Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/600

Rh with the regular day and night service of steamers to Queenborough in the county of Kent, forms one of the main routes between England and the east of Europe. In 1873 the great harbour, docks and canal works were completed. Yet the navigation of the port remains far behind that of Rotterdam or Antwerp, the tonnage being in 1899 about 7.9% of that of the kingdom. As a summer resort, however, Flushing has acquired considerable popularity, sea-baths and a large modern hotel being situated on the fine beach about three-quarters of a mile north-west of the town. It possesses a town hall, containing a collection of local antiquities, a theatre, an exchange, an academy of sciences and a school of navigation. The Jakobskerk, or Jacob’s church, founded in 1328, contains monuments to Admiral de Ruyter (1607–1676) and the poet Jacob Bellamy (1757–1786), who were natives of Flushing. The chief industries of the town are connected with the considerable manufacture of machinery, the state railway-workshops, shipbuilding yards, Krupp iron and steel works’ depot, brewing, and oil and soap manufacture. The chief imports are colonial produce and wine, wood and coal. The exports include agricultural produce (wheat and beans), shrimps and meat.

FLUTE, a word adapted from O. Fr. fleüte, modern flûte; from O. Fr. have come the Span. flauta, Ital. flauto and Ger. Flöte. The New English Dictionary dismisses the derivations suggested from Lat. flatuare or flavitare; ultimately the word must be referred to the root seen in “blow,” Lat. flare, Ger. blasen, &c.

1. In music “flute” is a general term applied to wood-wind instruments consisting of a pipe pierced with lateral holes and blown directly through the mouthpiece without the intervention of a reed. The flute family is classified according to the mouthpiece used to set in vibration the column of air within the tube: i.e. (1) the simple lateral mouth-hole or embouchure which necessitates holding the instrument in a transverse position; (2) the whistle or fipple mouthpiece which allows the performer to hold the instrument vertically in front of him. There is a third class of pipes included among the flutes, having no mouthpiece of any sort, in which the column of air is set in vibration by blowing obliquely across the open end of the pipe, as in the ancient Egyptian nay, and the pan-pipe or (q.v.). The transverse flute has entirely superseded the whistle flute, which has survived only in the so-called penny whistle, in the “flute-work” of the (q.v.), and in the French flageolet.

The Transverse Flute or German Flute (Fr. flûte traversière, flûte allemande: Ger. Flöte, Querflöte, Zwerchpfeiff, Schweitzerpfeiff; Ital. flauto traverso) includes the concert flute known both as flute in C and as flute in D, the (q.v.) or octave flute, and the (q.v.). The modern flute consists of a tube open at one end and nominally closed at the other by means of a plug or cork stopper: virtually, however, the tube is an open one giving the consecutive harmonic series of the open pipe or of a stretched string. The primitive flute was made in one piece, but the modern instrument is composed of three adjustable joints. (1) The head-joint, plugged at the upper end and containing at about one-third of the length the mouth-hole or embouchure. This embouchure, always open when the instrument is being played, converts the closed tube into an open one, in an acoustical sense. (2) The body, containing the holes and keys necessary to produce the scale which gave the flute its original designation of D flute, the head and body together, when the holes are closed, giving the fundamental note D. Before the invention of keys, this fundamental note and the notes obtained by the successive opening of the six holes produced the diatonic scale of D major. All other semitones were obtained by what is known as cross fingering (Fr. doigté fourchu; Ger. Gabelgriffe). It became usual to consider this the typical fingering nomenclature, whatever the fundamental note given out by the flute, and to indicate the tonality by the note given out when the six lateral holes are covered by the fingers. The result is that the tonality is always a tone lower than the name of the instrument indicates. Thus the D flute is really in C, the F flute is E♭, &c. (3) The foot-joint or tail-joint containing the two additional keys for C♯ and C which extend the compass downwards, completing the chromatic scale of C in the fundamental octave.

The compass of the modern flute is three octaves with chromatic semitones from The sound is produced by holding the flute transversely with the embouchure turned slightly outwards, the lower lip resting on the nearer edge of the embouchure, and blowing obliquely across, not into, the orifice. The flat stream of air from the lips, known as the air-reed, breaks against the sharp outer edge of the embouchure. The current of air, thus set in a flutter, produces in the stationary column of air within the tube a series of pulsations or vibrations caused by the alternate compression and rarefaction of the air and generating sounds of a pitch proportional to the length of the stationary column, which is practically somewhat longer than the length of the tube. The length of this column is varied by opening the lateral finger-holes. The current or air-reed thus acts upon the air column within the flute, without passing through the tube, as a plectrum upon a string, setting it in vibration. The air column of the flute is the sound-producer, whereas in instruments with reed mouthpieces the vibrating reed is more properly the sound-producer, while the air column, acting as a resonating medium, reinforces the note of the reed by vibrating synchronously with it. If the angle at which the current of air is directed against the outer edge of the embouchure be made less acute and the pressure of the breath be at the same time increased, the frequency of the alternate pulses of compression and rarefaction within the tube will be increased two, three or fourfold, forming a corresponding number of nodes and loops which results in harmonics or upper partials, respectively the octave, the twelfth, the double octave. By this means sounds of higher pitch are produced without actually shortening the length of the column of air by means of lateral holes. The acoustic theory of sound-production in the flute is one on which there is great diversity of opinion. The subject is too vast to be treated here, but readers who wish to pursue it may consult the works of Rockstro, Helmholtz, and others. The effect of boring lateral holes in pipes is to shorten the vibrating length of the air column, which may be regarded as being effective only between the hole in question and the mouthpiece. In order to obtain this result the diameter of the hole should be equal to that of the bore; as long as the holes were covered by the fingers, this was obviously impossible. The holes, therefore, being smaller than the laws of acoustics demand, have to be placed proportionally nearer the mouthpiece in order to avoid deepening the pitch and deadening the tone. This principle was understood by wind-instrument makers of classic Greece (see and ), and has been explained by Chladni and Gottfried Weber.

The bore of the early flute with six finger-holes was invariably cylindrical throughout, but towards the end of the 17th century a modification took place, the head joint alone remaining cylindrical while the rest of the bore assumed the form of a cone having its smallest diameter at the open end of the tube. The      