Recorder Instruments
Recorder Instruments Fast Facts
Whistles and pipes are probably the most familiar of musical instruments and the most widespread throughout the world. Certainly the recorder is one of the oldest instruments. The Sumerians had a long, vertical pipe, and rim-blown vertical pipes were known in Egypt in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, since they are depicted on wall paintings of the time. The rim-blown pipe is still found in North Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans, but it never caught on in Europe. Double pipes, represented later in Greece by the aulos and the tibia in Rome, were also known in Mesopotamia at this time.
A Brief History of the Recorder Instrument
A very common sight in the Middle Ages and even later was the musician with pipe and tabor. The tabor is a small snare drum which the player beats with his right hand and with his left he plays the pipe. This pipe, with only two holes on top for the fingers and one underneath for the thumb, was the forerunner of the recorder. I between came the flageolet, which had six main fingerholes, two of which were underneath.
The recorder brought more subtle tonal quality and fingering technique, as a result of which the pipe organ to take leave of the realm of folk music and go indoors, as it were, to more refined music making. Whole consorts of recorders were introduced, and the instruments had a position among woodwind very similar to that of the viols amongst stringed instruments. There are seven finger holes on top and one underneath, and on the large bass instruments the last finger hole usually has a key to cover it. The early or Renaissance recorders were of one piece, whereas the later Baroque recorders were in three pieces, and this has been followed down to the present time, except for the tiny descant recorder, which is of one piece. Because of its use as a music teaching instrument, the descant recorder today has a prominence it never had previously, since it was for the next size down, so to speak – the treble recorder – that Bach and Handel wrote their flute parts. It was then known as a flauto dolce. The flute to which we are now accustomed was known as a flauto traverse or German flute.
Consorts of flutes were also used at the Renaissance, and recorders were apparently used as solo instruments with strings to form consorts. Like recorders, Renaissance flutes were of one piece, and later Baroque models were of three, and then four, joints or sections. Flutes were made of ebony, boxwood, or even glass, though silver is now the preferred material.
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