Page:The story of the flute (IA storyofflute1914fitz).djvu/149

 mouth! Surely if Handel had intended this he would have marked it "flauto piccolo." In this very work the florid accompaniment to "Hush, ye pretty warbling choir" was originally so marked, though it is now always played on a flute. (By the way, "The heart the seat of soft desire" was originally written for two flutes-à-bec). Handel used the "flauto piccolo" on several , Acis, "Hush, ye pretty warbling choir." other occasions. The most notable of these is the very elaborate obligato and cadenza (which last is omitted in the later version of 1731) to Almirena's song, "Augelletti," in Rinaldo (1711). This part was marked "flageolet" in the original autograph score, but it was altered to "flauto piccolo" in Handel's own writing. Addison in The Spectator, Nos. 5 and 14, has a most amusing description of this scene as performed at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, where sparrows flew about the stage and put out the candles; Addison calls the instruments used "flagellets and bird-calls." The "flauto piccolo" is allotted another very similar obligato in Riccardo (iii. 10). It is also used in the "Tamburino" in the ballet music in Alcitia