THE DATE OF THE NEXT GAME OPENING WILL BE ANNOUNCED! STAY TUNED – WE WILL DO IT AGAIN!
Test your knowledge of the flute, its history, composers & repertoire
in the celebration of Ernesto Koehler’s birthday on December 4th!
READ THE RULES BELOW!
GAME RULES
Welcome to the very first GLOBAL game for flutists, available with 100 languages! You are invited! And it is FREE!
The Babel Flute team remembered that December 4th is the birthday of our beloved Ernesto Köhler, an Italian flute virtuoso who has worked all his life at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg and wrote numerous etudes, pieces, duets and ensembles so loved by every flutist. We also remembered that this is also the birthday of Yulia Berry, one of the founders of The Babel Flute and Saint-Petersburg’ native. And we decided to celebrate this day with a fun quiz! We invite everyone to test their knowledge in flute!
When we opened the game on December 4 for only one day, the responce was overwhelming! Flutists from 37 countries came to play it! We decided to open it again to give an opportunity to more flutists to play the First Global Game.
Take the quiz in any language by clicking the translation button at the top of the screen.
To access all available languages from a Mobile phone switch to a desktop version in the browser settings, choose a desired language and switch back to a Mobile version. You only need to do it once.
HOW IT WORKS:
To participate you need to FIRST register or log in. Do not try playing before you logged in to your account – the game will not work!
The registration for the game is open for anyone and is free.
After registering or logging into your account, come to this game page and start playing. If you tried the game on December 4th and didn’t score 80%, now you can try again to win!
The certificate will bear the date 4 December of the dedication of this game to Ermesto Koehler.
The game stays live from December 22 till January 1, 2023
You have 25 minutes to answer 50 questions. Of course, you can finish early, if you answer fast.
The computer will count your score automatically.
Fill out part 2 – Comments. The course is now completed.
If you answer at least 40 questions correctly (80%), you will get a personal certificate “The Babel Flute Expert”.
On the page “My courses” you can view answers and download your personal certificate.
IMPORTANT:
A personal certificate will be issued in the name you specified during registration. Make sure you enter your name correctly when registering.
Ernesto Köhler – Pearl of the North
article by Irina Nekipelova
The name of the Italian-Russian flutist and composer is familiar to more than one generation of musicians.
The son and student of Josef (Giuseppe) Wenceslas Köhler (1809-1878), a flutist in the court orchestra in Modena, was born in Modena on December 4, 1849. As a child, Ernesto toured Italy, performing with his pianist brother Ferdinando. At the age of 19, he already played in the orchestra with his father.
In 1869-1871. – at the age of 20 – Ernesto was already a soloist with the orchestra of the Charles Theater in Vienna. In 1871, on the recommendation of compatriot Cesare Ciardi, he was accepted as a flutist in the orchestra of the St. Petersburg Imperial (Mariinsky) Theatre. Ciardi, a flutist and composer who lived in St. Petersburg for the second half of his life, taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and was a soloist at the Imperial Theater for many years, had heard about the virtuoso playing of Ernesto Köhler, and, apparently, wanted to see a colleague next to him in the theater – compatriot.
Ernesto Köhler, like Cesare Ciardi, once in St. Petersburg, remained in it until the end of his life. For 35 years he served first as the first flutist, and then, after the death of his senior colleague, as a soloist of the Imperial Theater. In 1906, the Saint Petersburg Bulletin published a note about Köhler on the 35th anniversary of his activity in the Russian capital.
Now, in the 21st century, we know Köhler the composer as the author of numerous etudes and salon pieces. At the same time, Keller was widely known, primarily as the author of an opera and several popular ballets. Contemporaries noted that his music is distinguished by its special beauty, combining Italian and Russian songwriting. Köhler’s music was often performed not only in Russia, but also in Europe, America and even Australia.
For the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, he composed the opera “Ben Akhmet”, it was staged in 1893, unfortunately, the opera has not survived to our time. The ballet Clorinda the Queen of the Mountain Fairies was staged in 1899 as a graduation performance of the theater school at the Mikhailovsky Theatre, choreographed by Alexander Gorsky, Honored Artist of the Imperial Theaters.
For the flute, Ernesto Köhler wrote more than 100 works: studies for various types of technique, for different levels of training – beginners and more experienced musicians, duets, quartets and solos, concert pieces, serenades, waltzes, concerto and sonatinas. Also well known among flutists is his Flöten-Schule, a flute teaching method developed by Köhler around 1880.
Ernesto Köhler was one of the most famous flutists of his time. He was born two years after Theobald Böhm made a revolution in the history of woodwind instruments – a new, improved flute model was made – cylindrical, with a conical-parabolic head knee and a new valve system. And, although many of Köhler’s contemporaries already played the silver flutes of the new system, he was an adherent of the old school, and played all his life on the wooden transverse flutes of the classical system.
In our time in European countries, sketches and “salon” plays by Ernesto Köller, an Italian who came to Russia, to St. Petersburg in his youth, and remained here for the rest of his life, remain very popular. His concerto in G minor, the concert piece “Pearl of the North”, the salon pieces “Lullaby”, “Waltz in G minor”, “Meditation”, etc. are often performed.
In St. Petersburg, the virtuoso composer is remembered and honored. At the Mariinsky Theatre, where he has been a soloist for 35 years, his music is regularly performed at the annual Flute Virtuosi Festival.
The music of Ernesto Köhler – filled with light and romanticism, demonstrating all the possibilities of the flute, revealing the timbre richness of this beautiful instrument, still sounds today, and on the banks of the Neva, in St. Petersburg, and in other cities, not only Russian and European, but also in other continents – in Australia and America.
