Renaissance & Baroque Flute

The traverso, as the Baroque flute is commonly called, is a one-keyed wooden instrument with a narrower bore than its modern descendant. It flourished in European courts and chambers from the late 17th century through the Classical period, carried by composers from Telemann to Mozart. Renaissance flutes predate the traverso, cylindrical-bored and keyless, built for consort music of the 16th century. Both forms have found new life among early music players who hear in their constraints not a limitation but a different kind of expressive possibility.