Theobald boehm biography

Theobald Boehm, a Bavarian goldsmith, flutist, composer, and industrialist, invented the type of flute that became the basis for the modern instrument a little more than a century and a half ago.

Between 1821 and 1831 Boehm traveled throughout Europe on concert tours, often performing his own compositions and, from 1828, playing on flutes made in his own workshop in Munich.

On a visit to London in 1831 he constructed an experimental flute that gave the fingers new mechanical means to control holes placed beyond their reach. He refined the concept of his new flute in the following year, and the "ring-key" flute of 1832 was taken up by a few prominent performers in Paris and later officialy adopted at the Brussels Conservatoire.

Boehm devised a metal flute with a new cylindrical bore in 1847, using a similar mechanism to that of the 1832 flute. His first metal cylinder flute (No. 1, 1847, Dayton C. Miller Collection) is pictured here.