Recorder (musical instrument)

The recorder is a family of woodwind musical instruments and a member of the family of duct flutes that includes tin whistles and flageolets. It is the most prominent duct flute in the western classical tradition. A recorder can be distinguished from other duct flutes by the presence of a thumb-hole for the upper hand and holes for seven fingers: three for the upper hand and four for the lower.
Recorders are made in various sizes and ranges. The sizes most commonly in use today are the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Recorders were traditionally constructed from wood or ivory. Modern professional instruments are wooden, often boxwood; student and scholastic recorders are commonly made of moulded plastic. The recorders' internal and external proportions vary, but the bore is generally reverse conical to cylindrical, and all recorder fingering systems make extensive use of [|forked fingerings].
The recorder is first documented in Europe in the Middle Ages, and continued to enjoy wide popularity in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, but was little used in the Classical and Romantic periods. It was revived in the twentieth century as part of the historically informed performance movement, and became a popular amateur and educational instrument. Composers who have written for the recorder include Monteverdi, Lully, Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Bach, Hindemith, and Berio. There are many professional recorder players who demonstrate the full solo range of the instrument, and a large community of amateurs.
The sound of the recorder is often described as clear and sweet, and has historically been associated with birds and shepherds. It is notable for its quick response and its corresponding ability to produce a wide variety of articulations. This ability, coupled with its open finger holes, allow it to produce a wide variety of tone colours and special effects. Acoustically, its tone is relatively pure and, when the edge is positioned in the center of the airjet, odd harmonics predominate in its sound.

Name

The instrument has been known by its modern English name since the fourteenth century. David Lasocki reports the earliest use of "recorder" in the household accounts of the Earl of Derby in 1388, which register i. fistula nomine Recordour.
By the fifteenth century, the name had appeared in English literature. The earliest references are in John Lydgate's Temple of Glas : . and in Lydgate's Fall of Princes : '', /.''

Etymology

Appending the name recorder to the instrument itself is uniquely English: In Middle-French there is no equivalent noun sense of recorder referring to a musical instrument. The English verb record meant "to learn by heart, to commit to memory, to go over in one's mind, to recite"; but the term did not refer to playing music until the sixteenth century. It was long after the English recorder was so-named that it gained two additional meanings: "silently practicing a tune", or "sing or render in song"—both referring almost-exclusively to songbirds.
Partridge indicates that the use of the instrument by jongleurs led to its association with the verb: Recorder the minstrel's action, a recorder the minstrel's tool. The reason is uncertain why this flute instrument—rather than some other instrument played by the jongleurs—is known as the recorder.

''Flute'' and ''recorder''

The introduction of the Baroque recorder to England by a group of French professionals in 1673 popularised the French name for the instrument, flute douce, or simply flute, a name previously reserved for the transverse instrument. Until about 1695, the names recorder and flute overlapped, but from 1673 to the late 1720s in England, the word flute always meant recorder. In the 1720s, as the transverse flute overtook the recorder in popularity, English adopted the convention already present in other European languages of qualifying the word flute, calling the recorder variously the "common flute", "common English-flute", or simply "English flute" while the transverse instrument was distinguished as the "German flute" or simply "flute". Until at least 1765, some writers still used flute to mean recorder.

Other languages

Until the mid-eighteenth century, musical scores written in Italian refer to the instrument as flauto, whereas the transverse instrument was called flauto traverso. This distinction, like the English switch from recorder to flute, has caused confusion among modern editors, writers and performers.
Indeed, in most European languages, the first term for the recorder was the word for flute alone. In the present day, cognates of the word flute, when used without qualifiers, remain ambiguous and may refer to either the recorder, the modern concert flute, or other non-western flutes. Starting in the 1530s, these languages began to add qualifiers to specify this particular flute.

Nomenclature

Since the fifteenth century, a variety of sizes of recorder have been documented, but a consistent terminology and notation for the different sizes was not formulated until the twentieth century.

Modern recorders

Today, recorder sizes are named after the different vocal ranges. This is not, however, a reflection of sounding pitch, and serves primarily to denote the pitch relationships between the different instruments. Groups of recorders played together are referred to as "consorts". Recorders are also often referred to by their lowest sounding note: "recorder in F" refers to a recorder with lowest note F, in any octave.
The table in this section shows the standard names of modern recorders in F and C and their respective ranges. Music composed after the modern revival of the recorder most frequently uses soprano, alto, tenor, and bass recorders, although sopranino and great bass are also fairly common. Consorts of recorders are often referred to using the terminology of organ registers: 8′ pitch referring to a consort sounding as written, 4′ pitch a consort sounding an octave above written, and 16′ a consort sounding an octave below written. The combination of these consorts is also possible.
As a rule of thumb, the tessitura of a baroque recorder lies approximately one octave above the tessitura of the human voice type after which it is named. For example, the tessitura of a soprano voice is roughly C₄–C₆, while the tessitura of a soprano recorder is C₅–C₇.
Modern variations include standard British terminology, due to Arnold Dolmetsch, which refers to the recorder in C₅ as the descant and the recorder in F₄ as the treble. As conventions and instruments vary, especially for larger and more uncommon instruments, it is often practical to state the recorder's lowest note along with its name to avoid confusion.

Notation

Modern recorder parts are notated in the key they sound in. Parts for alto, tenor and contrabass recorders are notated at pitch, while parts for sopranino, soprano, bass, and great bass are typically notated an octave below their sounding pitch. As a result, soprano and tenor recorders are notated identically; alto and sopranino are notated identically; and bass and contrabass recorders are notated identically. Octave clefs may be used to indicate the sounding pitch, but usage is inconsistent.
Rare sizes and notations include the garklein flutlein, which may be notated two octaves below its sounding pitch, and the sub-contrabass, which may be notated an octave above its sounding pitch.

Historical recorders

The earliest known document mentioning "a pipe called Recordour" dates from 1388.
Historically, recorders were used to play vocal music and parts written for other instruments, or for a general instrument. As a result, it was frequently the performers' responsibility to read parts not specifically intended for the instrument and to choose appropriate instruments. When such consorts consisted only of recorders, the pitch relationships between the parts were typically preserved, but when recorders were combined with other instruments, octave discrepancies were often ignored.
Recorder consorts in the sixteenth century were tuned in fifths and only occasionally employed tuning by octaves as seen in the modern C, F recorder consort. This means that consorts could be composed of instruments nominally in B, F, C, G, D, A and even E, although typically only three or four distinct sizes were used simultaneously. To use modern terminology, these recorders were treated as transposing instruments: consorts would be read identically to a consort made up of F₃, C₄, and G₄ instruments. This is made possible by the fact that adjacent sizes are separated by fifths, with few exceptions. These parts would be written using chiavi naturali, allowing the parts to roughly fit in the range of a single staff, and also in the range of the recorders of the period.
Transpositions, such as C₃–G₃–D₄, G₃–D₄–A₄, or B₂–F₃–C₄, all read as F₃–C₄–G₄ instruments, were possible as described by Praetorius in his Syntagma Musicum. Three sizes of instruments could be used to play four-part music by doubling the middle size, e.g. F₃–C₄–C₄–G₄, or play six-part music by doubling the upper size and tripling the middle size, e.g. F₃–C₄–C₄–C₄–G₄–G₄. Modern nomenclature for such recorders refers to the instruments' relationship to the other members of consort, rather than their absolute pitch, which may vary. The instruments from lowest to highest are called "great bass", "bass", "basset", "tenor", "alto", and "soprano". Potential sizes include: great bass in F₂; bass in B₂ or C₃; basset in F₃ or G₃; tenor in B₃, C₄ or D₄; alto in F₄, G₄ or A₄; and soprano in C₅ or D₅.
The alto in F₄ is the standard recorder of the Baroque, although there is a small repertoire written for other sizes. In seventeenth-century England, smaller recorders were named for their relationship to the alto and notated as transposing instruments with respect to it: third flute, fifth flute, sixth flute, and octave flute. The term flute du quart, or fourth flute, was used by Charles Dieupart, although curiously he treated it as a transposing instrument in relation to the soprano rather than the alto. In Germanic countries, the equivalent of the same term, Quartflöte, was applied both to the tenor in C₄, the interval being measured down from the alto in F₄, and to a recorder in C₅, the interval of a fourth apparently being measured up from an alto in G₄. Recorder parts in the Baroque were typically notated using the treble clef, although they may also be notated in French violin clef.
In modern usage, recorders not in C or F are alternatively referred to using the name of the closest instrument in C or F, followed by the lowest note. For example, a recorder with lowest note G₄ may be known as a G-alto or alto in G, a recorder with lowest note D₅ as a D-soprano or soprano in D, and a recorder in G₃ as a G-bass or G-basset. This usage is not totally consistent. Notably, the baroque recorder in D₄ is not commonly referred to as a D-tenor nor a D-alto; it is most commonly referred to using the historical name "voice flute".