Flute Anecdotes

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If you feel the need to link - feel free but please respect the fact that this is my own work - the result of many years teaching and performing and should you wish to use any of the material ~

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Trevor Wye ascribes the following to "A Greek Philosopher, 2000 years ago":

"Flute players have brains, of that there's no doubt!
but alas and alack, for they soon blow them out!"

FLUTE: "A sophisticated pea-shooter with a range up to five hundred yards and deadly accuracy in close quarters. Blown transversely to confuse the enemy, it can be dismantled into three small pieces for easy concealment." - David W. Barber

Syrinx

Most surgical of instruments!
Aeolian tube with rods and keys
Poised in the balanced hands to squeeze
The slender soul through its precise space,
Like a rare serpent of the desert south
Worshipped in its narrow place,
Drawing the soul from the hovering mouth!

A trickle that defies gravity, creating
Pools of articulated notes that fly
From each prestidigitating hand,
A shining elevated wand
Whose buttons the fingers do up so quickly!

It is like a telescope for the wind's song
Extended from the lips and tongue
As from an eye to which horizons are strangely near.

Then the silver body is broken in three
And the music survives in the ear.

--John Fuller ("Words about Music" by John Amis and Michael Rose)

Each note flies from his flute towards my cheek like a mysterious kiss. - Ravel (from the song La Flute)

Q: How many classical flutists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but she'll pay $5,000 for a gold-plated ladder.

Q: How many Irish flutists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. There's nothing wrong with the old one that a little superglue, almond oil, and Guinness won't fix.

The flute is the only wind instrument which has to any appreciable extent been adopted by women. Still, in modern times at any rate, flute-playing has never found many votaries amongst women, and none have ever attained the very first rank as performers. The mere man might attribute this to the fact that one cannot flute and talk at the same time, or possibly it may be, as a fair flautiste is recently reported to have said, because kissing is fatal to flute-playing: in such a contest it is, of course, the flute that goes under. In early Victorian times, it was considered most unlady-like and vulgar. Yet the instrument is extremely well suited for ladies. The attitude when playing is graceful and healthy, affording ample opportunity for the display of a beautiful arm; it is a gentle instrument requiring but little physical exertion. Moreover, women possess more delicacy of touch and deftness of finger than men, and their lips are softer and more flexible.- Fitzgibbon, The Flute

'The Flute is not an instrument which has a good moral effect - it is too exciting.' - Aristotle

A flute with no holes is not a flute, and a doughnut with no hole is a Danish - Chevy Chase

Street Musician: 'What is the difference between a flutist and a flautist?'
Famous Musician: 'I don't know.'
Street Musician: '$50 a week, man.'

"When Hari puts the flute to his lips
The still are moved and the moving stilled;
Winds die, the river Yamuna stops,
crows fall silent and the deer fall senseless;
bird and beast are stunned by his splendour.
A cow, unmoving,
dangles a grassblade from her teeth;
Even the wise can no longer
hold firm their own minds."

--Sur Das

                 It is only a tool.

                    A tool forged from

                      the metals of the

                        Earth. From Silver.

                           From Gold. Fashioned

                           by history.  Crafted

                         by Masters. It is a tool

                     that shapes mood and

                    Culture. It enraptures.

                    Sometimes distracts.

                       Exhilarates and soothes.

                          Sings and weeps. Now

                             take up the tool

                                 and sculpt Music

                                 from the air.

- unnamed Muramatsu employee, on the World Wide Web

I really should have studied flute,
Harmonica, or chimes.
A clarinet is nice and light;
A fiddle would be fine.
But I had to take piano,
And my teacher is a brute.
He lives up seven flights of stairs.
(I wish I played the flute.)

- Shel Silverstein, in Falling Up

"Every music lover is familiar with the sound of the flute, which seems to possess a magic power that emanates from its innermost being. It speaks, it moves, it entrances, almost as if it had been revealed to us on the glorious day of creation. And yet it is genuine human expression, an element of language, the image of a dream continually repeated." - Meylan, The Flute

Blowing is not playing the flute: you must make use of your fingers. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"The flute player puts breath into a flute, and who makes the music? Not the flute. The Flute player!" - Rumi

"And all the people went up after him, and the people were playing on flutes and rejoicing with great joy, so that the earth shook at their noise." - anonymous scribe, in First Kings 1:40

"You know that I become quite powerless whenever I am obliged to write for an instrument which I cannot bear." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in a letter to his father, after being commissioned to compose flute music

"The flute is the show-off of the wind section, the big shot: Jean-Pierre Rampal, James Galway--both millionaires. (How many millionaire bassoonists can you name real fast?) Well, that's fine. Everybody knows it's the hardest, blowing across a tiny hole with your head tilted all your life: it's like soloing on a pop bottle. The problem with the flute is that it vibrates your brain, and you start wearing big white caftans and smocks and eat roots and berries. You become a pantheist and sit in meadows, and you believe that all is one and God is everything--God is a column of air vibrating--and you know that's not right." - Garrison Keillor, in The Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra

A Flutist called Marion Grey,

Was inclined to play sharper each day,

the pitch reached a height, where the lady, one night,

Played the Mozart G Major in A!

- Trevor Wye January 1st 2002

The sound of the Flute will cure epilepsy and sciatic gout. - Theophrastus

Since bad habits are very difficult to overcome, they should be removed in their beginnings. - Theobald Boehm

"From the start, when it was the instrument of the wood-god Pan, the flute has been associated with pure (some might say impure) energy. Its sound releases something naturally untamed, as if a squirrel were let loose in a church." - Seamus Heaney

A Tonguing Exercise

A tutor who tooted the flute,

Tried to teach two young tooters to toot;

Said the two to the tutor,

'Is it harder to toot or

To tutor two tooters to toot?'

"The only woman awake is the woman who has heard the flute." - Rumi

"Playing a flute is like writing a book. You're telling what's in your heart...It's easier to play if it's right from your heart. You get the tone, and the fingers will follow." - Eddie Cahill

"The way leads from playing the flute to pleasure, from pleasure to laziness, from laziness to sleep, from sleep to sin, from sin to death, from death to the devil and hell." - Stephen Cossman, of Puritan England

"SERIOUS ACCIDENT AT THE VINTNERS' HALL. On Tuesday night an accident occurred at the Vintners'-hall, Thames-street, to a gentleman of the name of Ireland, brother of one of the liverymen of the company, which caused great alarm to those who were assembled at dinner on the occasion of the celebration of the Lord Mayor's-day. He entered the hall a little before 9 o'clock, and took his seat nearly under the orchestra. He had not been there above ten minutes when the flute belonging to one of the musicians dropped from the orchestra on his head. The blood immediately flowed most profusely, and he was for a moment stunned. Mr. May, a surgeon of the neighbourhood, was instantly called in, who found that he had received a slanting wound on the scalp. The wound was dressed, after which Mr. Ireland was conveyed home in a coach. The stewards promptly inquired how the accident originated, when it was ascertained that while the musician was adjusting the leaves of his music-book the flute slipped out of his hand. The man was perfectly sober. It was stated by Mr. May that he did not anticipate any fatal result."

--unnamed reporter, in The [London] Times, 12 November 1841, page 7

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If you feel the need to link - feel free but please respect the fact that this is my own work - the result of many years teaching and performing and should you wish to use any of the material ~

PLEASE ASK!!