Boehm's Flute


Fiona M Simpson	9705782s@student.gla.ac.uk

Portrait of Boehm aged 83, from the frontispiece of The Flute and Flute Playing, Theobald Boehm, translated and annotated by Dayton C. Miller, D.Sc. (London: 1922) The most important development in the construction of the flute came in the middle of the 19th Century.
The German flute maker and player Theobald Boehm (1794-1881) completely redesigned the instrument during the 1830s and 40s.
Living in Munich, Boehm trained initially as a goldsmith and jeweller after his father, but had shown a talent for music from an early age. He combined the careers of goldsmith, flute maker and professional flautist until he was appointed in the orchestra of the royal court in Munich as a flautist in 1818 and devoted himself to performance.

In 1828 Boehm established a workshop in which to manufacture the instruments. He visited London in 1831 as a travelling virtuoso, and heard the playing of the great flautist Charles Nicholson. Nicholson's flute had unusually large finger holes, and Boehm discovered that this created a very large and accomplished tone. He decided that flutes should therefore all have large, widely spread tone holes, creating a better tone. He reasoned that this was more necessary than the comfort of the players to reach the holes.
In 1831, Boehm had an experimental model of his ideas built by London company Gerock and Wolf, but the first practical conical "Boehm flute" was built by Boehm himself in his workshop in 1832.

Boehm's Conical Flute
Dissatisfied with the flutes that were made for him by other flute makers, Boehm established his own workshop in 1828. He constructed many different machines with which to produce a better mechanism for the flute, and by the end of the first year he had created his first flute.

The original model of flute that Boehm developed consisted of a cylindrical tube with a conical bore at the end.
This conical bore can be seen clearly in this image of his 1828 model. In addition to the powerful "open" sound and refined intonation, Boehm had developed an ingenious mechanism, both solid and elegant in construction, and allowing greater tone.
Although everyone did not immediately adopt this new design, important players gradually began to recognise the merits of it.

The New Mechanism
However, although this flute had a beautiful tone and good tuning, Boehm felt that the tuning could be adjusted by placing holes in an acoustically correct position. He set out to work on this, and constructed a flute with ring-keys, as seen in this image, of his 1832 model.

Through Boehm's new system of fingering all tone combinations could be played to near perfection. He realised that further progress could only be made by altering the shape of the bore in the tube of the flute.

Boehm's Cylindrical Flute
Boehm spent much of his time between 1833 and 1846 on non-musical affairs, but returned to developing the flute in 1846. He studied acoustics with Carl von Schafhäutl, a professor at the University of Munich, in order that he might perfect the problems with the flute. The result of this was the flute created in 1846-7.

Boehm could not understand why the flute was the only wind instrument that was blown at its widest end, when, with a rising pitch and shorter length of air column, the diameter should surely be smaller. He therefore took it upon himself to experiment with different bores, and, in 1847, he developed a new style of flute based upon his scientific studies.

This flute had a cylindrical tube, a parabolic head and larger tone holes than on his previous conical model. These tone holes proved to be so large (approximately 13.5mm on metal models and 13mm on wooden models) that they required padded covers to cover them completely, as clearly seen in this image of his 1850 model. This also meant that Boehm had to develop a whole new mechanism to enable each key to open independently, in addition to interacting with the other keys when required. Although Boehm developed part of this new mechanism himself, he also borrowed ideas from previous inventors. He transferred much of the outer mechanism to the inner tubing of the body, and adopted refined springs and rods. Boehm manufactured his new flutes at first himself, but later in partnership with Carl Mendler, one of his best workmen, who continued the firm after Boehm's death in 1881.

Boehm left the flute with a range of C' to C#''''.

Since Boehm's invention, the flute has only gone through minor changes. Although it was not immediately accepted into the 20th Century, it is, in all key details, the concert flute of today.