If you’re doing any kind of research on the flute, there is a resource that you should know about if you don’t already: The Flute Ark. It began as an encyclopedia by Trevor Wye about all things flute. He, with the hard work and contributions of Sarah Bull, Martin Hoffman, Robert Scott, et al. have compiled this amazing compendium dedicated to the flute.
By its own admission, the website claims to be “weak on biographies,” but from the sheer quantity of names in its Table of Contents, that doesn’t appear to be true. However, I believe what the contributors meant was that the quantity of information about a particular person may be limited. I found that to be true when I looked up the entry on one of my former teachers, Jacob Berg. However brief the entry on a more historical figure, like Theobald Boehm, though, it was a terrific summary and explanation of his contributions to the evolution of the flute. Another limitation of the website is that it does not include contemporary artists, although it did include Jacob Berg, as I mentioned, and I noticed an entry for Claude Bolling, as well, so they are working on expanding in that area.
I love this website for its thorough, scholarly citation of sources. While it will not give you every possible fact about each entry, for those of us who need more detail than this resource gives, it will point you in the direction of where to find more information. Another benefit of this site is that its sources are reliable, respected documents.
The other thing I love about this website is that it is a work in progress, just like this one. I appreciate the fact that its contributors did not wait until the work was “finished” before sharing it. I don’t know that a resource like this one can ever truly be finished as long as flutes continued to be played in this world.
So if you haven’t checked out The Flute Ark, be sure to give it a look and recommend it to your more advanced students, as well!