• Flute
Flute
Flute

Object ID
1997.43.1.A
Object Name
Flute
Date Created
circa 1910
Material
Metal; Wood
Object Entities
Object Description
Flute has three pieces and is made of a dark wood (possibly African Blackwood) with metal instrumental accessories.
Origin
Flute was acquired by Anton Brostos (the donor's father) for carpenter work. Flute was performed by him, in lieu of a monetary payment as a resident of his native Greece.

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening.

A flute has three main parts. It has the head joint which has tuning cork, lip-plate, embouchure plate, blow hole, mouth hole. The second part is the body joint which consist of the keys, tuning slide and tenons. The last part is the foot joint which has a few keys.

A flute produces sound when a stream of air directed across a hole in the instrument creates a vibration of air at the hole. The air stream across this hole creates a Bernoulli, or siphon. This excites the air contained in the usually cylindrical resonant cavity within the flute. The player changes the pitch of the sound produced by opening and closing holes in the body of the instrument, thus changing the effective length of the resonator and its corresponding resonant frequency. By varying the air pressure, a flute player can also change the pitch of a note by causing the air in the flute to resonate at a harmonic rather than the fundamental frequency without opening or closing any holes.

To be louder, a flute must use a larger resonator, a larger air stream, or increased air stream velocity. A flute's volume can generally be increased by making its resonator and tone holes larger.

The Western concert flute, a descendant of the 19th-century German flute, is a transverse flute that is closed at the top. An embouchure hole is positioned near the top, across and into which the player blows. The flute has circular tone holes, larger than the finger holes of its baroque predecessors. The size and placement of tone holes, the key mechanism, and the fingering system used to produce the notes in the flute's range were evolved from 1832 to 1847 by Theobald Boehm, and greatly improved the instrument's dynamic range and intonation over those of its predecessors. With some refinements (and the rare exception of the Kingma system and other custom adapted fingering systems), Western concert flutes typically conform to Boehm's design, known as the Boehm system. Beginner's flutes are normally made of nickel, silver or brass that is silver plated, while professionals use solid silver, gold, and sometimes platinum instruments. There are also modern wooden bodies instruments usually with silver or gold keywork. The wood is usually African Blackwood.
Rights and Reproduction
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Citation
Flute, circa 1910, National Hellenic Museum, https://hellenic.whirlihost.com/Detail/objects/6712. Accessed 05/12/24.