Page:The story of the flute (IA storyofflute1914fitz).djvu/147

 meet an E′′′, very rarely an F′′′, and I have only noticed a single case in which he has written a G′′′ for the flute. He uses the three lowest notes F to D much less frequently than Bach, who introduces them freely. Though he sometimes uses flutes in tutti movements along with oboes, trumpets, bassoons, and occasionally horns, as a rule, like Bach, he reserves them for special effects and to accompany vocal solos or duets.

Although Handel introduced the transverse flute in a work written in 1705, in his earlier operas he almost exclusively uses the flute-à-bec, which instrument he continued to employ throughout his whole career, including his last work, The Triumph of Truth and Time (1757). But this production was really a rechauffé of an earlier work written in 1708, and it is interesting to notice that in some numbers where the flute-à-bec was used in 1708, the transverse flute is substituted for it in the later version. One number in this version in which the flute-à-bec is retained is taken bodily from his early opera Agrippina. In Giustino, i. 4 (1737), he uses a bass flute-à-bec, and in Riccardo (iii. 2) we have the solitary instance of his use of a bass transverse flute. It tranposes from F minor to G minor, and is allotted a melody, extending from G′ to B′′♭, the accompaniment being played on violins and violas only. Sometimes Handel uses both forms of flute in the one work. Thus in La Resurrezione (1708) and in Rodelinda (ii. 5) we have two flutes-à-bec and also a transverse flutein the latter work they are used