A Tiny, Forgotten Folly or a Miniature, Buried Treasure?

It’s really, quite simple: what instruments we know about now are the ones that have managed to survive through a historical “development” in a process that seems to be conceived as a cultural evolution. Rarely do we ask ourselves why rebecs, ophicleides, musettes, or serpents (or their potentially modernized versions), do not appear in the symphony orchestra. Despite its current visible and audible presence and widespread use in jazz and more popular settings, only occasionally do we even ponder the failure of the saxophone to penetrate the orchestral barricades beyond rare circumstances. Human nature seems to place instruments that are out of current usage, out of mind as well. (Sometimes, off-stage, or at home while others are rehearsing, I expect that my orchestra colleagues when they are playing a Mendelssohn or Bruckner symphony, are not even missing the sweet, clear tones of my absent piccolo.)

Ardall Powell (2007) as he explores the “powerful forces that conspire to stifle innovation in musical instrument design”, notes that musicians routinely seek day-to-day stability in their music-making. This dominating thrust has its obvious benefits in fostering the raising of performance standards for the professionals who depend upon well-“developed” instruments that respond in increasingly reliable ways. This focus on “development” has been especially positive for students and amateurs, who now have ample access to excellent, standardized, and affordable flutes. This would have been an unimaginable luxury by those flutists living during the last half of the nineteenth century.

Yet while this “development” has produced such marked improvements to the flutes and piccolos we now play, it has at the same time, come with a significant cost. We rarely acknowledge, let alone recognize, that in the quest for the perfect instrument, this process eliminates many creatively divergent possibilities of invention. Powell observes: “Instrument-makers invest in production methods that resist disruption or alteration”, thereby arresting the inventive tangents that do not offer immediate and useful application or might violate the established norms of established music-making. After all, what kind of business could succeed in producing tools for which there was no demand? Presenting the musical public with the instruments they long for—those with a warm, rich tone, easy, fluid mechanisms, powerful low registers, and scales that are in tune—appears to be a far more lucrative pursuit than spending time on risky, imaginative innovation. (Luckily even within the constraints of good business sense, some pockets of divergence occasionally emerge on the periphery in such things as the new, ultra-big flutes that claim new voice-range territories, intricate quarter-tone key systems facilitating non-western traditional scales and even glissando headjoints.) Yet how many other creative incentives have been attempted, discarded and then sentenced to oblivion?

Figure 1. Super-octave piccolo. D.C. Miller Collection, No. 610.

This seems to be the fate of one of the most interesting nineteenth century experiments on the piccolo. Buried in one of the many drawers of the enormous Dayton C. Miller Collection in the Library of Congress lies an anonymous nineteenth century oddity, no. 610, a tiny transverse flute. Built to sound a full octave higher than the modern piccolo (or a full two octaves above the standard, concert flute) its actual length is more than twice as long as its sounding length. Since playing such a tiny instrument as a super-octave piccolo obviously poses a fingering challenge for anyone without the most miniature hands, this anonymous maker has employed the same concept of remotely controlling mechanisms for the opening and closing of keys that is used to manipulate distant hole covers on baritone saxophones, bassoons, contrabass flutes or even simply the D# key on the eighteenth century traverso. Instead in this instance, the keys are used for facilitating a miniature layout rather than spanning unreachable distances. It is described in the DCM catalogue thus:

“SUPER-OCTAVE PICCOLO” IN C(?). Anon., 19th cent.

1 key plus 6 covered finger holes; lowest pitch D3 (?); wood with brass keys and ivory ring; 342 mm. DCM: “Block of hard wood partly stained brown, with a ‘tube’ formed in the interior, speaking length, 132 mm . . . , with six ‘finger holes and D-sharp hole. All holes are covered with flat brass keys, each an extension lever-system so that the ‘touch’ pieces are spread out over 140 mm below the ‘open lower’ end of the tube.” Bought from Auguste Buffet, Paris, 26 July 1926.

Figure 2. Back view of Super-octave piccolo. D.C. Miller Collection, No. 610.

Despite the visual complexity of the operating rods that connect the ‘touch’ pieces to the actual hole covers, this instrument’s mechanism functions as nothing more than the basic one-keyed flute. For a twentieth century flutist, the notion of the limitations of repertoire playable on a one-keyed piccolo could in itself dismiss any interest in it. It must be remembered, however, that the Rossini overtures, Beethoven symphonies, early nineteenth century Parisian operas, and even Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique would have originally been written for and played on the one-keyed piccolo, even while multiple-keyed flutes were in use. Unfortunately, there appear to be no accounts of when, where, how, or most importantly why this super-octave piccolo was created; neither are there any records of how it was used upon completion.

Nor does there appear to be any primary source material about what the initial reactions to this octave-piccolo were. How easy it is though, to imagine the reception of fellow musicians and/or the listening public of such a high-pitched instrument! While the lowest note of this instrument would be approximately the high third octave D of the modern flute, this pitch for a baroque traverso would be considered to be in the upper-most range of the instrument. This, in itself, and that its complete range lies well above any human voice, would automatically place the instrument in the realm of the absurd. Undoubtedly, opinions surfaced quickly and vehemently, employing references to such things as dog whistles, shrieking goblins or squealing pigs. Even though this piccolo may have been only a sort of experimental proto-type being played by a musician, not yet accustomed to its tendencies, there was probably little tolerance for any intonation issues. Due to lack of any apparent further development of this instrument, it seems that the inhibiting, ultra-conservative forces, of which Powell speaks, were involved.

About a century later, Philip Bate (1979) also questioned “the value of adding so high-pitched an instrument to the orchestra” suggesting that:

[i]f it conformed to the normal behaviour of the piccolo, it would carry the range up to c”””, more than an octave above the top note of the piano …getting into a frequency area where the ability to differentiate adjacent notes begins to fall off appreciably. Probably an octave piccolo might add something to the brilliance of the ensemble by reinforcing upper partials already present; in its own right it would seem to have little to offer.

“Little to offer” are dismissing words indeed, but how clearly they reflect and support so many other claims that orchestration texts make for even the standard piccolo’s timbre. (See Nourse, 2008.) To deny any usefulness for such an instrument successfully removes the concept from further consideration.

However, if we think about it, might this piccolo not offer some very real benefits to piccolo players themselves? Having the ease of performing a very high, difficult passage in a lower tessitura of an instrument could potentially make it less risky. For one example, consider how playing the extended high B’s in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 one octave lower could prove to be much less taxing and stressful when one is not forced to be in an extremely high range on the instrument. (One needs only to compare the relative ease of playing the second ledger line D on the piccolo with the infamous high D’s of the same sounding pitch on the flute found in Prokofiev’s Flute Sonata and Classical Symphony.) Greater ease in playing such high notes would also offer the possibilities of being able to play more softly in the high range. Because it would be played an octave lower, the treacherously exposed, soft and high passages in Dohnanyi’s Nursery Variations could become much more successfully managed.

Figure 3. Final 3 bars of Variation IV from Dohnanyi’s Variations on a Nursery Theme.

Note that the six woodwinds here are playing in unison, covering six different octaves.

These two orchestral examples alone should be reason enough to at least sustain an interest in re-evaluating the possibilities of developing a smaller, higher-pitched piccolo. Yet, if a plausible instrument existed, surely many, many more uses would emerge. Is this super-octave piccolo then a misguided and justly-forgotten folly or a brilliant concept, sadly over-looked? We, the piccolo players, are the beholders of this question.

Post Script:

Despite its uniqueness of concept, there is another instrument based upon the same concept as the DCM no. 610, located in the Musical Instrument Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. I have not been able to gather even as much information about it as is available for DCM 610. When I visited there briefly three years ago, there was no labeling of the cluster of instruments on display, (not even in Russian). From the photograph I was given permission to take through the cabinet glass (Figure 4), all I can observe is that the wood finish is darker, the keywork is a silver-coloured or plated metal and, unlike the DCM model, all the finger touches are currently intact. While it appears to be close in length to the DCM model (for which it has been several years since I have viewed it) I have no measurements upon which to base that observation. Of course, I was unable to see the back of the instrument, so that I cannot offer a comparison of the mechanisms. Was this St Petersburg piccolo a second instrument made by the same maker, or a simply a curious person’s copying exercise? Does anybody know?

Figure 4. St. Petersburg Super Octave Piccolo (above DCM 610 for comparison)

References

Bate, Philip. (1979). The Flute: a Study of its History, Development and Construction. 2nd ed. London: Ernest Benn, p. 198.

Gilliam, Laura E. and Lichtenwanger, William. (1961). The Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection: A Checklist of Instruments. Washington: Library of Congress. P. 43.

Nourse, Nancy. (2009). “A Response to Rosamund Plummer’s ‘Letter to Composers and Orchestrators’ in Piccolo Notes, Flute Focus, October 2009”. Flute Focus, 17, p. 22-23.

Nourse, Nancy. (1981). The Piccolo: An Overview of its History and Instruction. Potsdam, NY: State University of New York, Master’s Thesis, p.178.

Powell, Ardal. (2007). “Instruments, Scripts, and the Intentional Fallacy”. Traverso, 19 (4). p. 147- 149.

Instrument Photographs taken (with permission) by Nancy Nourse

Nancy Nourse is a Canadian educator, composer/arranger and flutist. She has published articles in the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Journal of Curriculum Studies, Canadian Music Educators Journal, Flutist Quarterly and Flute Focus. Special Interests include aesthetics, feminist issues, the flute in liturgy, learning styles, flute choirs and the history of the piccolo. She is currently a doctoral candidate in music education at The University of Western Ontario and the piccolo player in Orchestra Toronto.