Mozart and the flute

By Claus Johansen

There are flutes in all Mozart’s great Vienna and Prague operas, and there are one or two flutes in most of his late symphonies, in many of the piano concertos and in several of the big orchestral serenades. But in the early operas and symphonies from Italy and Salzburg things look different. In these the basic core of the wind group is two oboes and two (or four) French horns, often bolstered up by one or two bassoons, and in festive contexts supplemented by timpani and trumpets. Flutes do appear, but as a rule only in single movements instead of the oboes, which suggests that it was at first the same people who played both instruments.

The flute, which is actually an ancient instrument, did not become a regular member of the orchestra until some time in the 1770s. However, the instrument had a long history behind it. The flutes Mozart knew we call ‘Classical’, but they are closely related to the old Baroque transverse flutes that were developed in Paris and Versailles around 1670. The flute is normally made of several parts that are joined together before you play it, and the assembled flute gets narrower towards the bottom, where it is furnished with a single key that you open when you play the note E flat. The flutes of the eighteenth century were usually made of boxwood, but other woods occur, and a few luxury instruments were turned in ivory. The musician blows across a hole in the mouthpiece, the sound is formed when the air flow strikes the sharp edge (as when one blows in a bottle). The flute is normally held towards the right. There are six finger holes and a key, but there are more than seven notes in the music of the eighteenth century. By means of so-called overblowing (blowing harder and/or changing the blowing angle) the musician can make the voice of the flute ‘break’ so that it leaps up into a higher octave. The semitones (the notes with sharps or flats) that lie between the basic notes are produced by cross-fingering, where for example you lift finger 2 while 1 and 3 are still covering their holes. The result is not quite in tune, but the skilled flautist can correct the pitch with the lips and air flow.

In Mozart’s time flutes were made in four parts – that is, with two middle sections. The first of these often came in several versions with different lengths, so that the musician could choose different pitches as the starting-point, which was necessary for travelling virtuosi, since two different cities rarely had the same concert pitch. Musicians and instrument-makers experimented throughout the 1700s with the holes and the bore of the flute, and in the mid-century the classic one-keyed flute arose, which has a slightly narrower bore than the Baroque flutes. This produced a better pitch and a more focused sonority and made the instrument more suitable for orchestral use, and this was the flute Mozart knew and wrote for throughout most of his life, with a few exceptions. His Parisian concerto for flute and harp was composed for a French amateur who had an instrument with an extra low C-key, and of course Mozart dexterously exploited the potential this offered.

The flutes of the eighteenth century function best in the ‘sharp’ keys (for example G major, D major and A major) and it is often in these keys that Mozart lets them replace the oboes of the orchestra. In the later Vienna compositions, perhaps inspired by Haydn, he uses the flutes in many keys, and often in the highest register of the instrument, so that they float high above the oboes and clarinets, which several contemporary writers incidentally considered vulgar and “shrill”.

It was a long time before the flute became a standard member of the orchestra. In Mozart’s time it was first and foremost an instrument for amateurs and virtuosi. A flute is not as hard to play as an oboe or a bassoon. A good flute was affordable, and it didn’t require as much practice as a violin. It was easy to transport, and it was extremely well suited to the intimate, sensitive chamber music of the eighteenth century. Mozart knew several professional flute soloists. The famous virtuoso Wendling from Mannheim was one of his close friends, but almost all Mozart’s solo works for flute were written for amateurs, and there were many of those in the eighteenth century. Students, aristocrats and officers played the flute. So the music publishers published reams of flute music. In the Copenhagen of the 1770s Count Raben and the young Royal Chamberlain  Gjedde collected huge (still-preserved) quantities of flute music. The Prussian State Treasury paid the virtuoso Quantz the same salary as a minister of state for composing flute music and rehearsing it with his pupil Frederik the Great. Prince Carl August in Mannheim, who commissioned and paid for Mozart’s opera Idomeneo, spent no small part of his leisure time relaxing with a flute. We can thank the flute amateur De Jean for Mozart’s flute concertos and quartets.

But why would a nobleman play the flute of all things? In the first place because it was fashionable, in the second place because it looked good, and in the third place because it sounded nice. In addition, flute playing sent out certain important signals. The flute was a ‘natural’ instrument and the philosopher Rousseau published Vivaldi’s Spring for solo flute in his own adaptation which, with added bird-twittering, sent the listeners directly back to nature. Everywhere nobles and burghers played amateur duets, often with one another. The flute was, if not democratic, at least liberating. The free-thinking Danish Count Brandt played wistful solos in prison before he was executed. He was perhaps a slightly naïve man of the Enlightenment; if he had lived in 1968 he would  presumably have played the guitar. But then, two centuries before, his flute-playing showed that he was in tune with the fashion of his time, and that he went in for parts of the enlightened Prussian absolutism, and cultivated modern French naturalness. You can presumably always begin your cultural revolution by blowing away the cobwebs!

A single disparaging remark in a single letter from Mannheim has given rise to the misunderstanding that Mozart did not care for flutes. He was young when he wrote that letter; he was also under pressure, confused and in love; in that situation a commission for flute concertos and quartets for a probably incompetent amateur can quite frankly be rather irritating. The misunderstanding is in fact cleared up by Mozart himself time and time again, not in the letters but in the scores. You only have to listen to his double concerto for flute and harp or the flute solos from The Magic Flute to understand that he knew the instrument, was fond of it and understood how to get the best out of it. Nor can we ignore the fact that it was he who composed the two most frequently played flute concertos in history.