A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Czakan

CZAKAN, or Stockflöte, a Bohemian or Transylvanian instrument of the flageolet family, usually standing in the key of A, though made to other pitches. It is said to have been lost for many years after its original invention, and to have been rediscovered in a Transylvanian monastery in 1825. However this may be, it rose to great popularity at Vienna about 1830, and received many additions and improvements. It consisted of a large flageolet mouthpiece, with a long slender body, bored with an inverted conical tube like that of the old flute, at right angles to the mouthpiece. It thus resembled an ordinary handled walking-stick, and indeed was commonly put to that use. It had the octave scale of the old concert flute, with fingering intermediate between that and the oboe. There was also a small vent-hole for the thumb at the back, as in the flageolet. It possessed about two octaves compass, starting from the low B of the flute. There exists a Method for this almost forgotten instrument by Krämer dated 1830. Its music appears to have been written in the key of C.

[ W. H. S. ]