Old and Lovely. Leitz Elmarit 90mm, Bellows II

Yesterday, I happened to run into the website of a company not far from where I work which manufactures custom flutes. It reminded of a long-ago chapter of my life when I studied, practised and performed on the flute every day. At home again, I took down an old friend. The Blip is the maker's stamp of a lovely 6-keyed Classical flute in boxwood with ivory rings and silver keywork. This spectacular instrument was given to me by my flute teacher, Reg Clay, in Cape Town in 1984. Reg was the consummate orchestral flute player: old school (no flash, no trash), phased by nothing, and contemptuous of conductors until they had passed his tests. He had started with the Halle Orchestra in Manchester and then emmigrated to South Africa where he became the principal flute player of the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra. Reg told me at the time that he had seen this flute in an antique dealer's shop and bought it for a song with the intention of learning to play an antique flute. This is a very different animal than the modern, orchestral flute. Reg never did, but that's exactly what brought me to Boston: to learn how to play the old flutes of the Baroque and Classical periods. He thought I was the right person to have this instrument... It fits right under the fingers, the mechanism still precise, the sound utterly sweet and bright, and a mind-bender to realize that Wolfy Mozart was a young man of 24 when Old Man Potter put his stamp on this flute. It was almost an anachronism at birth: the design of the flutes that the Young Potters were making had already changed, while Potter Senior continued using the methods that had kept his customers happy for decades. And, if life goes my way, I will one day have time to breath life into Potter Senior again.