Although the French flageolet was more popular in France than England, it is described in many English tutors and in the latter part of the century it was played in concerts in England by leading professional exponents. Inevitably, most French flageolets were made in France although a few were made in England and in other countries: a search through the inventories of ten collections for French flageolets whose makers are identified yielded a total of seventy-five instruments, of which sixty-five were of French origin. The French flageolet, particularly in the multi-keyed and Boehm versions, was sometimes referred to as the quadrille flageolet on account of its use in quadrille (dance) bands. Later in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, the piercing tone of the instrument allowed it to be used as a substitute for the piccolo.

Organology of The French Flageolet

It will be recalled that the tone-holes on the French flageolet are arranged in the unusual pattern of four in the front and two at the back, as the instrument in its original form in the seventeenth century was too small to permit the normal arrangement of six front holes. The left thumb functions as a speaker-hole in the same manner as the thumb on the recorder and English flageolet, whereas the right thumb takes the place of the second finger of the right hand. The little finger of the right hand is sometimes employed to partially close the bell in order to sound the semitone below the sixth-finger note and the third finger of the right hand may be placed behind the instrument in order to support it: the left third finger is otherwise unoccupied on a keyless flageolet. The sixth degree of the scale is sounded using a fork-fingering, making the basic scale rather more difficult than that of the English flageolet. The most common pitch for the instrument was in A, the sixth-finger note sounding a” with the music transposed down an octave or an octave and a fifth, but instruments were available in many keys. For consistency in the present volume, the descriptions given for keywork and fingering will be based on an instrument with a sixth-finger A: in comparison, the nomenclature of the keys on the English flageolet relate to a sixth-finger D.