The Bird Fancyer's Delight (1717)
About
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The Bird Fancyer's Delight is a collection of short songs for the flute and flageolet that aim to imitate a wide variety of bird species, including "ye wood-lark, black-bird, throustill, house-sparrow, canary-bird, black-thorn-linnet, garden-bull-finch, and starling." The first eight pages of the text contain a couple of fingering charts and a brief explanation of basic music notation. The remaining eighteen pages contain short pieces - each of which is named after a different bird.
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Terminology
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This text utilizes the term "flute" multiple times, including in the subtitle, which reads Choice observations, and directions concerning ye teaching of all sorts of singing-birds, after ye flagelet [sic] & flute, if rightly made as to size & tone, with a method of fixing ye wett air, in a spung or cotton, with lessons properly composed, within ye compass & faculty of each bird, vizt for ye wood-lark, black-bird, throustill, house-sparrow, canary-bird, black-thorn-linnet, garden-bull-finch, and starling. An initial glance at the text's cover page offers few clues as to whether the "flute" referred to in the subtitle is the transverse or vertical flute. After all, there is no frontispiece and the cover illustrations only show two birds and a flageolet. However, the first few pages display a number of vertical fingering charts which suggest that this text is likely meant for the vertical flute.
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The cover page of The Bird Fancyer's Delight showing the illustrations of two birds and a flageolet.
Retrieved from The Library of Congress. 
The fourth page of The Bird Fancyer's Delight which shows one of the vertical fingering charts included in the instructional portion of the text.
Retrieved from The Library of Congress. |
