Draft:Louis Lot

Louis Esprit Lot (The Couture, 17 may 1807 – Chatou, 12 january 1897) famous maker of French flutes.

Biography Louis Lot learned the flute with Louis Dorus and in 1827, worked in the Atelier of Clair Godfroy, in Paris. In 1833, he became the son-in-law of Godfroy and in 1836 partners of the company. Together with the son of Clair Godfroy, Vincent Hypolite Godfroy, Lot built in 1839 under license the first French flute model after the mobile ring model of Theobald Boehm from 1832. This model was improved in 1837 by the postman August Buffet, Victor Coche and flutist Louis Dorus, in particular to facilitate the adoption of new fingerings of flute. This French model is authorized to paris Conservatory from 1838 and met a success in Paris then in London with a growing number of flutists. In 1847, the company again received permission to exploit in France the second patent of the model boehm System based on the invention of a cylindrical bore, which lays the foundations of the flute modern (golden medal of the London world exhibition of 1851, gold medal of the Paris exhibition of 1855).

In 1855, Louis Lot founded his own studio in Paris – from there, Theobald Boehm himself sent him pieces, for example, to, to finish wooden bodies drilled because he could not cope with the sum of the expenses incurred by the orders. In 1860, the flutist Louis Dorus succeeds as a teacher to Jean-Louis Tulou, opponent of the flute of Boehm, which prevented his entry into the institution; the Paris Conservatory becomes a regular customer at Louis Lot. The winners of the annual contest (the first in this series was Paul Taffanel) received regularly a flute from Louis Lot. To the'Paris World Exhibition of 1867, Louis Lot presents a new model of flute with a thicker wall, with larger playing holes, a square mouthpiece and a more stable mechanics with the key of sol sharp ; this shape is today known as the « french model » of the flute. Louis Lot's only gold flute was born in 1869 for the flutist Jean Remusat (in 1948, the instrument was acquired by Jean-Pierre Rampal). In 1875 Lot retired. He had built about 2150 flutes (including 870 made of metal) and piccolo.

He lived about 20 years after retirement. There is no reference that after his retirement, he had a correspondence with the flute factors established in Paris. He died at home on January 12, 1896 at the age of 89. He lived at 73 rue Saint Germain, in Tickling. An interesting detail is that his home was bought by a Madame Thibouville-Martin, widow of the famous wind instrument manufacturer. On June 9 of this year, Louis Dorus died at the age of 83. 38 years before, he had retired from the Conservatory and in 1868, this the same year that Vincent Hypolite Godfroy died, and that Louis Lot bought his home to spend his retirement years there. And this year 1868is recognized as the pinnacle of the development of the French flute. Subsequent modifications did not change the Louis Lot flute. Lot and Dorus died at the same time when the 20th century was to be born and the flute schools and flute schools they had established were recognized worldwide.

With regard to the Louis Lot workshops, it will be interesting to note that in 1877, 70% of the production was metal flutes (the others being made of wood), and that from that year, metal flutes had even numbers, and wooden flutes had odd numbers. The largest number of metal flutes manufactured was between 1876 and 1900, and production began to slow down gradually until 1933. Due to the arrival of the second world war, the production of flutes was reduced to about one flute per month. Between 1931 and 1951, only 250 flutes were made.

In 1951, the factory was bought by the house SML Marigaux.

Notes & references (de) This article is partially or completely taken from the’ article from Wikipedia in German entitled « Louis Lot » (see the list of authors). External links Authority notices : VIAFGNDWorldCat Information about the German Company for Flute e.V. [archive] (fr) Information flutehistory.com [archive] Louis Lot instrument series numbers (1855–1876) [archive] [video] Jean-Pierre Rampal plays on Lot's 1869 gold flute [archive] on YouTube [Great Flute Maker of France: The Lot & Godfroy Families 1650-1900, by Tula Giannini]