Piccolo

Missing Infobox musical instrument / maintenance / Parameters Sound example: template

The piccolo (also: Piccolo ) is a smaller design of the flute. It is an octave tuned up and is the tallest classical woodwind instrument.

The Piccolo is about 32 cm long, about half as large as the flute and has a diameter of 1 cm. The Piccolo can be made of wood or metal, and sometimes also find plastic piccolos. The flaps are usually made ​​of nickel silver and silver-plated or nickel-plated also.

History

An early form of the piccolo is found since the Middle Ages in military music, as a fife with six holes that made up the typical sound of the infantry together with the small drum. In this nexus is held the instrument until the 18th century. Parallel to this, an attempt was made to build the newly developed transverse flute in the other, thus also higher vocal registers. Thus, the Piccolo was defeated in the course of time, the same structural developments such as the flute and was provided from the second half of the 19th century more and more frequently with the Boehm system.

For military and brass bands, Piccolo was also built in other moods like the2 or es2, these instruments are but today only rarely encountered.

Use in the music

Even in Baroque music, there are score lines with names like flauto piccolo or flautino, but it is unclear whether these voices are actually composed for a small flute or not but for a high recorder.

Later composers put the Piccolo one the one hand, to produce by imitating the whistling in the Janissary exotic flavor (as in Mozart's The Abduction or in duet with the contrabassoon in Beethoven's 9th Symphony ) or shrill nature similar effects such as the whistle of a storm or the electricity of lightning (such as Beethoven in the " storm " of his 6th Symphony ). In great romantic operas are found intersecting piccolo passages, especially for large choral and horror scenes.

At the latest on Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, the instrument is a full member of the woodwind set and is temporarily used as a solo instrument.

Simple and historical forms

Simple designs with little or even no mechanics are today sometimes still used in folk music.