Flute-making in Italy. Exhibition extended

The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the ISTI-CNR present to the public one of the richest collections of Italian flutes: over 450 flutes and more then 100 Italian wind instruments of many different types.

The exhibition illustrates the long historical process which brought
to the transformation of the flute in Italy, from the Eighteenth to
the mid-Twentieth century, when the current typologies were finally
established.
The flute was an instrument widely used by composers in Italy since
the end of the Seventeenth century, first in Rome and later in
Venice and other musical centres. The instruments survived today,
which can be dated from about 1730 onwards, show how the various
Italian makers, with marked differences from region to region,
were careful to follow the transformations of the instrument which were taking place in other countries, like France and Germany.

The collection started at the beginning of the 1980's as a broad
passion for flutes, in those days easily found at antiques fairs, and
quickly became of interest for specialists, with the primary aim of
documenting, in a most comprehensive way, the Italian historical
production from the early eighteenth century to 1970's.

The need for historic contextualisation of the instruments has stimulated
a research which was at first casual and became eventually
more methodical and systematic: it concerned documents
of any kind about Italian wind instrument makers, both woodwinds
and brass. Such huge documentation has been collected
and catalogued and is now available to the public through a dedicated website: www.italianwinds.it

Info:
tel: (+39) 06 80 242 382
email: museo@santacecilia.it