c1300 

References in the Niebelungenlied compare the sound of the flute to those of the trombone and trumpet.

1339-44

A manuscript of the Roman d’Alexandre (Oxford: Bodleian Library, Flemish MS 264, f. 118v), illustrated by Jehan de Grise, contains marginal drawings and miniatures showing soldiers and sentries playing the instruments on high battlements, most often alongside large bells, drums, bagpipes and trumpets.

1374

City of Basel engages fifers.

1476

Swiss infantry squadrons win famous victories against Burgundian cavalry, revolutionizing European warfare. Their techniques, including the use of fifes and drums, are soon copied in other countries, spread by Swiss mercenaries and their German imitators.

1494

French Ecurie, or military provisioning department, is making payments to tambourins suisses.

1505

Pope Julius II founds a Swiss Guard corps at the Vatican; two drummers [tamburi] and two fifes [pifferi] appear in the rolls from 1548 until 1814, when they are replaced by bugles. The corps still exists and has recently revived the use of the fife, using modern 'Basel piccolos'.

1511

The first printed treatise on musical instruments, Musica getutscht, by Sebastian Virdung, appears in Basel. Virdung uses the term Flöten to refer to recorders, reserving the word Zwerchpfeiff for the military fife and making no mention of the transverse flute in consorts or in any other non-military context.

1520

Five fifes and three drums play at the the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the famous summit meeting between Henry VIII of England and François I of France.

1526

Hans Burgkmair of Augsburg (1473-1531) publishes his extraordiarily rich and detailed set of prints entitled Triumph of Maximilian I, an imaginary triumphal procession for the Holy Roman Emperor headed by his personal fifer, Anthony of Dornstätt.

1529

A print in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, (Gabinetti dei disegni, Stampe sciolte 27) shows the triumphal entry of Charles V into Bologna at the head of a procession that includes fifers and drummers among the pikemen and harquebusiers.

1529

Musica instrumentalis deudsch published in Wittenberg by Martin Agricola (c1486-1556). Although he refers to Schweitzerpfeiffen (Swiss fifes) as well as Querfeiffen or Querpfeiffen, Agricola is clearly not really describing military flutes, but rather a different type of instrument for playing four-part consorts.

1548

When Henri II marries Caterina de Medici, both flauti d'Alamagna and flauti traversi play. During the reception of the royal couple in Lyons in September, extra players are hired for the occasion, and corps of fifes and drums lead guilds and columns of infantry in processions though the city, while the King’s Swiss guard brings its own fifers and drummers. In intermedi provided for the court's entertainment, transverse flutes (flauti d’Alamagna) are played in four-part consorts, sometimes with spinets and groups of viole da gamba.

1555

Leonhard Fronsperger’s manual of military discipline, Fünff Bücher. Von Kriegss Regiment und Ordnung (Frankfurt, 1555).

1556 

Philibert Jambe de Fer’s L'Epitome musicale de Tons, Sons et Accords, des Voix humaines, Fleustes d'Alleman, Fleustes a Neuf trous, Violes, et Violons (Lyons: Michael du Bois, 1556), a comprehensive introduction to musical theory and practice, gives the transverse flute pride of place, and does not mention the fife at all.

1574

When the mathermatician, medic, and statistical theoretician Girolamo Cardano describes wind instruments in his manuscript De Musica, he mentions no transverse flute but the military fife (fifolae), having a range of only 9 tones.

1578

Woodcut attrib. Tobias Stimmer shows Minerva playing a ‘Zwerchpfeif’

1589

Thoinot Arbeau, in his French dancing manual Orchesographie (1589) describes a special Swiss playing style, in which fifers use a special hard articulation and play together with large side drums. Although he writes that the fife music is improvised on the spot, he provides examples of the kind of improvisation it plays.

1819

Swiss federal drum ordinances contain printed fife tunes.

c1900

Basel Fasnacht celebrations are primarily a drumming event.

1926

Basel fifers at Fasnacht play in three parts.

1964

Oesch woodwind company founded. Erwin Oesch senior, originally