Virtual Tour of
"Beethoven & Berlioz, Paris & Vienna:
Musical Treasures from the Age of Revolution & Romance
1789-1848"
Flute by Auguste Buffet Jeune, Paris, ca. 1838
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NMM 1297. Flute by Auguste Buffet Jeune, Paris, ca. 1838. Original wooden box and cork grease box with ivory top. Owned by Marston Cabot Smith, Boston, 1840s-1870s. Arne B. Larson Collection, 1979.
The key system, first developed by Theobald Boehm in 1832, is the basis for the system still used on most flutes today. This instrument also has needle springs, introduced by August Buffet about 1837, and a Dorus G-sharp key, which came out in 1838. Theobald Boehm (1794-1881) was a flute player, inventor, teacher, composer, and industrial metallurgist in Munich, and often sold his patent rights to others, who then produced the flutes for commercial sale. The Buffet family lived in the La Couture area west of Paris, going back at least to the mid-seventeenth century, where several of them were active as wood-turners in the mid-eighteenth century. Buffet-Crampon continues to make fine woodwind instruments yet today.
Source: André P. Larson, Beethoven & Berlioz, Paris & Vienna: Musical Treasures from the Age of Revolution & Romance 1789-1848, with essay by John Koster, exhibition catalog, Washington Pavilion, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, September 12-November 2, 2003 (Vermillion: National Music Museum 2003), p. 42.
National Music Museum
The University of South Dakota
414 East Clark Street
Vermillion, SD 57069
