NMM 3515. Flute attributed to Louis Lot, Paris, ca. 1849-1850. Distributed by Rudall & Rose, London. No serial number. Stamped on body (in script): Rudall & Rose / Patentees / 38 Southhampton St Strand / London. Parabolic head, cylindrical body. Three sections. German-silver-plated tube. Silver-plated body, keys, raised lip plate, and screw-cap. Boehm 1832 key system, open G-sharp, Briccialdi B-flat. Post and axle supports. Lowest note c'. Total length, 669.2 mm. Sounding length, 592.1 mm. Original case. W. Wayne Sorensen Collection, 1984.
Lit.: Amy Shaw Kreitzer, Transverse Flutes by London Makers, 1750-1900, M.M. Thesis (University of South Dakota, 1993), pp. 223, 240-242.
Stephanie Kocher, 'Boehm’s Very Good Idea,' Flute Talk, Vol. 25, No. 5 (January 2006), p. 14-15.
NMM 3791. Flute by Rudall, Carte & Co., London, ca. 1893. Serial no. 2470. Stamped on body: [crown] / RUDALL CARTE & Co / 23 BERNERS STREET / OXFORD STREET / LONDON; on head and foot joints: [crown] / RUDALL / CARTE & Co / LONDON. Parabolic head, cylindrical body. Three sections. Cocus, silver ferrules. Wooden screw-cap. Metal lining in head joint and socket of foot joint. Patented 1867 'Boehm and Carte Systems Combined.' Sixteen German-silver keys, post and axle supports. Closed keys: duplicate F, D-sharp. Articulated keys: d', c-sharp', c', duplicate c', B, B-flat, A, G-sharp, G, F-sharp, F, E, c-sharp', c'. Lowest note c'. Total length 622.1 mm. Sounding length, 542.2 mm. Original, fitted, double case shared with NMM 3972. Ex coll.: N. L. Anderson, Haslemere, Surrey, England. Arne B. Larson Collection, 1979.
Lit.: Amy Shaw Kreitzer, Transverse Flutes by London Makers, 1750-1900, M.M. Thesis (University of South Dakota, 1993), pp. 226, 243-245.
NMM 3792. Piccolo flute by Rudall, Carte & Co., London, ca. 1893. Serial no. 2998. Stamped on body: RUDALL CARTE & Co / 23 BERNERS STREET / OXFORD STREET / LONDON; on head and foot joints: [crown] / RUDALL / CARTE & Co / LONDON. Cylindrical head, conical body. Two sections. Cocus, silver ferrules. Wooden screw-cap. Metal lining in head joint. Patented 1867 'Boehm and Carte Systems Combined.' Post and axle supports. Lowest note d'. Total length, 292 mm. Sounding length, 240.5 mm. Original, fitted, double case shared with NMM 3791. Ex coll.: N. L. Anderson, Haslemere, Surrey, England. Arne B. Larson Collection, 1979.
Lit.: Amy Shaw Kreitzer, Transverse Flutes by London Makers, 1750-1900, M.M. Thesis (University of South Dakota, 1993), pp. 226, 245-247.
NMM 3208. Flute by Rudall, Carte & Co., London, ca. 1900. Serial no. 3224. Stamped on body: [crown] / RUDALL CARTE & Co / 23 BERNERS STREET / OXFORD STREET / LONDON; on head and foot joint: [crown] / RUDALL / CARTE & Co / LONDON. Parabolic head, cylindrical body. Three sections. Cocus, silver ferrules. Wooden screw-cap. Metal lining in sockets of head and foot joints. Patented 1847 Boehm system, additional closed G-sharp and Briccialdi B-flat keys. Post and axle supports. Lowest note c'. Total length 677.7 mm. Sounding length, 609.9 mm. Original case. W. Wayne Sorensen Collection, 1983.
Lit.: Amy Shaw Kreitzer, Transverse Flutes by London Makers, 1750-1900, M.M. Thesis (University of South Dakota, 1993), pp. 223, 247-249.It is far too early to expect to draw final conclusions fromthe data so far in, but some useful observations can be madealready.
Dating particular flutes more accurately
Combining the address information provided by Langwill's Indexof Musical Wind Instrument Makers and the serial numbers andaddresses from instruments in the Study, we can interpolate tofind the probable date of any flute for which we have a serialnumber. The blue squares are known address changes or fluteswhose dates are known independently. I am indebted to Robert Bigio for thetwo final dates.
On the company's productivity
It is also possible to get some idea of the company's rate ofproduction. We can see it varies greatly:
Vcarve pro 8.5 software. It is tempting to assume that the introduction of Boehm's 1832instrument caused the downturn of interest in 8-key flutes fromabout that time, but we would need to see sales figures for thoseinstruments before such a conclusion could safely be drawn.Indeed, since manufacture by Rudall & Rose of the Boehminstrument didn't start until 1843, perhaps it was more that adownturn in interest in 8-key flutes prompted the company todiversify into other flute types.
It is interesting to note that the Patent Head was patented in1832 and its manufacture continued until the 60's. Was this anattempt to win back market share?
Again, it is tempting to see the sharp decline at 1850 as aresult of the introduction of Boehm's 1847 cylindrical flute.Again an examination of sales figures for the new instrumentwould be helpful. It was clearly a period of upheaval for thecompany, with the induction of Carte and several changes ofaddress around that time, in addition to the changes which musthave been necessary to take on manufacture of the far morecomplex instrument.
On Evidence for Models
Lengths of parts and positions of finger holes appear to varyvery little between instruments throughout the serial numberrange. This makes a certain amount of sense - after all theplayer's hands define to a certain extent what is possible interms of reach. It does suggest that we need to look moreto bore profile and fingerhole sizes to differentiate betweenmodels.
On Finger hole sizes
The right hand finger holes seem to vary themost, with F# for example varying from around 8 to around 11mm. Early data seems to suggest strong clusters around 8 and 10mm. These might be our earliest indications ofdiscrete and popular 'models'.
Distribution of models
The chart below illustrates how the small, medium and largeholed instruments are distributed with time. Left end starts at Serial No454, the middle large-hole is No 4260 and the right most flute is 7174.
On body keys
Four distinct key types have been reported so far on thebodies of the instruments surveyed:
- pewter plugs (# 655)
- saltspoon (well distributed)
- flat disk 'keycups' with plain leather 'pads' (# 4795)
- dished cups (#4974)
- wide cups with vertical sides and a low domed top soldered to forged shafts (# 7174)
On footjoint keys
Footjoint keys for C and C# seem usually to involve pewterplugs closing on metal plates screwed to the wood. The Eb key varies between the pewter plug variety or being thesame as the rest of the keys on the instrument.
On 'unusual' keys
Unusual keys (ie. those not part of the 'normal' 8-keycontingent) reported so far include:
- a 'Brille' (additional upper C pad operated by ring keys on the top two holes) (# 2625)
- a double Bb key, operated by both LH thumb and RH forefinger (# 4795, # 5088)
- nine keys, extending the bottom note to B (# 3312)
- ten keys, extending the bottom note to B and Bb (# 3060)
- a C#/D trill key (#6239)
- a roller on short F (# 605)
- a high E key (# 5356)
On Foot Length
As mentioned above, the lengths of the body sections and placement of fingerholes varies only slightly. A fascinating pattern emerges with the length of the footjoint however. The earliestinstruments were nearly 150mm, gradually making their way down to around 140mmby about No 4000 (c1840). They settled in this area until about No 7000(c1885), whereupon they shortened suddenly to just over 130mm.
Two things are probably happening here. Certainly pitch of the flutesis increasing. Reduction of 'flat footsyndrome' is probably the other contributor.
On Body Scaling and Embouchure to Hole 1 length
During the period covered, 1820 to the end of the century, pitch rose dramatically, then dropped as British high pitch was abandoned (apart from by military bands) circa 1895. We saw that effect in the rapidly reducing lengths of the foot, above. We might also expect to see this as a significant shift in lengths of other parts of the flute, such as the distance between holes 1 and 6, and the distance between embouchure and the first hole. The data does not yield what we might expect.
In the graph below, the distance between the first and sixth hole is given in navy. While we might expect it to drop over the period and then recover somewhat at the end, it generally increases slightly. We'll come back to that.
We would expect the distance from embouchure to first hole to drop very markedly in order to accommodate the higher pitch towards the end of the period, but the data shows only a gentle drift of about 5mm downwards. On the old rule of thumb, 1mm per Hertz, that suggests only a 5Hz variation in pitch, while our other studies suggest a greater than 20 Hz variation occurred.
This can probably be explained easily - the very long tuning slides provided were already capable of covering the full range of pitches likely to be encountered, so there was no need to reduce the distance between embouchure and hole 1 when pitch rose - just push the slide in a little more. As we'll see later, the size of the embouchure hole increases too, which sharpens the flute considerably.
On hole size balance
Rudall Carte Serial Numbers Flute Scales Chart
But it's not so easy to explain away the slight increase in distance from hole 1 to hole 6 at a time when the pitch is rising and there should be a marked decrease. What else is going on?
Could Rudalls have used fingerhole sizing rather than fingerhole spacing to allow for increasing pitch? If so, we'd expect holes at the bottom of the flute, i.e. holes 5 and 6, F# and E to increase, or holes at the top, holes 1 and 2, C# and B, to decrease in diameter, or a bit of both. It turns out that all holes increase in diameter over the period, although it gets difficult to interpret as there are a mix of large and small hole flutes in the earlier days. To get around that problem, it's safer to look at the ratios of the hole sizes, rather than their absolute values. When we do that, in the graph below, we see that the bottom-of-tube holes increase considerably more than the top-of-tube holes.
In blues, we see the ratio of the diameters of hole 6 and hole 1. In reds, we see the ratio of holes 5 and 2. The rise over the period approaches 10%, more than enough to overcome the 2% or so increase in length and make a longer-bodied flute a sharper flute!
Impact of the shorter foot
But there's also something else that is going to sharpen the low notes of the flute as the century progresses - the shortening feet we saw up at 'On foot length'. The E note in particular (being produced from a very small hole) is very sensitive to how far away its nearest venting support is. That venting support will be Eb (if you open that when playing E) or the D hole (where the C# pad is) if you don't. Both of these move much closer to the E as the century proceeds. The combination of these various effects probably explain why the C#-E length had to be increased to prevent E going too sharp.
On embouchure size
We can see that the longitudinal length increased from around 11.5mm at the start to between 12 and 12.5 or so after about serial number 4411. The short axis seems to have generally remained between 10 and 11mm.
On Best Pitch
[Update: This section needs review in the light of other studies.]
By determining the best pitch of readily available flutes and scalinglengths,it is possible to estimate the design pitch of flutes in thestudy. This is the pitch for best intonation, not the highestpitch available by pushing the tuning slide fully in. It suggeststhat, in common with other 2nd generation instruments, they wereintended to work best at low and medium pitches (430 and 445) rather than highpitch (450-455) as is generally believed. Note the last twoflutes are radically different and follow the tuning of thirdgeneration flutes, which seems appropriate given their very latedates.
This picture is confused however by the issue of flat footedness, and morework is needed to work out what is really going on.
Coping with change
Now an interesting puzzle presents itself. If the finger holes don'tmove, yet the pitch of the instrument changes with the time, how is thatreconciled? As we've seen the foot gets shorter, but that won't have muchimpact on the body notes. The graph below gives us some clues ..
Firstly, focus on the flutes with an F# hole of about 8mm. Note thatthe B holes are about the same size. Note also that these flutes seem morepopular in the early part of the century.
Now turn to the large hole flutes and we note that the B hole is generally amm or so smaller than the F# hole. But look at 7120 and we see it is muchsmaller. What will this do?
Increasing holes at the top of the tube will sharpen the upper tube notes inrelationship to the notes lower down the tube. To find the best pitchagain, the slide will have to be compressed. As it has more effect on theupper tube notes, an extension will be found where the upper and lower tubenotes are once more in tune. That will be at a higher pitch thanbefore. The flute has been sharpened without recourse to shortening thebody. Some adjustment to the foot length will be required too.
On Bore profile
Rudall Carte Serial Numbers Flute Scales For Beginners
While the bore dimensions have not been made a formal part ofthis phase, some bore information is available. As observedpreviously, bore information may be needed to confirm the models.
In the graphs above, the vertical dimension (diameter) has beenwildly exaggerated. The vertical scale has been omitted toprotect the interests of the museums from which some of the datais taken. Of particular interest are the 'backreamings' at the two junctions between the upper and lowerbody and the footjoint. Since these had to be consciouslyreproduced on each instrument, we can assume the company regardedthem as significant. What result they produce or wereintended to produce is not clear but may be determined byexperiment.
[Update: Since the work done on the effects of thread wrapping (see elsewhere on this web site), it is now safe to assume that the bumps at the tenons of the flute bores shown are due largely if not entirely to compression of the bore by the combined action of humidity and thread compression.]
Note that the curve for # 7174 has been left incomplete aroundthe tenons of the upper body because of recent repairs tothose areas.
Note the great similarity between the bores of # 5047 and #5501. This is puzzling as the section lengths andfingerhole positions are nearly identical, but their fingerholesizes are very different. There remains a mystery to clearup here.
Note also the lengths of the bores which relate directly tothe estimated design pitch. The Norman flute is longest, with the 5000 seriesinstruments about the same, and 7120 the shortest.
Rudall Carte Serial Numbers Flute Scales For Sale
On Inheritance and Cross-fertilisation
An interesting question is to what extent the company reliedon the work of previous makers, and to what extent theirinstruments were copied by other makers, particularly those whohad been employees. Questions and answers appear togetherbelow:
Influence of previous work of Willis (TBD)
Influence of previous work of Rose (TBD)
Influence on Ingram
Rudall Carte Serial Numbers Flute Scales Free
Ingram was a former employee of Rudall & Rose. Examination of a flute made by Ingram indicated no sign ofinfluence by the company's designs.
Influence on Wylde (TBD)
Influence on other makers of the time
Comparisons of bore data indicate no points ofsimilarity with Metzler, Pratten's Perfected or B&S flutes.
