Romantic flutes

The Romantic flute that I make is the result of a one year research project. During this year I examined and measured a great number of flutes made by the workshop of the Viennese maker Stephan Koch (1772-1828) and was able to learn about their special playing charachteristics as well as to establish guidelines for dating them.
Stephan Koch was the most important woodwind instrument maker in Vienna at the turn of the ninteenth-century and he made czakans, flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons. Koch's instruments were very progressive for his time and he is best known for the improvments that he made to the flute and oboe. Establishing his workshop around 1807, Koch undertook a new approach to flute making.

His flutes, unlike those of the generation of flute-makers who had preceded him, for example Grenser and Kirst, were designed with extensive use of the keys in mind, as opposed to occasional use in slow movements and in lyrical passages. His concept of sound was also different: he aimed for a brighter, louder sound that would carry well in bigger halls and with symphonic orchestras. His flutes were designed to produce a full, equal tone in all keys and throughout the instrument's three octaves. This was achieved, in part, by the addition of a metal-lined headjoint and a tuning slide, as well as by an angled e-hole, which improved the volume and reponse of the e. His model was later copied by many flute makers, Viennese, German and Italian, and he is considered the father of the Viennese school of flute-making. Koch was reputed to be one of the best makers of his time, and his instruments are recommended in treatises of the period by A.B. Fürstenau and George Bayr, the Viennese flute virtuoso.

My Koch model is a four-part, nine-keyed boxwood instrument, and is based on several originals from various European collections. It has keys for C, Bb, G#, F (long and short), Eb, and low C#, C and B. It has a pitch range of 430-440, with the optimal pitch being somewhere in the middle, around 435. This model can be dated between 1810 and 1820 and is the perfect instrumnt for playing Beethoven and Schubert symphonies as well as chamber music of the time.
The instrument comes with a hand-made wooden case, which is a copy of a contemporary Koch flute case.
The recommended fingerings for this model are the ones found in Viennese and German methods of the 1820s: Furstenau Bayr, and Fahrbach.