Introduction and Terminology

The English single flageolet arose at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and continued to be made, albeit in differing forms, until the early twentieth century. Initially the instrument was of alto recorder size, but fitted with a windcap: subsequently soprano-sized versions became more common, and these instruments remained the definitive size of the English flageolet until its demise in the years leading up to the First World War. The several terms used in the description of early nineteenth-century flageolets have given rise to confusion, and before discussing the organology of the instrument it is appropriate to examine the terms ‘English flute’, ‘English flageolet’ and ‘improved octave flageolet’: it is also appropriate to recall that precise definitions are seldom possible and that there is a degree of crossover between authors.

The English Flute

The descriptive term English flute is applied somewhat indiscriminately to both flageolets and recorders. In the late seventeenth century in England the recorder was known as ‘recorder’, but by the early eighteenth century it was called ‘flute’, the transverse flute being known as the German flute. Subsequently the recorder was known as the common flute, consort flute or English flute and in France it was called flûte d’Angleterre. In 1801 Thomas Busby, in his A Complete Dictionary of Music, referred to the recorder, noting that it was ‘now indifferently called the Common Flute and English Flute’. Swaine, writing in his 1818 tutor The Young Musician, distinguishes between the recorder, flageolet and English flute. In the preface he writes, ‘The scales for three of the most simple and portable instruments only have been introduced; i.e., the English Flute, the Flagelet [sic] and German Flute.’ He distinguishes between the English flute and flageolet in that the fingering charts for the two instruments differ, the fingering for the former instrument being very similar to the fingering given for the recorder with a compass of d’–d’” whereas the fingering for the flageolet differs and has a chromatic compass of c sharp’–e’”.

Arguing against the ascription of the term English flute to the recorder, a series of early nineteenth-century patents suggest that the flageolet and English flute are the same instrument. The flageolet maker William Bainbridge (fl1802–30), for example, headed his 1803 patent ‘Improvements on the flageolet or English flute’.