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Re: Recorders

Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2010-09-28 15:39

beejay -

I love Charpentier, and Skip Sempe is really good.

There's some French music for recorder, but not a lot. Recorder was much more popular in England, Germany and Italy. Also, there was a gigantic battle of styles between the "Italian taste" and the "French taste." Italian recorder music tended to be bright and virtuosic, with sweeping, grandiose gestures and ornamentation. French music was graceful and elegant, with self-contained phrases and "twiddly" ornamentation. The two require very different ways of playing.

I respect Lelia's knowledge of yard sales, but all of the Koch recorders I've seen have been low-end instruments. You recognize them by their simple shape, single holes and a brass pin running from side to side near the top of the head joint that holds the block in place.

As Illebret says, the Yamahas have low resistance. However, I think they produce a more characteristic sound than recorders with higher resistance. Playing with low breath pressure (even letting your cheeks puff out) is the essential difference between recorder and clarinet.

On recorder, the voice is built into the instrument, and recorder requires more precise breath control to find the resonant point and stay on it. High-breath-pressure recorders (i.e., nearly everything between the Yamaha and hand-made instruments) are made for beginners and intermediate players. The usable breath pressure covers a fairly wide range, at the expense of a narrow, resonant peak response. Even the von Huene Workshop uses a default intermediate voicing, though of course on request they'll give you a more resonant but more difficult voicing.

Ken Shaw

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Recorders new

beejay

2010-09-27 22:35