Where is the first piccolo now?

Answer 1

It is a fairly reasonable thing to want to know where the first of any particular variety of thing has gotten to. For the first piccolo, however, like many firsts in Musical Instruments, this may not be an easy thing to tell.

The term "Piccolo" means simply "small" in Italian. The instrument we now call Piccolo is actually the Piccolo Flute, the smallest of a family which includes the "normal" flute (actually the soprano of the family), the Alto Flute, and the Bass flute.

The flutes go back in time before the Renaissance. In the Baroque, the flute was generally known as the German flute or Transverse flute, to differentiate it from the Recorder family. The flute family was voiced like most Renaissance instruments, from soprano to bass, and smaller sizes probably existed as well. (In the recorder family, the soprano was far from the highest-pitched of the family, with the sopranino pitched above it and the Gar-Klein above that!)

The transverse 6-hole pipe exists in many societies, both as a fipple (recorder-like) and transverse (flute-like) instrument.

The modern piccolo (which is actually known in Italy as "ottavino") is claimed by some sources (of questionable authority in the matter) as first being played in 1854. It is unlikely that this is a first, since the English made reference to it nearly 20 years before. With so little to identify the 'first' piccolo, locating it or even verifying that it still exists is well-nigh impossible.