# Transverse Flute > Theobald Boehm - 1828-1832 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/theobald-boehm/boehm-transverse-flute-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-26 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Theobald Boehm - **Date:** 1828-1832 - **Medium:** Ebony, silver, and ivory - **Dimensions:** Total length 669 mm (head joint 229 mm, middle section 289 mm, foot joint 151 mm) - **Object type:** Musical instrument - **Period:** German, nineteenth century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A wooden transverse flute made in Theobald Boehm's own Munich workshop sometime between 1828 and 1832, the exact five years in which Boehm reformed the flute and, in doing so, opened one of the longest-running priority disputes in the history of musical instruments. Boehm met the amateur inventor William Gordon in London in 1831, judged his mechanical ideas unsound, and unveiled his own ring-key redesign in November 1832; Gordon's widow and several of Gordon's later partisans, including a Paris Conservatoire professor and a prominent English flute maker, spent the following six decades arguing that the invention was really Gordon's, a claim revived with particular force after Boehm's death in 1881 and never formally settled by anyone.This particular instrument, ebony with silver keywork and ivory joint bands, sits inside the disputed years rather than after them, and the museum's own photograph is consistent with an earlier stage of Boehm's keywork rather than the full November 1832 specification, though this record does not claim that as established fact. Its ownership history is almost entirely blank between manufacture and the Metropolitan Museum's 2009 purchase, a gap of roughly one hundred and seventy-five years that this record states plainly rather than fills with invention. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1828-1832** Made in Theobald Boehm's own workshop, Munich `[documented]` (manufacture) The Metropolitan Museum dates the instrument to this five-year span, which begins with Boehm opening his own Munich workshop in 1828 and ends with his public debut of the ring-key redesign on 1 November 1832. It is not established from the sources consulted which side of that redesign this specific instrument falls on. - **1832-2009** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, dealer, or collection is documented for this instrument across roughly one hundred and seventy-five years. The gap is recorded rather than bridged with a guess. - **2009-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (purchase) Purchased in 2009 using funds from the Robert Alonzo Lehman Bequest. The seller and sale price are not published in the sources consulted. ## Open questions - Does this instrument carry the full ring-key mechanism Boehm debuted on 1 November 1832, or does it represent an earlier stage of his 1828-29 patented conical flute? The Metropolitan Museum's own date bracket spans both possibilities and the museum's published record does not resolve it. - Who owned this flute between its manufacture in Boehm's workshop and the Metropolitan Museum's purchase in 2009? No dealer, collection, or intermediate owner is named in the sources consulted for a gap of roughly a century and three-quarters. - Is the instrument stamped or signed? No inscription is described in the sources consulted, and it is not established whether one exists. - Does any flute actually made by William Gordon himself survive today for direct physical comparison with Boehm's 1832 design? The sources consulted describe Gordon's mechanical ideas but not the present whereabouts, or survival, of an instrument he built. - Was this flute made for a specific patron or player, or as ordinary workshop stock? Nothing in the sources consulted addresses the circumstances of its original commission or sale. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object page for Transverse Flute, Theobald Boehm, 1828-32, accession 2009.333a-k (catalogue tombstone data and Public Domain image rights badge). - [2] Wikipedia, 'Theobald Boehm', for birth and death dates and the Royal Bavarian Orchestra appointment. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography such as Nancy Toff's or Ardal Powell's work on the flute. - [3] H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon, The Story of the Flute, Chapter 4, for the Boehm-Gordon meeting, Boehm's own account of the 1832 redesign, the claims of Coche, Ward, and Clinton, Rockstro's 1890 treatise, and Fitzgibbon's 'storm in a teacup' verdict, via Wikisource. - [4] Wikipedia, 'Boehm system', for the general description of the 1832 conical and 1847 cylindrical designs and their industrial adoption. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a specialist organological source. - [5] The Babel Flute, 'Theobald Boehm as a Flute Maker', for the goldsmith training, the 1828 workshop, the 1829 Bavarian patent, the Mendler partnership timeline, and Boehm's quoted remark on quality over quantity. - [6] VM Collectables, 'The conical ring-key flute - game changer of 1832', for the 1 November 1832 Munich concert debut and the licensing of the design to Godfroy (Paris) and Rudall & Rose (London, from 1843). - [7] Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access API, object records 506166 (Transverse Flute, after 1832, no public-domain image) and 503510 (Transverse Flute, Boehm & Mendler, ca. 1870, Public Domain), consulted for related works. - [8] National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, object listings for 'Rudall & Rose Boehm (1832 Model) System Flute' and 'Theobald Boehm Flute', consulted for related works only; neither object was examined in detail for this record. - [9] Wikimedia Commons, File:Theobald Boehm.jpg, portrait photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl, circa 1852, licence verified as Public domain via file extmetadata. - [10] Wikimedia Commons, File:Boehm's Flute of 1829 and File:Boehm's Flute of 1832 (both page 51, The Story of the Flute, H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon, 1914), licence verified as Public domain via file extmetadata for both. - [11] Wikimedia Commons, File:Flute in C by Theobald Boehm, metal flute made by Boehm himself, No. 19, Munich, c. 1850, from the Dayton C. Miller Collection, Library of Congress, licence verified as Public domain via file extmetadata. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.