The Medieval flute I make is a result of a collaboration with Claudio Santambroggio, who has done a great deal of research about the transverse flute in the middle ages, both in iconography as well as in literature. Claudio is also an inspiring player who is active in several groups performing music of the late middle ages. The idea of experimenting with constructing a mediaeval flute came from Claudio's search for an instrument suitable for the performance of this music. We were looking for an instrument that would be more flexible and open on the lower register than the renaissance flute is, as well as tuned in d Dorian in Pythagorean tuning. An inspiration for the design has been a very unusual original in the Musikinstrumenten Museum in Berlin, made in maple, with two horn rings. The instrument, which at first glance looked like a renaissance flute, has many features, which are not found on originals made in the sixteenth century. The most striking is wide bore and thicker walls - more than on any surviving tenor renaissance flute. An other interesting feature is its grouping of holes, not two groups of three holes, but a single group of six holes, more or less equally spaced. The first reconstruction of this original showed an other difference, namely that the fingering for B and C# (1----- and ------) gave sounding B flat and a C natural.
We found the sound concept of the instrument very appealing, it had a wonderful low register and was capable of a large range of colors and dynamics, we have decided to base my Medieval flute on this original, but to alter the hole positions, so that it would play with in D Dorian in Pythagorean tuning with renaissance fingerings.
Copies are available in A=440 and 465 in maple as well as in a variety of fruit-woods: pear, plum or cherry.