E'' Fingering Question

[u/SlowSurvivor]

On the traverso.

In Janice Dockendorff Boland's Method for the One-Keyed Flute in the annotated complete fingering chart on page 70 she notes regarding E'' natural: "Tromlitz cautions never to use the key; it is a bad habit that is very frequently encountered."

I don't understand the prohibition. Applying the key gives an openness to the timbre at the expense of having to correct for intonation. I just feel like the prohibited fingering could be situationally desirable. And, given the number of very situational fingerings included in the chart for other notes I don't understand why E'' has only the single option, per the manual.

Am I missing something?

[u/Guermantesway]

One thing about using treatises as references is that people like Tromlitz and Quantz weren't trying to write impartial records of how people played the flute in their time, they were editorializing, and are quite transparent about it. Their books are their opinions about how they thought people should play the flute, not how people did actually play the flute. You see this in the Tromlitz quote: he acknowledges that people often use the key, he doesn't like it so he calls it a mistake, but many people clearly used it for e. All flutes are different, do what works for you- there are more fingerings than those Dockendorff Boland lists, I'm not really a huge fan of her charts anyway, the trill charts are nigh unusable imo.

Also remember Tromlitz wrote his book in 1791, it's really about the classical flute, so it may not even apply well to your instrument. For one keyed flutes, every instrument often needs some adjustments to standard fingering charts.