In about 40,000 B.C. bones (often tibia bones) were used by humans to make whistles. This may be the very fist type of flutes created. Around 2224 B.C. the Chinese began to bind different lengths of bamboo together to make panpipes and a bit later, around 900 B.C., side blown flutes were being used in different parts of Asia (called Dizi in China). Often Asian dizi have a vibrating membrane that creates a really buzzy sound when played.
About 300 A.D. clay whistle flutes are found in Mexico and in 1100 people in the West start playing side-blown flutes. Soon after, about 1550, the violin is created in Italy. Though not a wind instrument, the violin is very important!
This brings us to 1660 when things really started to happen for the flute. Previously flutes always played out of tune because all of the holes on the flute were placed within easy reach of the fingers. However, to make a flute sound "right" the holes actually had to be spaced at very specific places on the tube to make it play in tune. These places were often not in locations that a normal person could reach. Many people didn't play the flute (and many composers didn't write for the flute) because it sounded terrible and there were very complicated fingerings to learn, which didn't always produce great notes anyway!
Next we arrive at the Frenchman Jacques Hotteterre (see photo). He was born in 1680 and died in 1761 and his family may have been involved with the creation of the oboe! Hotteterre designed a new kind of one-keyed flute. He added a key to the "keyless flute" and even changed the shape of the tube so a better tone could be produced.
Word has it that because his improvement of the flute, it became so popular that people put down their recorders and switched to flute!
Hotteterre didn't stop there, either. In 1707 he wrote the book "Les principles de la flute traversiere" or The Principles of the Traverse (side-blown) Flute. This was the first book on flute playing every created.
Interestingly, in 1709 Bartolommeo Cristofori, an Italian man, builds the very first pianoforte. Remember that people were using harpsichords prior to the piano and soon switched to piano as time went by!
Later, around the 1730s, the first flute concertos are published by Anton Vivaldi and soon after in 1741, Johann Quantz (1697-1773), a very prominent flutist and palace musician (see photo), begins working for Frederick the Great of Prussia (a flutist as well). Quantz wrote over three-hundred flute concertos, made his own flutes and wrote the book "On Playing the Flute." When he was a young person he also learned to play the harpsichord, violin and double bass.
Unfortunately for the flute, more keys were added, but they were not always as dependable as other instruments since the keys fell off or didn't seal properly. The flute still had not achieved its proper place in the musical world. Remember that Mozart is said to have disliked the flute in a letter he wrote and perhaps his ill feelings were because flutes often played out of tune and were much quieter than today's instruments.
Suddenly we fly by Maelzel's patented clockwork metronome in 1814 and the creation of the saxophone by Adolphe Sax in 1846 and we land in 1847.
Theobald Boehm (1794-1881), a German metal worker and instrument maker, created the current design most flutes use today (see photo). He repositioned the holes and added keys that made it possible to play every note in every key without weird fingerings. His flute design won him first price at the Industrial Exhibition of All Nations in London in 1851!
