![chiff and fipple chiff and fipple](https://images.abc-directory.com/135474-2.png)
In the second half of the 19th century, some flute manufacturers such as Barnett Samuel and Joseph Wallis also sold whistles. ĭue to its affordability, the tin whistle was a popular household instrument, as ubiquitous as the harmonica. The instrument became popular in several musical traditions, namely: English, Scottish, Irish and American traditional music. The name "tin-whistle" was also coined as early as 1825 but neither the tin whistle nor the penny whistle name seems to have been common until the 20th century. However, in reality, the instrument was so called because it could be purchased for a penny. They were mass-produced and widespread due to their relative affordability.Īs the penny whistle was generally considered a toy, it has been suggested that children or street musicians were paid a penny by those who heard them playing the whistle. The Clarke tin whistle is voiced somewhat on an organ-pipe with a flattened tube forming the lip of the fipple mouthpiece, and is usually made from rolled tin sheet or brass. The company showed the whistles in The Great Exhibition of 1851. Clarke's first whistle, the Meg, was pitched in high A, and was later made in other keys suitable for Victorian parlour music. The six-hole, diatonic system is also used on baroque flutes, and was of course well-known before Robert Clarke began producing his tin whistles. The whistle's fingering system is similar to that of the six-hole, " simple system Irish flutes" ("simple" in comparison to Boehm system flutes). Down to 1900, they were also marketed as "Clarke London Flageolets" or "Clarke Flageolets". The modern penny whistle is indigenous to the British Isles, particularly England, when factory-made "tin whistles" were produced by Robert Clarke from 1840 to 1889 in Manchester, and later New Moston, England. The term flageolet is still preferred by some modern tin whistlers, who feel that this better describes the instrument, as the term characterises a wide variety of fipple flutes, including penny whistles. In the 17th century, whistles were called flageolets, a term to describe a whistle with a French made fipple headpiece (common to the modern penny whistle) and such instruments are linked to the development of the English flageolet, French flageolet and recorders of the renaissance and baroque period. By the 12th century, Italian flutes came in a variety of sizes, and fragments of 12th-century Norman bone whistles have been found in Ireland, as well as an intact 14 cm Tusculum clay whistle from the 14th century in Scotland. In the early Middle Ages, peoples of northern Europe were playing the instrument as seen in 3rd-century British bone flutes, and Irish Brehon Law describes a flute-like instrument. ) Written sources that describe a fipple-type flute include the Roman tibia and Greek aulos. (A revised dating of the Malham Pipe now places it within the early medieval period. Examples found to date include a possible Neanderthal fipple flute from Slovenia, which according to some scientists may date from 81,000 to 53,000 BC a German flute from 35,000 years ago and a flute, known as the Malham Pipe, made from sheep's bone in West Yorkshire dating to the Iron Age. In Europe, such instruments have a long and distinguished history and take various forms, of which the most widely known are the recorder, tin whistle, Flabiol, Txistu and tabor pipe.Īlmost all primitive cultures had a type of fipple flute, and it is most likely the first pitched flute type instrument in existence. The tin whistle in its modern form is from a wider family of fipple flutes which have been seen in many forms and cultures throughout the world.