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The Alex Murray Flute Author(s): Philip Bate Reviewed work(s): Source: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 26 (May, 1973), pp. 47-54 Published by: Galpin Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/841112 . Accessed: 15/09/2012 05:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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PHILIPBATE

The

Alex

Murray

Flute

N 1967,whilstcollatingmaterialfor a generalbook on the transverse flute,I was fortunatein havingmy attention drawnto experiments which had been carriedout duringsome nine or ten yearsby Alex D. Murrayof the MichiganStateUniversity,andwhichI wasbold enough to suggestmightpointto theultimateformof thecylinderfluteoriginated by TheobaldBoehm.At thattimean outlineof Murray'sworkwas due for publicationin an Americanjournal,but with the permissionof the Authorandthe Editor,I was privilegedto writea shortadvancenotice. Work, however,did not cease,andat the presentday the Murrayflute hasreachedits 'Mark8' andis indeeda remarkable instrument.The data and descriptions in the latterpartof this note are basedon an account kindlyfurnishedby Murrayhimself. THE BACKGROUND The flutein most generaluse todayis commonlytermed'the Boehm,' andis basicallythatdevelopedby TheobaldBoehmin theyears1846-47, with cylindricalbore and a head taperingin a gentle curveratherinaccuratelydescribedas 'parabolic'.Boehm's work in designingan almostcompletely'open system'flute, and in devisingmechanismto controlthe twelvelargeholesandone smallone thathe foundnecessary, is discussedin his pamphletAn Essayon theConstruction of Flutes(1847) andhisbook TheFluteandFlutePlaying(1871),andto understand properly whatMurrayhasnow achievedit may be well to look for a moment at thesetwo publications.'Fig. I reproducesBoehn'sown drawingof this mechanismin its finalform.

, 0as C~(O ~g~' DI; (~a FIG.

Ix~a

() (

I. Boehm'sdrawingof hisflute.

It seems clear that while Boehm found an elegant solution to the problem he had set himself and created an instrument that meets the 47

needs of a majority of playerseven today, he may not himself have been entirely satisfied.Certainlyhe had doubtsasto the rationaleof the inverted cone bore of the traditionalflute, though he adopted a modified form of it for his first 'open system' design of 1832; and the closed Dg key for the right little finger he seems to have regardedas unavoidablethough it remained a glaring inconsistency in the 'open hole' concept.2 We disregardhere the closed D and D# trill keys which constitute a special case, but must note that Boehm found himself obliged for good reasons to reduce and displacethe top Cg hole.3 The need to keep the right hand Dg key open a large part of the time for venting purposesis to many playersa nuisance.To many also Boehm's open Gg key (left little finger) is objectionable,and severalarrangements of the Gg and a mechanismhave been elaborated,notably that of Dorus (c.1838), one of the lightest in action but not always quite reliable. On the majority of Boehm flutes today the Gg touch opens a hole for that note alone, while a duplicate hole is covered by a cup rigidly attached to the open-standingA cup so that when the latteris releasedthere is no closed hole immediately below it. Boehm is saidto have refusedto make fluteswith a closed Gg, but it is known that he did constructat least one such instrument to accommodate a favoured customer.4To do so he divided the touch lever into two and provided a second fulcrum using only the normal hole. Fig. 2 shows how this was done, but even so this involved a slight re-positioning of the a hole to preserveintonation.

GO

:D

FIG.2. Boehm's closedGgaction.

AftermuchexperimentwithauthenticBoehmandotherwell-designed flutesthe lateDaytonC. Millerconcludedthatthe open Ggis no more difficultto masterthanthe closedversion,andthatit hascertainminor in somepartsof the scale.This,we shallsee later,is alsothe advantages now reachedby Alex Murray. opinion While consideringBoehm'sbasicwork we must also look at the B andBb arrangements for the left thumb.On the originalmodelof the flute of Boehm 1847 cylinder providedno Bb thumblever.About1849, 48

however, Briccialdi,a distinguishedItalianflautistthen living in London, invented a thumb mechanism which is almost universal today, and in that year he had it constructedfor him by Rudall and Rose. Soon after Briccialdi'sinvention Boehm himself designed a B? thumb lever on a somewhat different principle, and employing, as he claimed, a more rationalmovement of the digit in that in passingfrom B to BI the thumb moved downthe instrumentnot up as with the Briccialdi.Both arrangements included a B-C trill lever for the right forefinger,though Boehm seems to have regardedthis as an accessoryratherthan as a regularpart of his system. Lastly we must observe that in the original fingering the F# produced by lowering the third (or sometimes the second) finger of the right hand is on many instrumentsslightly flattenedor muffled by the unavoidable closing of the E hole below. Boehm compensatedfor this by placing the F# hole a shadeabove his calculatedposition, but this has still not satisfied some more critical players and hence such arrangementsas the Brossa and Rockstro keys which allow the E hole to remain open for F#. Rockstro, in fact, with his well-known prejudice against all things 'Boehm', more or less completely revisedthe cylinderinstrumentin I858 on the basis of a different set of calculations from the original, and, incorporatingseveral other ideas of his own, produced a flute that has become the preferenceof a number of distinguishedplayers. THE MURRAY FLUTE The preceding is, I believe, a fair summary of the more important modifications that have been applied to the basic Boehm flute from its advent to the middle of the presentcentury, and it forms the background to the recent labours of Alex Murray and his mathematiciancolleague Elmer Cole. How he first came to embark on them is, I think, best told in his own words:'Until 1945 when I joined the Royal Air Force Band, I played on what is the commonest form of the Boehm flute, the closed G# instrument. At that time I read Boehm's account of his instrument with Dayton Miller'scommentary and decided that the open G# was a more rationalsystem for at least three reasons. i) The duplicateG# hole was unnceesary. ii) The springof an open key is lighter than one requiredto hold the key closed. iii) Top E is greatly improved when correctly vented with the A hole alone, and not the A and G# holes together as on the closed G# arrangement. I consequently asked a flute repairerto alter my instrumentto the open 49

Gg and after a few weeks practice I found the readjustmentamply

rewarded'. The flute to which this first modificationwas made was in fact a good example of the standardAmerican style closed Gg instrument made by W. S. Haynes, and we may suppose that it was originally built with the A hole in the compensatingposition, though Murray does not mention this point in his notes. Anyhow, here we have a case of a busy professional who found it worth while to make the first change in his accustomed fingering. The next point to which Murray directed his attention was the anomaly of the closed Dg key which Boehm took over from the conventional flute of his time-apparently without demur.4To quote again from Murray'snotes:'The asymetricaluse of the little fingers, in particularthe necessityfor maintaining the right little finger down much of the time struck me as undesirableand I experimented with an open Dg by turning the footjoint until the D9 hole was within reach of my little finger. I unhooked the spring and maintainedthe key open with an elastic band. The flute became a little unstableto balancebut I solved this by sticking a wedge of cork on the body above the right thumb (I no longer require this, having learnt to balancethe instrumentwithout it). I felt that the action of the key was an improvement on the closed Dg. 'At that time (1958) I was fortunate in meeting Albert Cooper, an artist-flute-maker,formerly with Rudall Carte and who had left to begin making flutes on his own. He agreed to construct a new foot joint which would convert my flute to open Dg. The Cg, D, and Dg keys were placed in line from an axle on the near-sideof the flute; the Dg key was closed by both the other keys. The problem remained,how to trill C-D or C#-D. When the little finger was removed from C or Cg, Dg was the note sounded. In order to circumvent this a crescentshapedkey was built from the D key around the front of the ring-finger key. This finger could then close both keys simultaneouslywhen required, giving D?. Laterit was found better to have two parallelrollers so that the ring finger could move easily from D to Dg in the same way that the little finger moves from C to Cg on a flute with two rollers on the foot joint.' Fig. 3 is a sketch of the little finger arrangementsat the first stage of development. A proposthe above-mentioned extension of the D key, we may observe that while there are a number of referencesin the older flute literature to crescentic touch-pieces associated with finger-holes, and, though the cases may not be quite identical,it is interestingto note 50

seemsneverto havebeenwholly satisfactory. thatthe arrangement The notableexampleis, of course,that of Gordon'sflutes,contrastedwith Boehm's1832modelin whichcompleteringswereemployedfor similar purposes.In his descriptionof his cone-boreflute of 1852 Rockstro claimsto haveoriginated'thenow commoncrescentic shapeof thetouch of the D# key' partiallyembracingthe endsof the C and C# touches. Its objectivewas to easethe slurringof C# andD#, but in this he was forestalledby CorneliusWardsometen yearsearlier.

FIG. 3.

Murray's openD key,firstarrangement.

Turningbackto the Murraymodel,it is evidentthat once we have passedD? the rightlittlefingeris not requiredagaintill we come to the samenoteanoctavehigher,andit maythereforebe givenotheremployment in the interval.Murraythoughtof the defectiveF# mentioned earlierand, with anotherlittle fingertouchand linkageto close the G cup, arrangedthatthe F# couldbe soundedfrom its own hole with all below open. A good trill for E-F# is thus securedwith no change of fingeringfor the latternote. Further,by splittingthe A key so that the B hole can remainopenwhile the Bb is closed,and by linkingthe lowerof theseto thenew F# touch,a correctventingfor top F# becomes possible.This is comparablewith ventingthe top E with the open G# key (Fig.4). The thirdpartof Murray'swork has been concernedwith the small top C# hole, which, on accountof its multiplefunctions,Boehm was constrainedto makesmalland placein a compromiseposition.It'suses

are:-

i) As a note-holefor c#",c/"' andc1"" ii) As a vent-holefor d",d"',andd"",d1"',g1"', a"',andb?'". Murraypointsout alsothaton manyflutesthe intervalc#"-d#"requires muchcarein blowingif it is to soundan acceptable whole tone,andthat both noteshaveto be 'humoured',one in one directionand one in the 51

In7 K

___ MURRAY

Note-Holes C

A

0

G G

E D c

FIG. 4.

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G#)compared. ofthe3rdoctave:MurrayandBoehm(closed Venting

other.A numberof experimentsled to a divisionof functionbetweena well-placedfull-sizeupperC# hole anda smalld"vent.The only change of fingeringinvolvedwas a reversalof the Briccialdiarrangement and a returnto Boehm'smorelogicalone, i.e. B? aboveB,. Finally,the closedD trillkey, which, togetherwith the D# trill,has remainedvirtuallyunalteredsince Boehm inheritedit from Capeller, has been slightlymodified.By linkingit to the right handD key the closedfor the normalfingeringof top B, thus D# hole is automatically again leaving the right little finger free. P1. IV shows the general appearanceof the Murrayflute in its latestform,and P1.IIIdetailsof the rightlittle fingerkeys on a largerscale.It will be noticedthat this exampleis built down to low B as is now almostuniversalin America andincreasingly popularin England. To summarise, we may saythatalthoughthe Murrayflutemay seem it is in fact both logical and mechanicallysound. The complicated of multiplicity touchpiecesat the lower end owe theirexistanceto the very fact that the rightlittle fingerhas been releasedfrom its bondage andsetfreeto makeuseof them.At the costof veryslightchangesfrom thestandard fingeringin one or two places(Fig.5) it hasbecomepossible to makea flutewith hole dimensionsandplacingexactlyaccordingto Boehm'sideal'Schema'5 andwithoutthe needfor compensatory adjustmentsto humour'bad'notes. Possiblysuchan instrumentmay prove 52

2

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FIG. 5.

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Fingeringchartfor theMurrayflute.

more expensive than the average high quality standardBoehm-indeed as long as the model is being produced 'one off' to specialorder it must be so-but the researchand experiment has been done, and as more flautistsbegin to appreciatethe facilities it offers, the writer, for one, will not be surprisedto see it take its place in the cataloguesof the best makers,and at a reasonableprice. Let Murray himself have the last word: 'Without the skill, patience, and insight of Albert Cooper, this flute would not be in existance. Inevitablyhe has been inundatedwith work and has a seven-yearwaiting list for his instruments. I have been most fortunate in meeting those responsible for manufacturing Armstrong flutes. The foreman, Jack Moore of the Heritage division, accepted the challenge of making a similar flute with certain slight mechanical improvements over my presentone (my eighth) which I hope will embody the final form of the Murray flute'. 53

NOTES und den die neuesten Ueber desselben, Mainz,1847. I Flditenbau Verbesserung An Essayon theConstruction editedwith the additionof corresof Flutes-, pondenceand other documentsby W. S. Broadwood,London, Rudall, Carteand Co., 1882.This is Boehm'sown Englishversionof the preceding. - , Munich,1871. TheFluteandFlutePlaying Die Flite unddasFlktenspiel SecondEnglishedn, revisedand enlarged,translated and annotatedby -, DaytonC. Miller,London,Rudall,CarteandCo., 1922.Miller'scommentary andAppendicesareof the utmostimportance. 2 TheFluteandFlutePlaying,p. 6o. 3 Op. cit.,pp. 29, 30 and 37. 4 Op.cit.,p. 68. InvariousCollectionsthereareexamplesof authenticBoehin fluteswhichshow differentvariations(possiblyexperimental) fromhisnormal model. 5 Op.cit.,pp. 36, 38 et seq.

54

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PLATE III

TheMurrayFlute:detailof rightlittle-fingerkeys

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PLATE IV

Flute16o byA. K. Cooper,London,builtto thespecification ofA. D. Murray ('Mark8')