The orchestra and its instruments

by Esther Singleton

THE PICCOLO

The piccolo is the little flute. Properly, it should be spoken of as the piccolo flute, for just as we have seen in the case of the violoncello the word ’cello means little or small, so the word piccolo is an adjective and not a noun. However, people speak of it simply as the piccolo. The piccolo plays the upper octave of the flute. It is less than half the length of the flute and it lacks the “foot-joint.” Its compass is over two octaves. Almost every piccolo player can play high B and even C. The music for the piccolo is always written in the Treble Clef, an octave below the real pitch, that is to say an octave below the real sound of the notes. The fingering and technique are exactly the same as for the flute, so anything that can be played on the flute can be played on the piccolo.

It should be noted here that two-thirds of the compass of the flute plays within the compass of a high soprano; now, the piccolo, on the other hand, is nearly always playing in a register higher than that of any human voice. It is the most acute and piercing of all instruments in the orchestra; for even the corresponding notes produced by harmonics on the violin are far less shrill and penetrating. The piccolo rarely plays in its lower register. Its second octave is bright and joyous; but in this we hardly distinguish it from the flute. What we do notice are the piercing upper notes in quick runs, in chromatic passages and wild screams. Sometimes too, the piccolo can be made to utter something of a diabolical nature.

The piccolo is often used to brighten the upper notes of the other members of the Woodwind Family in all kinds of combinations. This method of using the piccolo might be likened to brightening up an article with gold leaf. We might say that the piccolo sometimes adds a sort of gilt edge to the melody.

Berlioz liked to use it in this way for additional ornamentation, so we hear a great deal of this kind of piccolo gilt-edging, as we might call it, in his works. Berlioz gave it a great deal of thought. “In pieces of a joyous character,” he wrote, “the sounds of the second octave are suitable in all their gradations; while the upper notes are excellent fortissimo for violent and tearing effects: in a storm, for instance, or in a scene of fierce, or infernal, character. Thus the piccolo flute figures incomparably in the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony—now alone and displayed above the low tremolo of violins and basses, imitating the whistlings of a tempest whose full force is not yet unchained—now on the higher notes still, together with the entire mass of the Orchestra. Gluck in the tempest of Iphigénie en Tauride has known how to make the high sounds of the piccolo flute in unison grate still more roughly by writing them in a succession of sixths, a fourth above the first violins. The sound of the piccolo flutes issuing out in the upper octave, produces, therefore, a succession of elevenths with the first violins, the harshness of which is here of the very best effect.

“In the chorus of the Scythians, in the same opera, the two piccolo flutes double in the octave the little grouped passages of the violins. These whistling notes mingled with the ravings of the savage troop, with the measure and incessant din of the cymbals and tambourine make us shiver.

“Everyone has remarked the diabolic sneer of the two piccolo flutes in thirds in the drinking-song of Freischütz. It is one of Weber’s happiest orchestral inventions.

“Spontini in his magnificent bacchanalian strain in the Danaïdes (since become an orgy chorus in Nurmahal) first conceived the idea of uniting a short piercing cry of the piccolo flutes to a stroke of the cymbals. The singular sympathy, which is thus created between these very dissimilar instruments, had not been thought of before. It cuts and rends instantaneously, like the stab of a poignard. This effect is very characteristic—even when employing only the two instruments mentioned; but its force is augmented by an abrupt stroke of the kettledrums joined to a brief chord of all the other instruments.

“Beethoven, Gluck, Weber and Spontini have thus made ingenious use—no less original than rational—of the piccolo flute. But 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 and sharpening—for the sake of noise only—the high part of the orchestra, I think it a stupid method of instrumentation.

“The piccolo flute may have a very happy effect in soft passages; and it is mere prejudice to think that it should only be played loud. Sometimes it serves to continue the scale of the large flute by following up the latter and taking high notes beyond the flute’s command. The passing from one instrument to the other may then be easily managed by the composer in such a way as to make it appear that there is only one flute of extraordinary compass.”