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aswanson
Harmonie erst. (Our german mates will have to let me know if I am anywhere near grammatical correctness).
arrrg
That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Sorry.
aswanson
Ah, well. It was an attempt at saying "Harmony first." Verdamung babelfish.
eru
That would be: Harmonie zuerst.

But "Harmonie" does not have the same (con-) notation in German as "harmony" has in English.

And "Verdamung babelfish." could be taken that you wish babelfish would turn into a lady ("Dame"). ;o)

aswanson
Oh, thanks. I better quit while I'm ahead. During Oktoberfest I'll just keep my mouth shut (unless imbibing) :).
eru
And remember to drink beer in Maßen not in Massen.
aswanson
Alles klar, Herr Kommissar. Danke. :).
WilliamLP
Geez, they don't even tell us what kind of scale it's tuned to?
msluyter
They played a couple of recreated samples on NPR. One sounded roughly pentatonic to me; the other sounded... of indeterminate scale and/or out of tune. It's hard to say exactly how it would have sounded, because the flute allows a lot of room for bending the pitch based on things like embouchure and whatnot (I'm a former flutist).

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1058231...

aoeu
msluyter, do you know what flutes (and other wind instruments) are generally tuned to these days? I noticed some of my sister's clarinet music books show different fingerings for sharps and flats so presumably an extended meantone? Ta :-)
vorador
Clarinets are in A or B bémol iirc.
msluyter
Modern flutes are all in C. Not sure what you mean by "extended meantone." Most wind instruments can have slightly different fingerings for the same note (more prevalent in clarinet than flute, actually). These may have slightly different intonation/sound. Perhaps that's what you're seeing?
staunch
Makes me wonder how it was invented. Directly, or maybe there were some incremental steps? Would I have invented a flute?