Buying a flute and how I came by the diamonds on the way

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Reading the flute list the last few days began to make me wonder if I was still here with you. There were so many people giving their opinion of me that it made me begin to wonder if there were lots of people out there who really knew me and I had forgotten that I knew them. Joking aside, I would like to tell you about how I came to play on the flutes I have and how I began with the problem of buying flutes which was basically what all these letters to the list were all about.

The first flute I ever had was a Henry Potter wooden 5-keyed flute. This flute was given to me by one of our neighbours in the street where I lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I played on this flute for some time and had some lessons from my "Uncle Joe" on it before I got a small flute in A flat, like a piccolo but a third lower, from the flute band I joined in Belfast. My Uncle Joe was the conductor and my lessons for about a year were on this small flute. This flute was made by Boosey and Hawkes, who made most of the flutes for the flute bands in Northern Ireland.

Eventually I changed to a regular flute made by Selmer. It was called Gold Seal and I have to say it was a bit of a wreck. I don't think it ever worked from the day I had it and have to add it cost three and a half weeks wages of my fathers' hard earned money. We did not have anyone to advise us about what to buy and we got this instrument from the local store in Belfast.

It slowly began to fall to bits and this led to the purchase of another instrument from a friend of my dads called Purdy Flack. He lived a few streets away from us and was the local repairman. This flute was made by E. J. Albert and was to be the flute I would use through my first two years at the Royal College of Music. At this time I think I was about 18years old and I had by then managed to save some money, not much, but I bought a Haynes closed hole, low C silver flute with the help of the concerts I was doing around London at the time when I was studying there with John Francis.

This Haynes was the flute I used to get me through the last year at the RCM. , One year at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where I learned with Geoffrey Gilbert, and the one and only year I studied in the Paris Conservatoire with Gaston Crunelle.

By this time I got a job in London in the Saddlers Wells Opera playing second flute to my idol William Bennett. Playing alongside Wibb was a real education in flute playing and flute making. So you understand what we are talking about here financially, I must tell you I earned 21 pounds sterling a week before tax. The tax was deducted at source and I cant remember how much it was but I do believe the British government helped themselves to 4 of these hard earned pounds leaving me with 17 to live on.

Shortly after I got comfortable playing with Wibb he left the company and I got the job of first flute in the opera. Until this point I was still playing my closed hole Haynes. But under the influence of Wibb I decided to get an open hole flute. I went to see the bank manager of the Westminster bank round the corner where I was living at the time,. I shared an apartment in Hanson Street 21. I tell you this because it had two bedrooms a kitchen and bathroom so you will understand that I was still working hard and on my salary could not afford a place outside the working class area in London. Before this I lived in a house in London, 211 Borough High Street, where Charles Dickens wrote the novel Little Doritt. Well to get on with the saga of buying flutes, the new flute from Mr Cooper arrived. A beautiful silver flute with open holes and low B. I still used my Haynes headjoint, as Mr Cooper had not yet in those days got the knack of building good headjoints. I would like to add this is the only time I used a different headjoint on a new flute. From here on out, I always used the headjoint, which came with the flute. I was to use this flute till I got a job in the Berlin Philharmonic.

I joined the Berlin Phil in 1969 and the first thing I had to do was to get a flute built at A=445 in order to play at the pitch of the orchestra. This flute made a great difference and as you can hear from the recordings the intonation in the flute section changed radically.

When my future with the BPO seemed assured and it looked as if I was going to stay I decided to get another flute.

The Golden Age

I had always fancied a gold flute since I studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Gaston Crunelle. Jean-Pierre Rampal was solo flute in the Paris Opera and I used to follow him around like a rat after the Pied Piper. He was a great influence on me when I was 20 and at the age of 33, and being the solo flutist in the Berlin Phil, I thought it was time to spend some of my hard earned cash and get a gold flute. My name came up on the list again with Mr Cooper and I ordered a 14k gold flute. It arrived with a low B, open holes and a special key which operated the low C# key. This meant I could play legato chromatically down to low B and could trill between Low B and Low C#, as well as C natural to C# and just in case you needed it between D# and C#. I was ready to go! On this flute I made most of the recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic. I left the orchestra in the summer of 1975 when I came to live in Switzerland.

Diamond Jim!

In the year 1977 I was run over by a Swiss gentleman who was riding a Yamaha 750 motor bike, and this was the nearest I ever came to using a Yamaha. I was hospitalised with two broken legs and a broken left arm and the worst headache I had in years. While I was on the mend I was reading about the Crusades and how these God fearing men used to carry a diamond to ward off evil. I would have thought a strong belief in God would be sufficient, but perhaps this is the subject for another letter. I had come up on the list of Mr Cooper again and ordered a gold flute. I had thought of the diamond to maybe help me too, but what really influenced me to put a diamond in the end of the flute was looking at photos of violin bows from the time of the great Paginnni. These bows were quite beautiful and the elaborate ornamentation made the straightforward violin bow look very ordinary.

I called Albert and asked him to put a diamond in the end of the headpiece and at the same time to engrave the flute. During my stay in the hospital the flute arrived and I was knocked out with it. It was a great flute and still is by any standards. I played on it for years till The Muramatsu Company made my first gold flute.

Japanese Décor

The year 1984 was one of the great years in my life being the year I married Jeanne. We were married at the Park Hotel, Vitznau, Switzerland and it was a wonderful occasion. Among the many international guests was Mr Muramatsu. In Japanese ceremonial dress, he hand delivered one of my first Muramatsu flutes No. 33333. This flute was later stolen in the famous theft of five of my flutes, at the main railway station of Luzern.

As a 50th birthday present at a surprise party in London, he brought a D# key inlaid with a ring of diamonds. He took the old key off and put the new key on himself and this was the only time I ever saw him use a screwdriver! This started off the fashion of having diamonds in the D# key.

The land of OZ

It was in Australia that the next and final step in the diamond trail took place. I was on tour playing concerts with Kiri Te Kanawa. The Argyle Diamond Company who gave Kiri a diamond necklace and offered to make me diamond studs for my shirt sponsored the concerts. For those of you who have not seen me play I have to tell you that I do not wear tails. I always wear a tux and diamond studs in the shirt are not my thing.

Here I must digress and tell you that I had 5 gold flutes stolen in the railway station at Luzern. Desperate I called the Muramatsu shop in Shinjuku, Tokyo and asked them if they had any gold flutes in the showroom for sale and they told me they had two. So with all due respect to those of you who are having difficulty buying your first flute, I bought them. Of course by then I was no longer the poor flute player who used to use the bus to go to work (Number 19 in Berlin) I just bought them and had Mr Sone and Mr Aoki, the two top engineers of the Muramatsu company bring them to my masterclass in Luzern. It was with these two marvellous flutes that I went to Australia when the Argyle Diamond Company offered me the gift of diamonds for my shirt, which I politely refused. They then hit on the bright idea of putting diamonds in my flute. You can imagine I was not about to give them my best flute just in case something went awry so I had to decide which flute to give them. I gave them what I thought was the "second" instrument. They put two rings on the headjoint and two rings on the footjoint. These rings contained regular diamonds and champagne diamonds which I am led to believe are more valuable than the regular ones.

This was the end of the diamond trail. I have to report to those of you who think diamonds make a difference that I cannot tell what it is. Seriously, as you all know, they make no difference at all. They just make the flute look a little more special.

I paid for all of these flutes and have never been offered a flute from any flute company. I also never asked for a free flute I believe if a flute is truly worth anything the maker should sell it and the player should buy it.

What ever you play, I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I have enjoyed playing all of these flutes over my career.

Best wishes,
James Galway.
Vico Morcote.
Switzerland.
Wednesday, August 25, 1999