What’s your favourite era of music? Is there a style of music that communicates to you more clearly than others? Teachers often refer to different periods of music, but what do we actually mean by Renaissance or Romantic music?

Like art and architecture, music is generally defined as belonging to particular stylistic eras. There are often features in common between these genres - for instance ornate decoration is a characteristic of both Baroque architecture and music. But there are also other terms too, which describe particular styles of music, as much as the period of history in which they were composed. At the most basic level, musical eras are divided up into periods of time, as follows:

Medieval up to around 1400
Renaissance 1400-1600
Baroque 1600-1750
Classical 1750-1820
Romantic 1820-1900
Modern/Contemporary 1900 onwards

While these dates are a useful guide, music doesn’t necessarily fit neatly into them, as we’ll see. Some composers were rule breakers, ahead of their time - think of Carlo Gesualdo, composing extraordinary harmonies in the Renaissance, some of which still feel extreme today. In contrast, we have composers like Elgar whose music is firmly rooted in the Romantic style, even though he was writing at the same time as modernists like Schoenberg. As a result the boundaries become rather blurred, so the dates above are a rough guideline rather than strict rules.

Having a sound knowledge of these different periods of music will undoubtedly help you understand the repertoire you play more easily - a composer’s intentions often become clearer when we understand the context in which they were writing. Of course there are some periods in which our instrument, the recorder, barely featured at all. That’s not to say we won’t play music from the Classical and Romantic periods, but in order to do so, we have to be prepared to borrow repertoire from other instruments.

In this blog post, I’m going to focus on three periods of music, returning to later eras in a future post. My original intention was to cover the whole of western classical music, but I quickly realised doing so would result in something worthy of an entire book, rather than a single blog post! Let’s make a start with the earliest years of formal music making…

Medieval Music

Humans have been making music in one way or another since our species first evolved. Initially we used our voices, but instruments made from animal bones have been found from 60,000 years ago. By the start of the Medieval period, music had become intrinsically linked with the church and it was here that vocal music first flourished. This earliest music can be described as monophony - that is a single line of plainsong, sung in unison. Over time this expanded into organum, where two lines were sung in parallel, a fourth or fifth apart - the simplest form of harmony.

But music wasn’t purely used in religious settings. Troubadors travelled throughout Europe, singing secular songs, often about courtly love. These musicians would have accompanied their singing with instruments such as the lute, dulcimer, vielle, psaltery and hurdy-gurdy. Wind instruments, such as the recorder and flute, were also common, as well as simple brass instruments and percussion.

Gradually polyphonic music developed during the Medieval period - the use of multiple lines working independently of each other - by composers such as Machaut and Perotin. Later still, in southern France, music of even greater complexity evolved - Ars Subtilior. This was mostly secular vocal music, with enormous rhythmic complexity - some of it unmatched until the 20th century.

A selection of Medieval composers

Hildegard of Bingen, Léonin, Pérotin, Guillaume de Machaut, Francesco Landini, John Dunstable.

A musical Renaissance

By the time we reach the Renaissance, music was an important feature of all parts of life, appearing in religious, civic and courtly settings.

Early in the Renaissance, the church was still the most significant setting for music and many composers wrote motets and masses for this purpose, usually based around Latin texts. Polyphonic music had now become the norm, with parts moving independently of each other, and lots of imitation between the voices.

The advent of printing allowed music to be published at an ever greater rate, with much of it aimed at amateur musicians. Secular vocal music, such as chansons and madrigals, and instrumental music too, was published in partbooks which could be used in a domestic setting. Before this music had to be copied by hand, a very time-consuming and expensive process, and the advent of printing allowed music to be disseminated much more widely and speedily.

Many different forms of instrumental music developed during this period, including forms such as the toccata, prelude, ricercar and canzona, as well as many types of music for dancing. The Canzona gradually evolved into the sonata, a form which composes continue to us to this day. I’ve written a blog all about the evolution from the canzona to the sonata which you can read here.

Madrigals became one of the most popular types of secular vocal music during the Renaissance, and composers typically used word painting to depict the text they were setting. For instance, in Thomas Weelkes’ As Vesta was from Latmos Hill Descending when the text talks of running down the hill we hear the notes in scurrying downward runs.

Renaissance instruments

The Renaissance saw many developments in musical instruments. The viol family became very became very popular and a huge repertoire of music developed for this family of instruments. Viols (not to be confused with the violin family, which we’ll look at later) have sloping shoulders and a flat back, with six strings (occasionally seven for the bass viol) and frets on the fingerboard to help the player with intonation. Like the recorder, they come in several sizes, from treble down to bass and consort music was composed for endless combinations of treble, tenor and bass viols. This consort repertoire included standalone pieces, such as Fantasias, but dance music too became very popular. Many composers wrote sets of dances, often pairing the Pavan with a faster dance such as the Galliard. I’ve written in more detail about Renaissance dance music here if you’d like to learn more about this topic.

Wind instruments were also popular in the Renaissance, such as the recorder and flute, and they were sometimes combined with strings in broken consorts. Music formed a large part of life in the royal court, in religious, domestic and ceremonial settings. Henry VIII in particular employed a large number of musicians, including a court recorder consort based around the Bassano family.

Precursors to many of today’s instruments developed during the Renaissance, including the violin, lute, guitar, curtal (predecessor to the bassoon) and sackbut (an early form of trombone). These presented composers with an ever greater array of musical colours to explore, although the precise instrumentation was rarely specified in the music. Of course this gives us carte blanche as recorder players to explore any type of music from this period!

The following video features a consort of sackbuts and cornetts. The cornett uses a cupped mouthpiece, much like the trumpet, while the body is made of leather-covered wood and fingered much like a recorder.

Harmony and ornamentation

Although complex polyphonic writing was common during the Renaissance, composers still used simple major and minor harmonies, saving dissonances for special effects and moments of high tension. One harmonic curiosity existed in English music of this period - the use of false relations. This is a simultaneous clash of major and minor harmonies, often at the end of phrases, as rising and falling melodic minor scales meet with each other, as you can hear in the video below. These piquant harmonies are particularly prevalent in the music of composers such as Thomas Tallis and William Byrd.

Another innovation during the Renaissance was the development of ornamentation, in the form of divisions. In contrast to the free trills and embellishments we encounter in Baroque music, Renaissance ornamentation is more structured, with melodic lines being mathematically divided into smaller note values. Sylvestro Ganassi wrote a very detailed treatise teaching the art of divisions, Opera intitulata Fontegara (pictured below), and performers of the day would have been well versed in adding such decorations to the music spontaneously.

The cover of Ganassi’s *Opera intitulata Fontegara*

A selection of Renaissance composers

Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Ockeghem, Jacob Obrecht, John Taverner, Claudin de Sermisy, Tielman Susato, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Orlando de Lassus, Andrea & Giovanni Gabrieli, William Byrd, Maddalena Casulana, Anthony Holborne, Elway Bevin, Thomas Morley, Peter Philips, William Brade, Claudio Monteverdi, Thomas Lupo, John Wilbye, Giovanni Coperario, Thomas Weelkes, Michael East, Samuel Scheidt, John Dowland.

The Baroque - a musical pearl

Next we come to a period beloved by recorder players - the Baroque. The word itself comes from the Portuguese barocco - an oddly shaped pearl - which hints at the ornamental character of music from this period, stretching from Monteverdi to Bach.

While Baroque music had distinct national styles, these became ever more fluid as people travelled more widely. 17th century London, for instance, was a tremendously popular location for musicians, and became a melting pot of composers from all over Europe. The type of music a composer wrote was often dictated by their employer and location. For instance, J.S.Bach wrote lots of sacred music because he was employed by the church, while Henry Purcell wrote many works for the London theatre scene.

A movement from Telemann’s Methodical Sonatas, showing a simple melodic line and how it could be ornamented. Click on the image to see it enlarged.

Ornamentation developed from the divisions of the Renaissance, into much freer but equally florid decorations, including the trills we perhaps most closely associate with Baroque music. Again, several composers (Quantz perhaps being the most famous) wrote treatises on the art of ornamentation, while others composed music with sample ornamentation as didactic resources - for instance, Telemann’s Methodical Sonatas.

In contrast to the Renaissance, polyphony became less important and the concept of a melody with an accompaniment became more prevalent. This was the period where basso continuo developed - a style of accompaniment usually played by a sustaining bass instrument, such as the cello, with a keyboard instrument (harpsichord or organ) providing the harmonies. Rather than prescribing precise notes for the keyboard player, composers simply indicated the harmonies they desired with numbers – figured bass – written above or beneath the bassline. This is a type of shorthand, which may seem impenetrable at first glance, but allows immense freedom for the harpsichordist. With practice a skilled continuo player can interpret the numbers very quickly and add lots of character to the music.

An extract from a recorder sonata by Francesco Mancini, with figured bass above the bassline

The idea of writing for specific instruments became much more common, allowing composers the ability to create carefully planned contrasts of musical colour. That said, it was also common for publishers to suggest a sonata could be played on a variety of instruments (flute, oboe or recorder, for instance) - no doubt a ploy to sell more copies of the music! Baroque composers began to write solo and trio sonatas for specific instruments and continuo, and it was during this period that the concept of a Concerto for soloist and orchestra evolved. The solo parts in concerti were often highly virtuosic – a feature that was retained and expanded during the Classical and Romantic periods.

Another huge development during the Baroque was opera. The genre evolved a long way during the period, from the free flowing writing of Monteverdi to Handel’s very formal Italian operas of the late Baroque. Opera featured two distinct types of music - recitative and arias. Recitative was a musical imitation of speech, usually for a singer with basso continuo accompaniment, and its purpose was to move the storyline forward. In contrast, the aria was a moment for an operatic character to express how they were feeling about what had just happened. These usually had an orchestral accompaniment and gave singers a chance to demonstrate their enormous virtuosity. At this time it was common for men to take all of the leading roles, even playing female characters. The highest, dramatic roles were most often given to men with castrato voices, with best castrati, such as Farinelli and Senesino, commanding huge fees and mass adulation – the equivalent of a modern day Hollywood star. Lower voices tended to be used for comic roles.

Dance music also continued to thrive during the Baroque, although the dances themselves evolved. Out went the Pavan and Galliard, and in came the Gavotte and Minuet. If dance music of this period particularly interests you I’ve written a blog all about the dances which you can find here.

Baroque performance practice

In common with music of the Renaissance, most Baroque composers gave very little information in their music regarding the way it should be played. Performers of the day would have been taught what was expected of them in terms of articulation, phrasing, dynamics and more. But for those wishing to learn more, numerous treatises were published during this era to help performers. For recorder players, the notable sources of advice are by Ganassi and Dalla Casa in the Renaissance, with Hotteterre and Quantz during the Baroque. But if you’re interested in looking for advice from either period, I can recommend this article which shares a comprehensive list of historical treatises.

Instrumental evolution

There were continued developments in musical instruments during the Baroque period, with composers taking advantage of these innovations. The Baroque orchestra was based around an ensemble of strings, as are today’s orchestras, usually with harpsichord continuo adding colour and texture, as well as filling out the harmonies. The instruments used were almost all members of the violin family - violins, violas and cellos. Sometimes you’d have an instrument doubling the cello line an octave lower - either a double bass (with four strings, like the cello) or violone (which had up to six strings). The popularity of the viol family gradually waned during the Baroque, and Purcell’s astonishing Fantasias (composed at the tender age of 21) are some of the last consort works for viols. The bass viol or viola da gamba persisted though, often used in chamber music as both a continuo or solo instrument.

The violin family became the most important string instruments of the Baroque. Compared to the viol, they have rounded shoulders, a curved back and f-shaped tone holes in the front of the instrument. Both the viol and violin were strung with gut strings (today’s violins use metal strings), so they produce a softer, less strident tone than their modern counterparts. The Italian city of Cremona became a hugely important hub for luthiers (makers of violins, violas and cellos) during the Baroque, with the most talented makers creating instruments which are still in use today. Violins by Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri are played today by the world’s top virtuosos, although many have been modified and strengthened to suit the greater technical demands of 19th century repertoire.

A Baroque oboe, with fewer keys than its modern counterpart

Woodwind instruments were often added to orchestras to create extra colour - perhaps a bassoon doubling the bassline and oboe, recorder and flute player higher lines. It was common for Baroque woodwind players to be multi-instrumentalists, playing oboe, flute and recorder in the same work, switching between movements. It was only in the Classical period that it became the norm to specialise on a single woodwind instrument.

Some composers also add brass instruments into the mix from time to time - notably the trumpet and horn. At this point they were made from simple lengths of bent and coiled metal, with no valves or pistons, so players had to use their embouchure (shaping the lips and surrounding muscles) to play different pitches in the instrument’s native harmonic series. This also meant each instrument could only play in one key. If a composer chose to use the horn or trumpet in a movement with a different key signature, the player would need to remove a section of tubing, replacing it with one of a different length to make the instrument longer or shorter, thus changing its native key.

Composers of the Baroque

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Johann Christoph Pezel, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Matthew Locke, Henry Purcell, Arcangelo Corelli, Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, Johann Mattheson, Georg Philipp Telemann, James Paisible, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedric Handel, Domenico & Alessandro Scarlatti, Johann Joachim Quantz.

If you want to explore the music from these periods for yourself, clicking on the composer links will take you to some of my favourites from the consort music I’ve shared with you over the last five years.

So there I’ll pause our exploration of the many musical periods - the remaining eras will follow in a future blog. We stop at the recorder’s high point, with the prospect of more than 150 years to be spent in the shadows. However, a second heyday is still to come, about which more very soon!

For many people the first image to come to mind when the recorder is mentioned will be the descant they encountered during their school years - quite possibly a plastic one, played very badly. But those of us in the know understand our favourite instrument has many more facets. Even so, many recorder players are really only familiar with mass produced Baroque style instruments, whether they’re made from plastic or wood.

Throughout history, the music composed for the recorder has changed, and the instrument has evolved in parallel to suit new fashions and styles. This is the first of a series of blog posts about the recorder’s different characteristics, exploring the way the instrument’s design has changed over the last six centuries. Today I’m going to talk about Renaissance and Baroque recorders. Since the recorder’s revival in the early twentieth century there have been many more developments, but I’ll talk about those in a subsequent post.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using Baroque style recorders to explore our varied repertoire, but maybe this will open your eyes to the way a historically appropriate design of recorder can influence the way music from different periods is performed.

The Medieval period

The oldest surviving recorders date back to the fourteenth century. The best known is perhaps the Dordecht recorder, found in the Netherlands in 1940. These ancient instruments are a simple design, made from a single piece of wood, but they share the recognisable features of our modern recorders - a windway created by the insertion of a fipple (the block) into the mouthpiece and a thumb hole to allow for a greater range of notes than a simple whistle. Sadly many of the surviving recorders are in poor condition as their wooden construction made them prone to damage or decay after they were discarded.

Renaissance recorders

By the time we reach the Renaissance period, we not only have a much larger array of surviving original instruments to study, but plenty of imagery too. This illustration, taken from Michael Praetorius’ treatise Syntagma Musicum (1614-20), clearly shows a sizeable family of recorders, from tiny to large.

The Renaissance look

Renaissance recorders look very different to the Baroque ones we often play today. The smaller instruments, from the tenor upwards, were usually made from a single piece of wood, while the larger recorders were creates in two pieces. Their outline tends to be very simple, with few decorative features - a straight body with a flared bell.

Another detail you may notice from the image above is the appearance of two holes for finger seven (clearest on the 6th recorder from the left). This allows the instrument to be played with the left or the right at the top and the unused hole would have been filled with wax. Larger recorders needed keys to make the lowest notes playable and these were made with a characteristic butterfly shape for the same reason. It’s normal to play with the left hand uppermost today, but if you study paintings from this era you’ll see they feature both left and right handed recorder players fairly equally.

A consort of recorders by Adrian Brown, based on an image from Sebastian Virdung's treatise *Musica getutscht.* The recording below was performed on a consort like this.

The elegant butterfly keys were only necessary for the larger sizes of recorder - certainly on basses and on some tenors too. The lower part of the key was often covered with a fontanelle made of perforated metal or wood. This protected the vulnerable mechanism, but added a decorative element too. The holes in the fontenelle also allow air to escape - without these it would have a negative effect on the tuning.

You might think that having instruments made from a single piece of wood would create difficulties with tuning – after all, you can’t adjust the pitch of a single piece recorder by pulling out the headjoint. Recorders of this period were almost always made in consorts at one pitch, so this was less of a problem than we would consider it today.

Most Renaissance bass (or basset as Praetorius calls them) recorders were direct blow models, although you need longer arms to play these compared to modern knick basses. Larger bass instruments existed too, the longest of which is listed in the inventory of Queen Mary of Hungary. It’s described as being a ‘baras’ in length - that’s about two and a half metres! For these largest recorders a crook or bocal is needed to carry the player’s breath to the windway, as you can see in the Praetorius image earlier. The video below features the Royal Wind Music performing on a consort of low recorders and you can see at close quarters the additions needed to make the biggest ones playable!

Not just recorders in C and F

Today’s recorders tend to use mostly C and F fingerings, but Renaissance recorders weren’t so consistent. Consorts of instruments were often pitched a 5th part - for instance a basset in F, a tenor in C, a treble in G and perhaps even a descant in D. These letters always refer to the lowest note of the recorder. To our modern brains playing recorders in G and D might require greater mental gymnastics than we’re used to, but I’m sure Renaissance musicians were entirely comfortable reading at any pitch, playing from a greater variety of clefs than we expect today too.

Renaissance tone begins inside the recorder

While Renaissance recorders look simpler on the outside, the shape of the internal bore is also very different. Inevitably this varies between the historical instruments which survive today, but they all have certain similarities. The bore tends to be mostly cylindrical, but with a noticeable flare at the bottom end. It’s this internal shape that influences the characteristics of the recorder’s tone and response.

Recorders from the Renaissance, often have a slightly smaller range than Baroque models - sometimes as little as an octave and six notes. Most music echoed the range of the human voice though, so this wasn’t a great restriction for composers. The lowest notes tend to be much richer and stronger, often demanding greater reserves of breath to fill out the tone. Because of this strength of tone more incisive articulation is also possible, making it easier to bring out the complexities of counterpoint and melodic shapes we so often see in Renaissance music. You can hear this clearly in Sirena’s performance of La Lusignola by Tarquinio Merula.

Fingerings and pitch

Most mass produced modern recorders are played with a pretty standard set of fingerings. The different bore shape of Renaissance recorders requires some variations on these fingerings. For instance, the ninth note from the bottom (middle D on a tenor recorder, or G on a treble) would have been played by covering none of the finger holes rather than using finger 2 as we would today. Handmade professional consorts of Renaissance recorders, such as those by Adrian Brown or Tom Prescott, retain these authentic fingerings. However, many of the more affordable consorts by makers such as Moeck and Mollenhauer, have been tweaked to allow the use of the more familiar modern fingerings.

Some time ago I shared a blog about the history of pitch, where we discovered that the standardisation of musical pitch is really quite a recent concept. During the Renaissance period music was generally performed at a higher pitch than we would expect today, and as a result some modern copies of old instruments are made at A=466. This is a pitch of convenience which has become internationally recognised, but it wouldn’t have been the case then. Instruments would have been crafted to match the pitch of instruments which can’t easily be adjusted, such as church organs, and pitch would probably have varied from village to village. The solution was to make recorders in matching consorts so you could make music together - undoubtedly why King Henry VIII’s inventory lists no fewer than 76 recorders!

Before you buy…

If you’re thinking about purchasing some Renaissance style instruments it’s important to consider how you’ll use them first.

Many professional ensembles commission a matching set of consort instruments from their preferred recorder maker. This creates a well matched sound and makes the tuning easier. Such instruments are often pitched at A=466 - around a semitone higher than modern concert pitch. If you only play the recorders together this is fine, but it’s probably more practical to stick with A440 if you want to have the flexibility to play with others.

The Renaissance instruments offered by the mainstream recorder brands are a good place to start if you want to dip your toes into this sound world at a more modest price point. I use Mollenhauer’s Kynseker instruments, but there are similarly priced Renaissance instruments available from Moeck and Peter Kobliczek, and it’s worth keeping a lookout for instruments for sale secondhand.

The Ganassi recorder - reality or myth?

In his 1535 treatise Opera intitulata Fontegara Sylvestro Ganassi reveals his discovery of a further octave of notes above those normally played on the recorder. He shares fingering charts for these additional high notes, noting adjustments which need to be made to one’s breath and articulation to achieve them.

The title page of Ganassi’s *Opera intitulata Fontegara,* featuring a consort of recorder players.

One thing Ganassi doesn’t include is a detailed description of the type of recorder required to play these notes. In the 1970s unsuccessful efforts were made to locate an original recorder capable of playing with his fingerings. In the absence of such an instrument, several contemporary makers, such as Fred Morgan, Alec Loretto and Bob Marvin, created their own designs to fill this gap. Externally they were modelled on pictures from La Fontegara, but much experimentation was needed to find the appropriate bore shape and level of flare at the bell to work with Ganassi’s fingerings. Ultimately the ‘Ganassi’ recorder is a modern creation, but still much loved by players today. I have a Von Huene Ganassi descant myself and love its rich tone, full low notes and the ease with which it plays the higher notes.

Baroque recorders - a change of purpose

The concept of the recorder as a consort instrument became less pervasive as time passed. There’s a small handful of pieces composed specifically for recorder consort (the Schmelzer Sonata à 7 is probably the most familiar) but in general the instrument took on a new musical role. As composers began to include the recorder in chamber music with other instruments and as the solo line in concertos a new sound and style was needed.

Whereas the Renaissance consort used the different sizes of recorder equally, during the Baroque the treble became the most popular size of instrument. The other recorders didn’t entirely fall out of use, but it was the treble that Bach, Telemann and Handel chose to use in their solo sonatas, cantatas, chamber music and concertos in combination with many other instruments. For instance, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.2 has four soloists, playing recorder, oboe, violin and trumpet.

Baroque elegance

At first glance the biggest change to the Baroque recorder is its external shape. Gone is the one piece design. Almost all recorders from this period (aside from some sopraninos and descants) are made from three pieces - the headjoint, body and footjoint. Creating breaks in the instrument adds points of weakness, so makers compensated by making the wood thicker here. These bulbous points added strength, but also created an opportunity for decoration - a stylistic feature we also see in Baroque architecture and fashion. Some makers took this to extremes, using complex wood turning and ivory rings.

The iconic image from Hotteterre’s 1707 treatise on playing the recorder, flute and oboe. The recorder’s decoration is as ornate as the player’s cuffs!

Another change to the Baroque recorder is the shape of the mouthpiece - often elegantly carved to look more like a beak. This has no effect on the tone, but was no doubt more in keeping with Baroque style and elegance. This feature also brought us the French name for the instrument - flute á bec.

At the other end of the recorder, another innovation was introduced by Peter Bressan - the addition of double holes for the lowest two notes. We take such luxuries for granted today, but this simple innovation makes the lowest semitones stronger and clearer - something that would become more important as music became more chromatic.

Many recorders have survived from the 18th century and can be seen in museums around the world. Fortunately contemporary makers have been allowed to examine these instruments and take measurements, resulting in modern copies for us to play today. Look at any recorder maker’s website and you’ll find recorders based on those by Peter Bressan, Jean-Jacques Rippert, Jacob Denner, Thomas Stanesby and others.

Inside the Baroque recorder

The Baroque recorder doesn’t just look different on the outside - the interior also changed to meet the demands of the new music. The headjoint remains almost cylindrical, but a taper is introduced through the body of the instrument, becoming most extreme at the footjoint. This taper has two purposes. From a practical point of view it allows for more comfortable placing of the fingerholes, but more importantly it greatly affects the sound of the instrument. Gone are the fruity low notes - the lowest tones are now much gentler. By way of compensation, the high notes are much stronger and easier to play - perfect for the florid passagework of Bach and his contemporaries. The Baroque recorder has a larger range too - at least two octaves and a note, but some composers (particularly Telemann) went further still, expecting players to reach the giddy heights of top C on the treble from time to time!

Mimicking the human voice

While recorders in C and F were the most common, a handful of other variations exist too. One of these is the Voice Flute - a recorder which sits between the treble and tenor, whose lowest note is D. The voice flute probably originated in the court of King Louis XIV of France, in Lully’s orchestra. It allowed recorder players to play music originally intended for the flute at the correct pitch. Of course its range, from the D above middle C also mimics that of the female human voice and this is likely to be the origin of its name.

It was commonplace during the Baroque to transpose flute music a minor third higher to place it within reach of the treble recorder. But this makes the music sound brighter and loses some of the mellower tonal qualities of the transverse flute. The voice flute, with its lower pitch, retains some of this character, while also being as agile as the treble recorder. Several original voice flutes survive today and modern copies based upon instruments by Bressan, Rippert and Stanesby are available for those who wish to explore this lovely sound world.

Other curiosities

Smaller recorders became less common during the Baroque period, but a handful of wonderful works exist for the higher instruments. Vivaldi composed three concertos for the ‘flautino’ or sopranino, although his scores also indicate that the music can be played a fourth lower on the descant.

The descant recorder and its close relatives also largely fell out of fashion at this time, although a handful of composers persisted with it in England. The names of such recorders often described their relationship to the treble recorder. Therefore the descant was a fifth flute because it’s pitched a fifth above the treble. It’s this recorder for which Giuseppe Sammartini, an Italian oboist working in London, composed his delightful concerto.

Alongside the descant there are two other variants. The fourth flute was pitched in B flat, a fourth above the treble and sounds rather mellower than the modern descant. It’s something of an anomaly, but two lovely suites by Dieupart survive for this instrument.

A more common small recorder (at least in England) was the sixth flute, sounding a sixth above the treble, and an octave above the voice flute. Three composers, William Babell, Robert Woodcock and John Baston, chose this as their instrument of choice for their charming concertos. These were almost certainly composed to be played between the acts of operas in London and the high pitch would no doubt have commanded the audience’s attention.

Should you invest in different types of recorder?

The decision of buy different types of recorders is a very personal one. If your playing comes as part of a massed ensemble, such as an SRP branch, a Baroque style recorder may suit your needs just fine.

On the other hand, if you play lots of Renaissance music, especially in smaller consorts, using historically appropriate instruments may help you get closer to the sound world of the period. Renaissance recorders require a different style of playing, from breath control to articulation, and can help you understand the music better. During my first year at music college our department invested in a double consort of Mollenhauer Kynseker recorders. We immediately noticed the difference. Suddenly we could use the appropriate articulation to bring out the cross rhythms and it was much easier to create sweetly tuned chords. Even when recording my consort videos now, I always use my Kynseker recorders for Renaissance repertoire and I hope perhaps you can hear some of these differences in the tone, style and articulation.

Ultimately your choice may come down to budget - after all, none of us have bottomless pockets. If this is the case and you have no plans to buy more recorders, I would still encourage you to at least try them when you have an opportunity - perhaps at an early music festival or during a recorder course where there’s an in house recorder shop. Trying a Renaissance recorder or voice flute for even a few minutes will give you a glimpse into these different sound worlds and a greater understanding of how the instruments we play can change the way we play the music written for them.

Time travel for musicians - from the Medieval to the 18th century