A flutist is a flute player. The term was first documented in 1603 and means the same as flautist, which has the same meaning as flutist but, according to Susan Maclagan, the author of this new dictionary, “sounds more sophisticated to some people”. Flutes have been round a long time and form an instantly recognizable member of the wind instrument family. There are end‐blown and side‐blown flutes and they date from the fifteenth‐century and probably well before that. They come in many shapes and sizes, from concert flutes to piccolos and tabors, tin whistles and ocarinas, and even novelty items shaped like walking‐sticks. The history of the flute is a fascinating mixture of technical inventiveness and the drive to play music with ever greater efficiency and virtuosity, as this work makes clear. The flute has entered the popular, even celebrity, world with James Galway and Gheorghe Zamfir and others.
The dictionary is very much a work for the musical specialist, and above all for people who play the flute and have a serious interest in the ways in which the flute has evolved into the modern instrument. Along the way it offers substantial information about technical matters, like how the instrument is constructed and how it has undergone many innovations to its manufacture and use in performance. The work is A4 size with a double‐column text interspersed with black‐and‐white photographs and line drawings, with A to Z entries on everything from acciaccatura and Butterfly headjoint and just intonation to open‐hole flute and pinless mechanism and Simmons F sharp key and transposing instruments. There is a short introduction and 14 appendices, including technical information on the Boehm system flute (the Boehm flute is the common name for the standard flute today) and a bibliography (of modern works as well as earlier, but still available, treatises on the flute). One of the appendices lists audition excerpts for the flute, although as a whole the dictionary does not cover the flute repertoire as such.
Susan Maclagan is a freelance flute player and teacher living in Canada. Her experience includes playing with the Calgary Philharmonic, and her approach is that of both a performer and compiler of a reference work. For flute specialist readers, then, she has brought together a wide range of relevant information about flutes, and this allows readers to dig deep into the technical aspects of the instrument, how it is made and played, compare information about the many early makers and performers with the evolution of the instrument, and set such detail in a helpful context of wider musical terminology (such as grace notes, ornaments, trill and turn, all relevant to the flute), and beyond that to musical life (from Alexander technique and sheet music to gig and master class and Suzuki method).
References to makers and performers are understandably aligned to those in North America (such as Robert Dick), although not to the exclusion of a wealth of more international examples such as Marcel Moyse, Alain Marion, Michel Debost, Carlo Giorgi, and historical figures like Johann Quantz, Tebaldo Monzani, and Charles Nicholson. The last of these, Nicholson (there were two, father and son), were both improvers and performers of the flute, and influenced Theobald Boehm to make improvements to the simple‐system flute of the time (Charles Nicholson Jr's dates are 1795‐1837). Boehm himself (1794‐1881) worked in Munich and the modified Boehm flute appeared first in 1847. His treatise on the flute (acoustical, technical, and artistic aspects) is available in English translation from Dover and was published by them in 1964. As well as this, Maclagan provides information about Bennett and Cole: William Bennett developed the Bennett scale, modifying the Cooper scale and providing flute players with a schema for playing accurately at a given pitch. This reveals just how intimately linked in the world of the flute are the technical and performance aspects of this instrument.
The entry on the Cole scale is typical in reflecting this linkage – between makers and performers, between theory and practice. Elmer Cole examined the mathematical basis on which Boehm had determined the position of the holes on the flute, and argued that this approach was compatible with equal temperament, itself a tuning system in which all 12 semitones in an octave are set equal to each other. The dictionary provides more of this in entries on just intonation and concert pitch, internal tuning and meantone temperament, range and register. This takes us to the heart of the dictionary – the technical and performance characteristics of the flute. As well as generous coverage of Key (as in open‐key system and G and G sharp keys) and Headjointand related terms, Pisoni Pads and Brossa F Sharp Lever and proprietary features like the Split F Sharp Mechanism (which improves venting of the F sharp by closing the lower of the normally connected and open B flat and A keys when F sharp 3, using the third finger of the right hand, is played), we find entries that place such “improvements” and innovations in a historical context. Notable among these entries are those on the reform flute, the simple‐system flute, and the Rochstro F sharp lever.
Such an approach makes it clear that this is a reference work for the specialist, whether they are in the industry itself, or a performer or serious student of the flute, or someone purchasing resources for the working library of a school or college where music is taught at a high level. Insiders outside North America may wish to consider whether the North American frame of reference makes this the very best book for them, for all its merits. Another of the book's strengths is the material on performance, in particular on fingering (system, chart, vibrato, cross‐fingering, octave length, Carte 1851 system flute, and so forth) and embouchure (several related entries, the main one, on the term itself, referring the reader on to the Lot flu, the model for the standard professional flute today, especially in France, where so many fine players have appeared). A foreword is provided to the work by Trevor Wye, himself a player and editor in the field, and author of a book on Moyse. The bibliography picks up many references to biographies, performance technique, the flute family, journals, pedagogy and repair. A specialist item, then, but one that deserves to be taken seriously in a field where many articles are ephemeral or elusive.
