Piccolo - Traditional Use

Traditional Use

Historically, the piccolo had no keys, and should not be confused with the fife, or classical piccolo, which has a smaller bore and is therefore more strident. The piccolo is used in conjunction with marching drums in traditional formations at the Carnival of Basel, Switzerland.

It is a myth that one of the earliest pieces to use the piccolo was Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, premiered in December 1808. Although neither Joseph Haydn nor Mozart used it in their symphonies, some of their contemporaries did, including Hoffmeister, Süssmayr and Michael Haydn. However opera orchestras in Paris sometimes included small transverse flutes at the octave early as 1735 as existing scores by Rameau show.

Although once made of various kinds of wood, glass or ivory, piccolos today are made from a range of materials, including plastic, resin, brass, nickel silver, silver, and a variety of hardwoods, most commonly grenadilla. Finely made piccolos are often available with a variety of options similar to the flute, such as the split-E mechanism. Most piccolos have a conical body with a cylindrical head, which is like the Baroque flute and later flutes before the popularization of the Boehm bore used in modern flutes. Unlike other woodwind instruments, in most wooden piccolos the tenon joint connecting the head to the body has two interference fit points which surround both the cork and metal side of the piccolo body joint.