Description
This model was copied from a fife in a private collection in France and the scholarship at hand asserted that it was from a military unit serving in about Paris in the late 18th century. It is in the key of D which would be considered a “high-pitch”, the commonly encountered pitches for the era being about a half step lower – so they might have regarded this to be in Eb. The common fife or piccolo used in most of Europe today is Eb (nominally A=440). The original to this had serious intonation issues and to make the replica meet the requirements of the initial customer who did the legwork, this copy has been “tweaked” to work better with itself and ensemble work.
