Description of piccolo flutes and their scope

The piccolo flute is one of the varieties of the common flute we are all used to. This musical instrument differs from it in its size, design features, and even high sounding. For more information about what the piccolo flute is, what is the history of its origin, what is the peculiarity of its sound, you can find out from the information below.

The piccolo flute, or, as it is also called, the piccolo, especially stands out among other wind musical instruments in its pitch, it is the highest of all.

It is a small flute, about half the size of a regular flute, but their fingerings are generally similar. Its length is no more than 30 centimeters. Due to its size, this musical instrument is not at all difficult to confuse with a children's toy.

However, the piccolo flute differs from an ordinary flute not only in its size. She is able to take such high-pitched sounds that are inaccessible to a simple flute. Its sound is a whole octave higher.

As for the structure of the piccolo flute, it differs little from the structure of an ordinary flute. Their main constituent parts are quite similar. Conventional flutes have only 3 of them.

• The first is the head. It is located at the very top and includes holes as well as plugs with a cap.
• The second part is the so-called body. It is on it that the valves are located, as well as holes that can open and close, thereby generating this or that sound.
• The third part of this musical instrument is the knee. It contains special keys for the fingers, but this part is completely absent from the piccolo.

Besides, in the structure of the piccolo, a number of other features can be noted... So, for example, the dimensions of the air holes are several times smaller, it has a reverse conical shape of the barrel section and, in addition, the gaps between all its holes and valves are quite small.

Traditional piccolo is made from a material such as wood. However, nowadays, you can find not only wooden specimens on store shelves. Nowadays, this musical instrument can be made of plastic, metal or silver. Of course, models made of ordinary plastic or metal are much less expensive than those made of wood or silver. However, playing the piccolo flute, which is made of wood, is somewhat more difficult than the one made of metal.

The flute is the oldest wind musical instrument. A myth from Greek mythology is associated with her appearance, which tells about the forest god Pan and his beloved nymph named Syringa, who, alas, did not reciprocate his feelings because of his not the most beautiful appearance. To hide from him, the maiden prayed for help, after which she turned into a reed. The frustrated forest god took a couple of reeds, creating a wonderful musical instrument from them - a pipe, which is now called a flute, or rather a pan-flute.

However, let's get back to the specific history of such a kind of flute as piccolo. This instrument is relatively new, since it appeared not so long ago.

A close relative of piccolo is such an old whistling musical instrument as the harmonic. It is he who is called the predecessor of the piccolo.

This musical instrument was used most often in order to teach certain birds to perform a certain melody. In addition, they used it in military compositions.

Naturally, over the entire period of its existence, the harmonic has undergone a variety of changes. So, at first, it acquired a conical shape, which contributed to the purity of its sound. Its head acquired great mobility, thanks to which it was able to influence the tuning of the instrument. A little later, the body of a musical instrument began to be divided into three parts.

This is how a completely new instrument, vaguely reminiscent of a harmonic, was created, which had the ability to produce a varied sound scale, while the sound of the harmonic did not differ much.

Already by the 18th century, the flute had become especially appreciated in orchestras, as well as among European musicians and composers. So this instrument got its names from the peoples of different countries. The Italians have flauto piccolo or ottavino, the French have petite flûte, and the Germans have kleine Flöte.

The piccolo flute acquired its present form thanks to Theobald Boehm, who was a German master, flutist and composer. It was he who became the "father" of this instrument, including the piccolo flute, which is still relevant today. He carried out various acoustic experiments, which made it possible to significantly improve the flute models existing at that time. Almost immediately, these new instruments delighted all European professional musicians.

In the 20th century, the piccolo began to be used even more actively in various orchestras, in symphonic and wind instruments. It is this musical instrument that contributes to the maintenance of the upper voices in the general tuning of the orchestra.

Such famous musicians and composers as, for example, Antonio Vivaldi, Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov, and Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich also resorted to using the piccolo flute.They loved the instrument so much that they even trusted him to solo in some episodes of their musical compositions.

Besides, used piccolo in his symphonic compositions and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. So, this musical instrument can be heard in such a work of this author as Symphony No. 1.

As mentioned above, such a wind instrument as the piccolo flute sounds quite peculiar. It will be difficult to confuse its sound with any other instrument, since it is quite piercing and remotely resembles a whistle. It has a special sonic range and is completely incapable of producing "D flat" and "C" of the first octave.

The piccolo flute is characterized by a high sounding, which is an octave higher than the sound of an ordinary flute. Its sound enchants and reminds of something fabulous and magical. It is because of these features that this musical instrument began to be most often used in orchestras in order to create the most realistic atmosphere of a thunderstorm, wind, battle and more.

Such a tool, as a piccolo flute, gives sonority to musical works, makes them brighter, juicy and high. In addition, it is she, in view of its sound characteristics, that contributes to an increase in the sound range of other wind musical instruments that are involved in the orchestra.

At the moment, there are a large number of manufacturers on the musical instrument market who are engaged in the creation and sale of piccolo flutes. Among them, manufacturers such as:

• Yamaha;
• Burkart;
• Pearl PFP;
• Armstrong.

Nowadays, piccolo is most often used in orchestras. It is often paired with some ringing musical instruments such as percussion, drum or oboe. However, despite the fact that the piccolo flute is a fairly common instrument and is of great importance in orchestras, there are not so many musical compositions that are designed specifically for it.

Despite the fact that there are not so many solo episodes for piccolo, they still exist in a certain amount. These include:

• concert in C-dur Vivaldi;
• Piano Concerto No. 1 by the French composer Ravel Maurice;
• Piano Concerto No. 4 by the Soviet composer Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin.

But despite this, the process of playing on it has some nuances in terms of an ear cushion... Nevertheless, the differences are not very significant, and therefore, in order to master the game on this musical instrument, the ability to play an ordinary flute is mandatory.