Rudall Rose Carte Rosewood & Silver Old System, D

A very interesting flute, and the first of its kind to come through the shop, which is saying something given how many Rudall Carte instruments have passed across the bench here.

The key system is essentially simple system: raise your fingers and it plays a D major scale, exactly as you would expect. There is a closed Bb key, and the short F works as it should. The long F works slightly different than a simple-system "Irish" flute, so to play F natural using it you finger F sharp and hold down the long F key instead of the E. It sounds down to C with the keys.

What makes it unusual is the bore. This is the Old System, a name Rudall Carte stamped on the barrel rather than a later nickname, devised by Richard Carte in 1851 to give players who had rejected Boehm's fingering the benefit of his cylindrical bore. The result pairs a cylinder body and tapered head joint with the eight standard English keys and the old fingering. The firm was candid that it was a compromise, noting that with the old fingering retained, the holes cannot all sit in their acoustically "correct" positions.

For a player with smaller hands this is worth a serious look. The finger stretch that makes simple-system Irish flutes hard work for some players is much reduced here, and it is a genuine shame nobody is building this system today.

Rosewood with silver keys. The head joint is a different shape from the one that soon became the firm's standard for this model, and the flute as a whole is lighter in the hands and better looking than the slightly more robust version that arrives with Rudall Carte a little later. It reads as a design still being worked out rather than settled. The name form Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co. was in use between 1852 and 1872, which places the instrument in that window.

The repad was done professionally about fifteen years ago, and the flute has seen little use since. It might want some slight adjustment, but it plays through its entire range as it stands.