Piccolo

   The piccolo (Italian for small ) is a half-size flute. It is a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments and has the same fingerings as the flute. However, the sound it produces is one octave higher than written. This is why it sometimes referred to as "ottavino," in the scores of Italian composers.

   Today, the piccolo is manufactured in the key of C. Piccolos were also once made in Db. In John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" you can hear the Db piccolo high above the rest of the band.

 

  The piccolo first appeared in the orchestra around 1700. The earliest work with a piccolo part was Handel's "Rinaldo" (1711). There is also a piccolo part in Bach's Cantata 103 (1725). It is not certain which specific instrument was intended by the composers – a piccolo or a sopranino recorder, which is also often called "flautino". The same uncertainty also applies to Vivaldi's three famous concerti, which are performed nowadays equally on the piccolo and the recorder.

   Thanks to the efforts of Rameau, a position opened for piccolo player at the Paris Opera. During the Baroque era, the piccolo was built of two parts, with one E-flat key.

   Mozart did not use a piccolo in any of his symphonies, but used it in his German Dances, K. 104 and in the Overture to "The Abduction from the Seraglio".

   Beethoven was the first composer to use the piccolo in his symphonic works. He wrote separate parts for it in the finales of his Fifth, Six and Ninth symphonies. The piccolo was also given significant parts in "Wellington's Victory", "Egmont", "King Stephen" and two of the Ten German Dances.

   The piccolo was naturally prominent in military bands, from the orchestra of the National Guard, led by Francois Gossec, which was established in France immediately after the siege on the Bastille.

    Berlioz and Tchaikovsky were also piccolo players and wrote beautiful parts for it in their orchestral works. Berlioz, noticing the lovely qualities that the low notes of the piccolo can produce, wrote:

   "When I hear this instrument employed in doubling in triple octave the air of a baritone, or casting its squeaking voice into the midst of a religious harmony, or strengthening or sharpening (for the sake of noise only) the high part of an orchestra from beginning to end of an act of an opera, I cannot help feeling that this mode of instrumentation is one of platitudes and stupidity. The piccolo may, however, have a very happy effect in soft passages, and it is a mere prejudice to think that it should only be played loud."

   The piccolo developed by Boehm was less successful than the flute. Boehm created several types of piccolos and did not achieve significant results. He therefore passed on the assignment to another German manufacturer called Mollenhauer, who reached satisfactory qualities, due to the fact that in contrast with the cylindrical-bore flute, in the piccolo he combined a cylindrical head and a conical body.