Baroque Flute Resources

Here are some handy resoureces for baroque flute players, with emphasis on on-line resources. This page is currently biased toward the USA since that is where I live.

Makers -- Learning to play -- Flute care -- Teachers -- Sheet Music -- CD's -- Professional Players -- Vintage and used flutes -- Other good on-line resources

Flute Makers

A list of active flute makers.

Learning to Play the Baroque Flute

Its easy! Its fun!

Get a flute made by one of the many outstanding makers practicing today. If you are not clear on your commitment, there are a few somewhat cheaper options.
- Claire Soubeyran makes a less expensive student flute. She generally has these flutes available for shipment in less than a month. Also they may be obtained through Jean-Luc Boudreau.
- Aulos sells a plastic A415 Stanesby copy for around $500 which is a fine starter flute. This instrument was what I started on.
- Charles Wells, Ronald Wick, and Thomas Fehr all sell handmade wooden flutes in the $800 range.
- Used instruments. This can be the best and the worst. Some of the earlier copies are not very good, and "for sale" often means "not wanted", but most used instruments are quite good. If you can get it on approval and have an accomplished flutist try it for you, you are set.
- If you don't consider yourself particularly accomplished you should consider the plastic A440 Aulos Grenser, very reasonably priced (around $300) but not a perfect instrument. Another less than perfect instrument is Ralph Sweet's baroque flute: its more like a 19th century one-key flute than a baroque flute. (Well, the one he makes now looks more like a baroque model and perhaps it is more period-appropriate--I've only played on the one he used to make 4-5 years ago).
Get Boland's excellent Method for the One-Keyed Flute. You will want to read 18th-century methods later, but this modern method is good for starters. Well, I take that back: it is also very good to read Quantz' On Playing the Flute (1752). It is now back in print! Support your early music businesses by getting your copy from e.g. Folkers&Powell or Von Heune Workshop.
Find a teacher (this link takes you to the baroque flute teacher's directory). Even if they are a ways away and you can only take a couple lessons a year that is much better than nothing!
Go to local concerts and get several baroque flute CD's to hear how its supposed to be done.

Caring for Your Baroque Flute

Read Rod Cameron's excellent "Flute Care Essay"

Also, here is Rod Cameron's fingering chart.

Baroque Flute teachers

There is an on-line database of baroque flute teachers hosted by Folkers&Powell at http://teachers.baroqueflute.com/.

Baroque Flute Sheet Music and Methods

There are several good sources.

B.V. MUZIEKHANDEL SAUL B. GROEN, The Netherlands: A very good selection of early flute sheet music, including many facsimiles. The full list is on the web.
Boulder Early Music Shop: They have a very good selection on-line, with a special page for facsimiles (don't miss it).
OMI (Old Manuscripts and Incunabula), USA: A large catalogue of facsimiles.
Von Heune Workshop: They have a good on-line selection.
The Recorder Home Page Publishers List: a very complete list of publishers and retailers.

There are also some electronic versions of flute music available:

The Gieddes Flute Collection: A large collection of scanned facsimiles which includes mainly later works; several Quantz and Telemann pieces.
Geoffrey Hemion: Has typeset works by Philidor, Telemann, and others and made them available.

- I am trying to improve this list of electronic editions, please email me if you know of more sources!

Baroque Flute CD's

These are easily ordered through the big on-line CD stores. However, the selection varies widely. CD's available in one country are often not available in another, so it may be necessary to order from a country other than your own for widest selection. I have listed stores below mainly based on a good selection. It would be good to have some shops specializing in early music CD's on this list!

Crotchet, UK: I have ordered from the US to this store with success. Their selection is very good.
JPC, Germany: They have a very good selection. International shipping is a flat DM 40 ($20), favoring larger orders. On-line excerpts are available for listening.
German Music Express, Netherlands: They specialize in shipping around the world and have a selection similar to JPC above. A flat $5 shipping reaches most locations in the world.
Alapage, France: Another store with a good selection. I have no direct experience with them however.
ArchivMusic, USA: A newer site in the USA that focuses on classical music and has a very good selection.
Barnes&Noble, Amazon, USA: The "big two" on-line CD stores in the USA.
Paolo's Online Classical CD Stores FAQ: An overwhelming list of on-line classical CD stores.

Professional Baroque Flute Players

These professional players are the most widely recorded players. This list is helpful for searching the above sites, copy and paste the names in.

Barthold Kuijken
Wilbert Hazelzet
Jed Wentz
Konrad Hünteler
Rachel Brown
Nancy Hadden
Stephen Preston
Christopher Krueger

The following players have a few CD's available now.

Philippe Allain-Dupre
Lisa Beznosiuk
Robert Claire
Sabine Dreier
Enrico di Felice
Hans Joachim Fuss
Hans Olav Gorset
Claire Guimond
Marc Hantai
Peter Humbel
Christoph Huntgeburth
Karl Kaiser
Stephen Schultz
Janet See
Courtney Westcott

Vintage and Used Flute Sources

Here are some places where you can find antique and used flutes for purchase.

Von Heune Workshop: They have a very good selection of used copies, and a few antiques. Give them an email or call to see what they have around.
Vintage Instruments, Philadelphia, USA: A large selection of vintage flutes, mainly cheaper 19c instruments. Good prices.
Lark in the Morning, USA: Also a large selection at somewhat higher prices than the above. Here is the actual list. Note this store had a bad reputation for customer service but Mickey sold the store a few years ago, and the new owners appear to be better.
eBay: eBay has a wide range of flutes up for auction if you don't mind checking routinely. They vary from complete junk to great finds. Final selling prices fluctuate wildly, but are on the high side these days. Here is a good search to get vintage flutes and not much other junk.
Hobgoblin, UK
Early Music Shop, UK: They primarily list used modern copies.

If you are interested in antique flutes you probably also want to consult Ardal Powell's on-line Database of 18th-century flutes, which is very extensive.

Flute Plans

Flute plans are available from several sources.

Jean-Francois Beaudin: Jean-Francois sells hand-made drawings of many flutes. His drawings of flutes by Quantz Flute, Stanesby , J-H Rottenburgh and T. Lot in the Dayton C. Miller flute collection are available on-line.
Several museums directly sell plans of instruments in their collections: The Bate Collection, Musee de la musique in Paris, EUCHMI in Edinburgh, and Berlin (email Mr. Wittenbrink at bildarchiv@sim.spk.berlin.de).

Other good on-line resources

Rick Wilson's Historical Flutes Page: A great deal of information about old flutes, in particular the pre-Boehm keyed flutes.
La flûte traversière en Europe aux XVIème et XVIIème siècles: A website devoted to the Renaissance flute, with much useful information.
European Early Music Festivals: A list of all the festivals and summer courses in Europe.
Flutehistory.com: Early flute history and other resources.
Lars' Baroque flute corner: Some fingerings, baroque flute care information, FAQ, and more.

Misc Links

Acoustics of the flute: A very interesting page describing the theory behind flute acoustics and the harmonics of the different fingerings.
Andrew Crawford at Fine Boxes makes some absolutely beautiful custom flute cases.
Autotuner: A program for PC or Mac that is a tuner in software. It has many nice options for early flute tuning such as temperaments, selectable pitch, pitch graphs, etc. The Mac version is a bit outdated at this point unfortunately.

Suggestions Needed!

This list is as accurate as its contributors (you!) Please email me any other good sources, or errors in the above: scott@cs.jhu.edu

Last modified: Tue May 29 11:22:46 EDT 2007