“Like a kiss from the 16th century.” That’s what it felt like for Kate Clark when she first put Warder’s Flute to her mouth. At least: a copy of it. The original is too fragile and probably quite counterfeit. However, an exact replica has now been made after careful measuring and scanning work by, among others, TU Delft.
Kate Clark is an authority in the field of Renaissance flutes and was the first to play the ‘new’ flute at a presentation in the Rijksmuseum. “If you put your lips on the place where someone did that 500 years ago, then that is a very intimate moment,” she says about it.
The flute is special in every way. In any case, it is the oldest flute in the Netherlands, but what makes it unique is that it does not come from a museum collection, but from the bottom of the Markermeer. In 2018, the instrument was found there in the wreck of a ship that must have wrecked there in the first half of the 16th century.
A special find. But in the 16th century these types of flutes were used everywhere. In battles to start the attack, in the church to accompany psalm songs, in the pub to sing obscene songs. This makes it impossible to determine who owned this flute.
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