Instrument: Flûte Perfectionée - B-foot with special features
Maker: Nonon, Jacques, Paris (1802-1867) Nonon was in business with Tulou starting in 1831. In 1853 he established his own shop and continued to make the Flûte Perfectionée as he did together with Tulou (1786-1865).
Pitch: ?
Sounding Length:
Total Length:
Embouchure size:
Restorer: Gary Lewis
Notes: The Flûte Perfectionée was developed in large part to compete with the newly introducted conical Boehm flute and eventually the Boehm cylindrical flute. Many technical elements are similar to the Boehm flute, rods and axels, needle springs, and a slightly more “modern” embouchure. Additional trills not commonly found on French flutes are included and a thumb key used for both C and B-flat. These flutes are normally C flutes but this example has a B-foot with a special link so that it is played by LH4.
This flute has a Tulou F# but played with a special mechanism using the RH ring keys. It allows the vented Tulou F# to be played using the regular F# fingering (minus D# key), rather than the extra key usually employed An additional feature is that playing the F# with a default (123-4 key- 7) gives the normal, slightly low F# and taking off the finger for the D# gives that “Tulou” raised pitch F#. It is clear from this that Nonon/Tulou expected the higher F# to only in special places, where the lower one would be used most of the time. This is the only example I know of this design on a Nonon flute. Other makers, such as Lefevre used this arrangement and it is thought to have been passed to the flute from the clarinet.
As you can see in the restoration photos this flute has a very special crew cork mechanism with a silver faceplate. It is thought that Louis Lot started using a similar design around #900. This design of lip plate can be seen on other example of the Nonon flute.
The Flûte Perfectionée of Tulou and Nonon must have been the most expensive non-Boehm flute other than Laurent’s crystal flutes. Having played a number of these flutes, I can testify that they exceptional flutes. There is clearly more going on than just the fancy key mechanism. They have a big, sweet, open sound and respond wonderfully to expressive playing. Interestingly, this type of mechanism was adopted by quite a few other manufacturers in models with just a few keys, to ones much like Tulou’s design. From the flutes I have played however, they are just putting a version of the keywork on a regular simple system flute without whatever magic Tulou and Nonon created in their flutes.
The original case for this flute has the name Sam Kennedy and the date 1864. This is almost certainly the date of manufacture of this instrument. This is an extremely rare and late version of the Flûte Perfectionée.
Notes:Demonstration recordings:
Restoration Photos:
