Because of all the possibilities embracing the new media formats can afford, even though this event may now seem like “old news”, I thought I would wait until Flute Focus went on-line to give my report on this most interesting and important biennial event,  The International Piccolo Symposium.....

Playing the piccolo, the one deviant instrument in the section, the little flute whose history is withheld, is it any wonder that piccolo players can experience feelings of marginalization or at least isolation?

It is common knowledge that many flutists dislike the piccolo and avoid having to play it. In most bands, the piccolo as the singular, ‘No-place-hide-instrument’ is located ironically next to the second flutes, the section most likely obscured by the overall mass of sound. Similarly, in the symphony, the piccolo is routinely situated to the left of the second flute, and behind and to the right of multiple second violins.

Can I have a piccolo lesson please? Yes, of course, but why? I suppose a ‘one-off’ piccolo lesson can be useful when preparing for an orchestral audition to boost confidence, but I often find that flute players who aspire to play the piccolo could simply apply their expert flute knowledge to their piccolo playing and save the money to buy CDs of the repertoire they are preparing!

Plummer’s care in her own studies and her demonstrated insider knowledge in this article is comprehensive. I was sorry however to read her quotations from Cecil Forsyth’s Orchestration, (1914) for his piccolo entries are damagingly critical, and may I say, dated. Comments such as “It can just be played by the instrument and, one may add, tolerated by the audience,” “the disabilities of the Piccolo in the way of tone-colour,” “a sort of thin, feeble disembodied voice,” and “if pitched too high approach dangerously near to the scream of a steam-whistle” are hardly conducive to eliciting creative or positive piccolo writing by a next generation of composers.