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Theobald Boehm

 
Theobald Boehm

 
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Theobald Boehm
 
 
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Theobald Böhm (or Boehm) (April 9, 1794 – November 27, 1881) was a Bavaria
Bavaria

Bavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is a region located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest States of Germany of Germany by area....
n inventor
Inventor

An inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find....
 and musician
Musician

A musician is a person who plays or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument....
, who perfected the modern Western concert flute
Western concert flute

The Western concert flute or C flute is a transverse woodwind instrument made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute....
 and its improved fingering system
Boehm System

The Boehm system is a system of keywork for the flute, created by inventor and flautist Theobald Boehm between 1831 and 1847.Prior to this time, flutes were most commonly made of wood, with an inverse conical bore , eight keys, and tone holes which were small in size, and thus easily covered by the fingertips....
. In addition, he was a virtuoso flautist
Flautist

A flautist, flutist, or flute player is a musician who plays the flute....
 and was a Bavarian Court Musician as well as a celebrated composer
Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, usually in the medium of musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music....
 for the flute.

Born in Munich
Munich

Munich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Munich is located on the River Isar north of the Northern Limestone Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg....
 in Bavaria
Bavaria

Bavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is a region located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest States of Germany of Germany by area....
, Boehm learned his father's trade of goldsmith
Goldsmith

A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a Goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards....
ing. After making his own flute, he quickly became proficient enough to play in an orchestra at the age of eighteen and at twenty-one he was first flautist in the Royal Bavarian Orchestra.






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Theobald Böhm (or Boehm) (April 9, 1794 – November 27, 1881) was a Bavaria
Bavaria

Bavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is a region located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest States of Germany of Germany by area....
n inventor
Inventor

An inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find....
 and musician
Musician

A musician is a person who plays or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument....
, who perfected the modern Western concert flute
Western concert flute

The Western concert flute or C flute is a transverse woodwind instrument made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute....
 and its improved fingering system
Boehm System

The Boehm system is a system of keywork for the flute, created by inventor and flautist Theobald Boehm between 1831 and 1847.Prior to this time, flutes were most commonly made of wood, with an inverse conical bore , eight keys, and tone holes which were small in size, and thus easily covered by the fingertips....
. In addition, he was a virtuoso flautist
Flautist

A flautist, flutist, or flute player is a musician who plays the flute....
 and was a Bavarian Court Musician as well as a celebrated composer
Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, usually in the medium of musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music....
 for the flute.

Born in Munich
Munich

Munich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Munich is located on the River Isar north of the Northern Limestone Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg....
 in Bavaria
Bavaria

Bavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is a region located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest States of Germany of Germany by area....
, Boehm learned his father's trade of goldsmith
Goldsmith

A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a Goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards....
ing. After making his own flute, he quickly became proficient enough to play in an orchestra at the age of eighteen and at twenty-one he was first flautist in the Royal Bavarian Orchestra. Meanwhile, he experimented with constructing flutes out of many different materials such as tropical hardwoods (usually Grenadilla
Grenadilla

Grenadilla is a name given to a number of different woods, all of them strong and dense. A famous wood so named is that of Dalbergia melanoxylon, in English African Blackwood and in East Africa known as mpingo)....
 wood), silver, gold, nickel and copper as well as experimenting with changing the positions of the flute's tone holes. After studying acoustics
Acoustics

Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of sound, ultrasound and infrasound . A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician....
 at the University of Munich
Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich

The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich , also known as LMU, is a university in Munich and, with more than 44,000 students, is the second-largest university in Germany....
, he began experimenting on improving the flute in 1832, first patent
Patent

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a term of patent in exchange for a disclosure of an invention....
ing his new fingering system in 1847. His new flute was first displayed in 1851 at the London Exhibition. In 1871 Boehm published Die Flöte und das Flötenspiel ("The Flute and Flute-Playing"), a treatise on the acoustical, technical and artistic characteristics of the Boehm system flute. Many people still admire his work and some of the flutes he made still function.

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