Boehm, Theobald

(b Munich, 9 April 1794; d Munich, 25 Nov 1881). German flute maker, flautist, composer and inventor. He worked out the proportions and devised the mechanism which are the bases of the modern flute. Boehm was the son of a goldsmith, in whose craft he became fully skilled at an early age. In childhood he taught himself the flageolet and one-keyed flute; by the age of 16 he had already grown dissatisfied with the latter, and in 1810 made himself a copy of a four-keyed instrument by Grenser of Dresden. Around the same time he also made a nine-keyed flute with a movable golden mouth-hole, based on the ideas of Johann Nepomuk Kapeller (1776–1825), flautist in the royal court orchestra in Munich. In 1810 Boehm began flute lessons with Kapeller, who gave him formal instruction until 1812, admitting then that he had no more to teach him.

In that year Boehm was appointed flautist at the Isartortheater and during the next five years combined flute playing with his daily work as goldsmith. In 1818 he became a member of the royal court orchestra in Munich (first flute 1830–48), and between 1821 and 1831 he undertook extended concert tours throughout Europe. Boehm enjoyed considerable success as a virtuoso performer: he was praised for his musicality and the beauty of his tone, and Fétis, among others, considered him the best German flautist of his day. Boehm, who had studied with Peter Winter and Joseph Graetz, frequently performed his own compositions. His works, all written for the flute, include a concerto, and numerous virtuoso pieces – fantaisies, variations, potpourris and the like. He also made many arrangements for flute with piano and for alto flute with piano. His music, popular and well regarded in his own time but then forgotten, has experienced a revival since the mid-20th century, spurred by the interest of Marcel Moyse and his pupils. A complete edition of Boehm’s works is in preparation.

In 1828 Boehm opened a flute-making workshop (mark: th. boehm / a / munich) and in 1829 he received a patent for an improved conical-bore wooden flute. During a concert tour in 1831 he heard the flautist Charles Nicholson in London and was impressed by the powerful tone that the latter drew from his large-holed flute. Boehm later admitted (in a letter to W.S. Broadwood of 18 April 1871) that he could not match Nicholson’s power of tone and therefore set to work to remodel his own instrument. An experimental model was made in 1831 in the workshop of Gerock & Wolf in London, and a completely remodelled instrument emerged from the Munich workshop in 1832. On this conical-bore instrument, the ‘cone Boehm’ or ‘ring Boehm’ flute, the tone holes were newly placed to improve the tuning and a system of interlinking keys with ring touchpieces was employed to enable the player to open or close the 14 tone holes.

Boehm’s flute was awarded a silver medal at the Munich industrial exhibitions of 1834 and 1835, but it did not at first win much attention although Boehm demonstrated it in Paris and London; production was limited as he was chiefly occupied from 1834 to 1839 with introducing a procedure for the purification of steel in Bavarian factories. In 1837 he left an instrument with the flautist P.H. Camus in Paris; the instrument was presented to the Académie des Sciences and adopted by Camus, Vincent Dorus and Victor Coche. The firm of Godfroy l’aîné (V.H. Godfroy and Louis Lot) began to make flutes based on it, but with a closed G key (a modification suggested by Dorus) rather than the open key of Boehm’s model, an alteration intended to make the new system easier for players of the old system. In 1838 Coche, annoyed that Boehm would not collaborate with him, accused the latter of stealing ideas from James Gordon, an amateur flautist whom Boehm had met in London in 1831 and advised on flute construction in 1833–4; the injustice of this accusation has been proved. The new flute was promoted in London by John Clinton, who had acquired an instrument in 1841; with Boehm’s approval, Rudall & Rose of London began in 1843 to manufacture flutes based on his design. In the meantime Cornelius Ward in London and L.-A. Buffet in Paris (the latter assisted and advised by Coche) had seized on the unprotected design. In November 1838 Buffet received a patent for several alterations to the Boehm flute. J.D. Larabee made a Boehm flute in New York in 1844 and A.G. Badger began to manufacture the instrument there soon after.

In 1839 Boehm sold his workshop to Rudolph Greve (1806–62), who had been his foreman since 1829, in order to concentrate, by royal command, on improvements to the Bavarian iron and steel industry. Greve continued to manufacture flutes with the mark Boehm & Greve until 1846, when Boehm founded his second workshop. From about 1845 Boehm studied acoustics under the guidance of C.E. von Schafhäutl (1803–90), his collaborator in improvements to steel manufacturing. He established a new workshop in 1847 (marks: Th. Boehm / in / MÜNCHEN, Th. Boehm / MUNICH). With a fuller appreciation of the acoustics of the flute, in 1847 Boehm produced his second model, a metal flute with a cylindrical bore and a parabolic (tapered) head. The keywork of the 1832 model was adapted to the new instrument, including an ‘open’ G key, which had been part of the original concept and a source of some controversy. From 1848 the instrument had covered keys. Boehm determined by trial and error the dimensions and placing of the tone holes, incorporating them, once established, into a geometrical plan (the Schema), which has proved a useful tool in the design of flutes of all sizes. He sold patent rights for this instrument in France to Godfroy l’aîné(Louis Lot) and in England to Rudall & Rose. Since that time a number of optional alternative keys have been designed, notably a B thumb key devised by Boehm and altered by Giulio Briccialdi, but the essence of the design has remained unchanged. Boehm’s silver flutes were awarded gold and silver medals at the exhibitions in Leipzig (1850), London (1851) and Paris (1855). In 1854 Boehm began to make cylindrical wooden flutes and in 1858 he made an alto flute in G; the alto flute was his favourite instrument from then on. Boehm also developed prototype oboe (1851–5) and bassoon tubes (1855).

In 1860 the watchmaker Karl Mendler (1833–1914), who had joined the workshop in 1854, bought Boehm’s instrument-making equipment for 500 gulden; in 1862 he was granted a trading concession. From that year instruments were marked ‘Th. Boehm & Mendler / in / München’ or boehm & mendler / münchen. Boehm remained active in the firm until his death (at the age of 87), occupied with correspondence, playing and making small improvements. In 1888 Mendler’s son Karl (1862–1920) took over the workshop and in 1903 it was sold to E.R. Leibl (1871–1957) in Nuremberg. The workshop remained active until it was destroyed by bombing in 1944.

Besides the flute, Boehm was responsible for a wide variety of inventions including improvements to the manufacture of music boxes and the construction of pianos, a sparkproof locomotive chimney and a telescope for locating fires. Pupils closely associated with him have written of him as a gentle and agreeable man of undoubted integrity. He had seven sons and a daughter, all of whom inherited a measure of his artistic and organizing ability and were outstanding in their professional lives.

WRITINGS

(selective list)

Über den Flötenbau und die neuesten Verbesserungen desselben (Mainz, 1847/R); Eng. trans., 1882, as An Essay on the Construction of Flutes, ed. W.S. Broadwood [with correspondence and other documents]

Schema zur Bestimmung der Löcherstellung auf Blasinstrumenten (Munich, 1862/R)

Die Flöte und das Flötenspiel (Munich, 1871/R; Eng. trans., ed. D.C. Miller, 1908, enlarged 2/1922/R)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

LangwillI7

V. Coche: Examen critique de la flûte ordinaire comparée à la flûte de Boehm (Paris, 1838)

R. Carte: A Complete Course of Instruction for the Boehm Flute (London,1845)

J. Clinton: A School or Practical Instruction Book for the Boehm Flute (London, 1846)

K.E. von Schafhäutl: Theobald Böhm: ein merkwürdiges Künstlerleben (Leipzig, 1882)

C. Welch: History of the Boehm Flute (London, 1883, enlarged 3/1896/R as History of the Boehm Flute, with Dr. von Schafhäutl’s Life of Boehm … and an Examination of Mr. Rockstro’s Version of the Boehm–Gordon Controversy)

R.S. Rockstro: A Treatise on the Construction, the History and the Practice of the Flute (London, 1890, 2/1928/R)

M. Böhm: Zur Erinnerung an Theobald Böhm, k. bayer. Hofmusiker (Munich, 1898)

H.C. Wysham: The Evolution of the Boehm Flute (Elkhart, IN, 1898)

K. Böhm: Theobald Böhm: Auszug aus der Familienchronik (Munich, 1944)

K. Ventzke: Die Boehmflöte (Frankfurt, 1966)

P. Bate: The Flute: a Study of its History, Development and Construction (London, 1969/R)

N. Toff: The Development of the Modern Flute (New York, 1979/R)

M.H. Schmid: Die Revolution der Flöte: Theobald Boehm 1794–1881 (Tutzing, 1981) [exhibition catalogue]

K. Ventzke and D. Hilkenbach: Boehm-Instrumente: ein Handbuch über Theobald Boehm und über Klappenblasinstrumente seines Systems, i: Theobald Boehm 1794–1881: Hofmusiker, Flötenbauer, Eisenhüttentechniker in München (Frankfurt, 1982) [incl. list of writings]

K. Lenski and K. Ventzke: Das goldene Zeitalter der Flöte: die Boehmflöte in Frankreich 1832–1932: Durchsetzung, Gestaltung, Wirkung (Celle, 1992)

V. Schulze-Johnson: Boehm’s Cylindrical Flute of 1847: a Study of its Evolution, its Improved Performance Characteristics, and its Major Proponents (diss., New York U., 1992)

L. Böhm, ed.: Festschrift anlässlich des 200. Geburtstags von Theobald Böhm (Munich, 1994)

L. Böhm, ed.: Theobald Böhm und seine Flöte: eine Dokumentation (Munich, 1994–)

PHILIP BATE/LUDWIG BÖHM