Cathy Folkers are invited back for a second time to the Boxwood Festival, July 20 - 26, 2003 in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

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