Warble
A flute may warble in the contemporary comical sense or may warble resoundingly, with all the dignity and majesty appropriate to the presence of a saint or an emperor. Depictions of flutes warbling in this latter sense are depicted in scenes shown in Das Weisskunigs Erfahrung in Mummerei (Of the White King’s Introduction to Mummery), from the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I’s autobiographical and allegorical Weisskunig cycle, and the Triumph of David, taken from the Encomium Musices (In Praise of Music) collection of musical scenes in the Bible. This “Warble” section illustrates the emergence of transverse, or side blown, flutes in a wide range of surroundings.
Michael Praetorius’s 1619 work, Syntagmatis Musici Tomus Secundus De Organographia (Second Volume of Musicology on Instrumentation) reproduced on this wall), includes the earliest extant representation of a transverse flute made in two pieces. Later in the seventeenth century flutes were made of three or four pieces, and still later of five pieces. The jointed flute was adopted for several reasons: for convenience in manufacture, for portability of the instrument when packed in its case, and for the purpose of adjusting the pitch.
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