Sounding Pipes, Edition 8

It’s a year or so since I last brought you one of my Sounding Pipes playlists, and during the intervening months I’ve been collecting a myriad of wonderful recordings, played on recorders of all sizes. This eighth edition of Sounding Pipes, focuses on one of our instrument’s superpowers - its infinite flexibility and versatility.

The recorder’s native repertoire stretches for 1000 years, but we do have a missing century and a half - that period from around 1750 to the early twentieth century when orchestras grew ever larger, thus squeezing our relatively quiet instrument into oblivion. During this period other woodwind instruments evolved, with a larger bore and extra keywork to give them added power, a greater range and the ability to easily play chromatic music. The recorder, however, missed out on these innovations and it wasn’t until well into the 20th century that modern makers really began to experiment and expand our instrument’s technical possibilities.

There were of course recorder-like instruments that persisted in particular geographic areas (as you’ll see and hear below), but even these remained fairly true to the way Baroque recorders were voiced. At first glance this lack of evolution may seem a negative thing, but I would argue it’s ultimately worked in our favour. Having too much choice can be a bad thing - one gets paralysed by the endless possibilities. Because we have that historical gap in our instrument’s native repertoire, recorder players have become very good at ‘borrowing’ music and making it our own. Admittedly it’s not possible for every type of music to suit the recorder (anyone fancy Wagner’s Ring Cycle of operas for voices and recorder orchestra?!), but our willingness to try playing unexpected music on recorders has proved surprisingly effective at times. It’s hard to think of another instrument which can play such a wide range of musical styles as effectively as the recorder. For instance, how often do you hear a string quartet playing jazz, or a clarinet choir exploring the medieval stylings of Perotin?

It’s this thought which inspired the collection of music I’ve brought together for you today. Prepare yourself for a smorgasbord of musical styles, from the Medieval to jazz, with forays into Classical opera and lush orchestral Romanticism along the way. I realise not everything will be to your tastes - after all, you can’t please all the people all the time. Hopefully though you may find some unexpected pleasures along the way and I feel sure it’ll broaden your horizons, opening your eyes to even more of the recorder’s possibilities.

Let’s begin by stepping back 700 years to Medieval France….

Guillaume de Machaut - Douce Dame Jolie

Performed by La Morra: Corina Marti (recorder), Michał Gondko (lute), VivaBiancaLuna Biffi (voice, vielle) and Marc Mauillon (voice).

This was one of the most popular songs from 14th century France and here it’s performed on instruments which would have been familiar at the time. Like most popular songs today, the lyrics are written in verses, interspersed with choruses, talking of love - some things remains the same, even after 700 years!

Sweet, lovely lady for God's sake do not think that any has sovereignty over my heart, but you alone.

For always, without treachery cherished have I you, and humbly all the days of my life served without base thoughts. Alas, I am left begging for hope and relief; for my joy is at its end without your compassion.

Sweet, lovely lady....

But your sweet mastery masters my heart so harshly, tormenting it and binding In unbearable love, so that [my heart] desires nothing but to be in your power. And still, your own heart renders it no relief.

Sweet, lovely lady....
And since my malady healed will never be without you, sweet enemy, who takes delight in my torment with clasped hands I beseech your heart, that forgets me, that it mercifully kill me for too long have I languished.

Sweet, lovely lady....

Hildegard of Bingen - O virtus sapientiae

Sophia Schambeck - double recorder

Much is made today of the need for women composers to be more visible - the world of composing has long been dominated by men. But there have always been women who defy this norm, composing music which survives to this day. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) is a prime example. A German Benedictine Abess, she was also a polymath, active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary and as a medical writer and practitioner during the Middle Ages. And she did all of this over a long life - 81 years - which would have been exceptional during the 11th century.

Music at this time was simple in form - single melodic lines, or perhaps organum - that’s two lines played in parallel, creating the simplest form of harmony. Here this beautiful melody, O virtus sapientiae, is performed by Sophia Schambeck on a double recorder. With one hand she plays the tune, while the other half of the instrument creates a static accompaniment of drone-like held notes. The result is absolutely mesmeric.

Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto RV580 for 4 recorders, first movement

Recorders: Michael Form, Claudius Kamp, Yi-Chang Liang, HyeonHo Jeon, Baroque Cello: Hyunkun Cho, Harpsichord: Eunji Lee

It’s been said that Antonio Vivaldi composed the same concerto 600 times, but I think that’s more than a little unfair! Granted, there are many works among his output which feel quite similar - hardly surprising for a composer who was so prodigious. But there are some wonderful works of tremendous ingenuity and drama too. This piece comes from a collection of twelve concertos for strings, published in Amsterdam in 1711, titled L’estro armonico - The Harmonic Inspiration. In this volume Vivaldi uses solo instruments in a creative way, with combinations of soloists rather than just a single violinist. In this concerto, No.10, he writes no fewer than four solo violin parts and in this performance they’ve been replaced by four recorders.

One of the challenges of playing music with multiple recorders of the same size is making each voice stand out as an individual. Without the dynamic range of the violin, recorder players have to get creative with articulation instead, using infinitely varied note lengths to create contrast between the lines. This wonderful performance does so beautifully when all four recorders are together, as well as having solo spots featuring each individual player.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Overture to The Marriage of Figaro

Flutes in Situ - Belgian duo Laterna Magica: Nathalie Houtman & Laura Pok - csakans, Thomas Waelbroek - piano.

From the Baroque period, we shift forward into the recorder’s missing century and a composer who wrote some of the most exquisitely perfect music - sadly none of it for our instrument. As I mentioned earlier, recorder-like instruments continued to exist in small pockets throughout the Classical period. One of these was the csakan in Austria and Hungary. Like the recorder, it’s a fipple flute, but usually pitched in A flat and designed as part of a gentleman’s walking stick. A small group of composers (Anton Heberle and Ernst Krähmer being the best known) wrote original music for the instrument, but it wasn’t unusual for performers to use it to play arrangements of popular music from the era.

In this arrangement of the Overture from The Marriage of Figaro, Nathalie Houtman and Laura Pok play two csakans, accompanied by a piano typical of the period. The lighter sound of the piano (compared to modern grand pianos) pairs with the csakans perfectly and it’s such a delight to hear Mozart played in this way.

Gustav Mahler - Symphony No.1, third movement

Hsin-Chu Recorder Orchestra, conducted by Meng-Heng Chen

Mahler isn’t a composer who immediately springs to mind when you think of the recorder, but this is an unexpected arrangement which works surprisingly well. In the third movement of his first Symphony Mahler reuses the familiar children’s song, Frère Jacques, changing the key from major to minor to create a funeral march. Along the way he also incorporates melodies reminiscent of Czech folk songs. Mahler was a master of orchestration, using colourful combinations of instruments, and that’s the one element which inevitably remains absent in a recorder arrangement. The Hsin-Chu Recorder Orchestra add cello and double bass in their performance, and the pizzicato strings sound undoubtedly adds a fresh tone colour. Even if you disagree with the borrowing of music which is so alien to the recorder, I think it’s important to push the boundaries from time to time to explore the almost limitless boundaries of our instrument.

Eugene Magalif - Colibri

Berlin Recorder Orchestra, conducted by Simon Borutzki

Born in Belarus and now living in the USA, Eugene Magalif may be an unfamiliar name, but he has a long track record of composing music for the flute. Colibri (Hummingbird) was originally composed for flute and string orchestra and was crucial in bringing Eugene to the attention of flautist James Galway, with whom he had a long working relationship. Simon Borutzki, the conductor of the Berlin Recorder Orchestra, created this arrangement for recorder orchestra and, listening to this spectacular performance, you’d be hard pushed it realise it’s been borrowed - it first the BRO like a glove.

Eugene writes the following about the piece:

“Hummingbirds migrate annually from Central America to New Jersey for the summer months and then back again, flying thousands of miles. They are the only birds that can move in any direction and hover in the air like bees. There is a family of hummingbirds that return every summer to our backyard, where we put out feeders filled with sweet nectar for them. One day I was sitting on the balcony, talking with professor Oleg Sytianko, from Turku, Finland. He asked me to write something for flute, promising to perform it at the music conservatory. In the same moment, the hummingbirds arrived. Seeing these cheerful little birds, a melody instantly came to mind—a simple melody, but with a special rhythmic pattern.”

Chick Corea - Armando’s Rhumba

Arrangement by Tal Zilber. performed by Tali Rubinstein - recorder and Tal Zilber - piano

My last Score Lines blog introduced you to advice from jazz musician Chick Corea, so when I discovered this phenomenal performance of his music by Tali Rubinstein I just had to include it in my Sounding Pipes playlist. This may have the genes of jazz at its heart, but Tal Zilber also manages to squeeze in snippets of music from Georges Bizet’s Carmen and J.S.Bach’s Badinerie from his second orchestral suite. A musical tour de force!

That concludes my playlist, featuring a tremendous variety of music, covering ten centuries. I can’t think of another instrument which could so effortlessly play all these different styles of music and I hope you’ll agree our lives as recorder players are richer for this. Have I missed out a style of music you might have included? If so, why not leave a comment below and share some of your favourite recorder gems with us?

The art of listening

Photo by Rupam Dutta

I’ve written before about the act of listening, while playing music and as an audience member. My blog post from 2021, The Importance of Awareness, focused mostly on paying greater attention to the musical world around you as a participant, from the physicality of your technique, to the creative use of expression in your playing and awareness of those with whom you are playing in an ensemble.

Today we’re going to widen our listening to the work of other composers and performers.

For most people listening is an activity we do for pleasure - perhaps we allow the music to wash over us as a way of relaxing, or maybe we’re inspired by the virtuosity of professional performers. As a performer and teacher, I’m very accustomed to listening to music in a critical way. That might be in a pupil’s lesson, picking up on both the positive and negative elements of their playing and musicianship. Or it could be while I’m listening to a recording or live performance, noting the way the musicians interpret the music, or how the composer has chosen to structure it. During my student years we spent a lot of time listening in an intentional and active way, because this is a great way to learn how music is composed.

Passive listening can be a wonderful thing, but opening your ears in a more active way can teach you a huge amount - it’s this we’ll be looking at today.

“Music is organised sound”. Edgar Varèse, composer

All the music we play and listen to has a high level of organisation - it’s this that helps us understand it as a listener, whether we do so instinctively or through an understanding of the composer’s methods. But have you given much thought to exactly how a composer organises the notes to create a coherent structure, ensuring the music is satisfying and logical? Perhaps not, especially if you’ve never had a formal musical training. Let’s break these building blocks down into what are often known as the seven ‘elements of music’ - timbre, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, melody, harmony, and texture.

Timbre

This word describes the tone colour or quality of sound in music. Sometimes a composer will choose a particular instrument to play a melody, or perhaps combine several different instruments to create a specific type of tone colour. Each instrument produces its own individual tone colour - the clarity of a recorder, the warmth of the low notes on a violin, the power of a trumpet or perhaps the focused tone of an oboe. Some instruments can also create changes of sound via specific techniques - for instance, a violinist can pluck the strings as well as bowing them, and brass players can insert different types of mute into the bell of their instrument to modify the tone.

Rhythm

This is the way the spacing of beats and silences are organised. Time signatures and barlines govern the way the beats are grouped, and the composer chooses his or her desired combination of long and short notes. The speed of the beat or pulse is often related to the human heart beat, especially in early music. The type of rhythms used can also vary enormously, depending on the style of music - for instance, jazz will commonly have more syncopated or swung rhythms than other styles. Composers will often use repetitive rhythm patterns to create a coherent structure in the music.

Tempo

This is the speed at which music is played or sung - often indicated with a metronome mark, which describes the number of beats per minute. Tempo follows a sliding scale, from very slow to very fast and doesn’t need to be the same throughout a single piece of music. Some composers use lots of subtle tempo changes to create a feeling of ebb and flow in their music.

Dynamics

The volume of sound produced by instruments or voices, from soft to loud. Sudden or gradual changes of dynamic can create depth and variety in music, as well as enhancing the way it makes us feel as we listen. Dynamics are usually indicated with combinations of the letters - p (an abbreviation for piano - the Italian word for soft), f (forte/loud) and m (mezzo/moderately). The words crescendo and diminuendo (growing and diminishing respectively) are used to indicate gradual changes of dynamic.

Melody

Put simply, this is the tune. Melodies are created from combinations of scale and arpeggios and are often the element you recall long after you’ve heard a new piece - think of that earworm which can get stuck in your head for hours or days! A melody might be a short motif, or a longer, more expansive phrase. Melodies can be made of conjunct notes (stepwise - like a scale) or disjunct (notes which leap around by larger intervals) and this can entirely change the character.

Harmony

These are the notes which sound simultaneously with a melody, often enriching it and perhaps changing the way we perceive it. Harmonies can be consonant (pleasant combinations of sound, such as the notes from a single arpeggio) or dissonant (clashing, discordant notes which create a sense of tension). Harmony has changed over the centuries, from simple octaves in medieval music, to rich chromatic chords in the works of Romantic composers.

Texture

This is the way the music is constructed, combining one or more melodic lines and the accompanying parts together. Density of texture can vary enormously, from sparse to rich. One extreme might be a single line, played or sung alone (monophonic - literally one sound). A choir singing a hymn tune would be described as homophonic, because they are all largely singing together in chords. In contrast, a canon or fugue would be described as polyphonic (many sounds) because the voices are playing and moving independently of each other.

Whether you want or need to know the technical terms for all these characteristics will depend on the depth of knowledge you desire. But just recognising the differences will bring you a greater understanding of the music, both as a listener and as a player.

I’m going to share some pieces of music with you to illustrate many of these characteristics. I’ll include recordings, as well as links to the scores so you can follow along with them. We all learn in different ways. For those who learn aurally, hearing the music may illustrate my points well enough, but if you find it easier to pick up new concepts through visual cues, having the scores may help reinforce your learning.

The music I share below covers a wide range of repertoire. We’ll begin in the recorder player’s familiar territory of the Renaissance and Baroque. Other pieces venture beyond the recorder’s home sound world, but I hope you’ll still find them interesting and inspiring. Even if you play mostly early music, it’s a good idea to widen your musical horizons from time to time as a means of opening one’s ears to fresh ideas.

With each piece I’ll highlight one or more of the elements of music to listen out for - you may make some surprising discoveries.

Bach Chorale - Jesu meine freude

We’ll begin with texture and this is a good example of homophonic music. From the score you can see that the voices move together most of the time, shifting to a new harmony or chord on each beat - I’ve highlighted this vertical movement with red lines in the first two bars. This creates quite a dense texture, with sound levels remaining the same throughout the piece. While the notes are easy enough to play or sing, such simple music requires excellent ensemble skills to ensure everyone’s rhythms match exactly.

Byrd - Fantasia à 4

At the opposite textural extreme we have the polyphonic music of the Renaissance, where composers such as Byrd write multiple independent parts, which have a conversation, weaving in and out of each other. In this Fantasia you hear each line begin at different times, but the way they interweave creates a coherent musical whole.

Notice too how on the first page (shown below), all the voices share a single line of melody - sometimes imitating each other, sometimes playing together a beat apart. This melodic shape is highlighted in yellow in the extract below. When Byrd has finished exploring this particular melodic fragment, he moves on and uses a new tune, working with six or seven different themes during the course of this one Fantasia.

View fullsize

Even Byrd steps away from polyphony at times - notice how all four voices come together for just a few seconds at 1:57 to play chords in rhythmic unison, before breaking away once again into a musical conversation.

Download Byrd’s original score here.

Download and play the music as a recorder consort here.

Mozart - Kyrie from Requiem

Before I move away from polyphonic music, one of the most formal examples of this genre is the fugue. Unlike a Fantasia, which meanders from one melodic idea to another, the fugue has a very precise structure. I plan to explain this in more detail in a future blog post, but this recording of the Kyrie from Mozart’s Requiem illustrates it very well. In the video you can see how Mozart combines two contrasting musical ideas to create a conversation between the voices. The subject (the main melodic theme, highlighted in purple) is a robust and quite angular melody, leaping dramatically, while the countersubject (a melody which works against the subject, highlighted in pink) is much busier, running hurriedly in short bursts of scales, building up the excitement.

Download Mozart’s full score here.

Download and play the music as a recorder consort here

Corelli Concerto Grosso Op.6 No.8

This well known work by Corelli gives us an opportunity to explore harmony and texture.

If you listen to the second movement, which begins 17 seconds into this recording, you’ll hear how the chords perpetually shift between discords and concords - moments where the notes clash with each other to create tension, before the harmony resolves into something less strident. In the extract below I’ve circled all the notes that clash with each other so you can see just how many there are.

View fullsize

In the following Allegro (which begins at 1:18 in the video) you can hear the texture change from being mostly formed from chords, to something more dynamic. The violins continue to shift between concords and discords (highlighted in the extract below) but the bassline takes on a much more energetic and melodic role, powering the music along through a continuous flow of quavers. As you can see from this extract, this melodic lines uses lots of disjunct movement (notes which jump around rather than moving in scales) which gives the music a lots of energy and drive. Notice how the players also take a creative decision to make the notes quite detached, even though Corelli gives no staccato marks in the music.

View fullsize

Download Corelli’s Score here.

Download and play the music as a recorder consort here.

Beethoven - Piano Concerto no.4, 2nd movement

Moving away from the recorder’s natural musical territory, we turn to music with a greater range of timbres and textures. In Beethoven’s 4th piano concerto he composes for a typical classical symphony orchestra - strings, woodwind (two each of flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon), two trumpets, two French horns and timpani. This brings him plenty of scope to create interesting combinations of tone colour, but in the 2nd movement he pares the scoring right back to the basics – just solo piano and the string section. This minimalism has a magical simplicity and there’s a real sense of conversation between the soloist and orchestra.

As you can see in the extract of the score below, at first the piano and orchestra don’t play together at all. The strings play a staccato melodic line together in octaves and their phrases are answered by a simple, legato melody in the piano, accompanied with chords. At 2:47 in the video the strings shift to just playing occasional pizzicato (plucked) notes, setting the piano free to explore alone, with more flowing melodic ideas. At 4:27 the orchestra returns, with the cellos and double basses playing a melody in octaves, while the violins sustain a single note. It’s not until 4:41 that the strings finally get to play together in harmony, accompanying the piano for the last few bars of the movement.

View fullsize

Download the full score here.

Isn’t this a magical effect? Beethoven composed lots of powerful music, which grabs you through its sheer force. But here he goes back to the simplest of elements and I think it’s all the more powerful for this.

Holst - The Planets - Mars, The Bringer of War

This is a piece which probably needs little introduction, but have you ever thought about how Holst creates a sense of Mars as the Bringer of War? Listen carefully and you’ll hear the way he uses many elements of music to do this.

Download the full score here.

First he uses rhythm. Listen to how the repeated rhythm which appears first in the timpani, harp and strings, creates an incessant drive - like an army marching into war. The use of a repeating rhythm like this is called an ostinato and you’ll have heard the device in many other pieces of music - Ravel’s Bolero, for instance, where the side drum plays the same repeating rhythm throughout the work.

It’s not just Holst’s use of an ostinato that creates this war-like feel. His choice of time signature is unsettling because we generally prefer rhythms which feel balanced and symmetrical -  after all we have two of most of most parts of our body - eyes, ears, lungs, feet, hands. By having a time signature of 5/4, the two halves of the bar feel unbalanced - three beats followed by two - so this immediately creates a sense of tension.

View fullsize

Now listen to the harmony Holst uses - rather than being straightforwardly major or minor, there are many more discords, once again creating a sense of tension. Later in the movement, the focus move onto a sinister melody in the lower instruments (3:37 in the video). But if you listen carefully you can still hear the side drum and trumpets nagging away with little snippets of the original ostinato rhythm - highlighted in red boxes below.

View fullsize

Andy Williams - Music to Watch Girls By

After all that tension, let’s move onto something complete different, and much sunnier too. Even if 1960s pop music isn’t your thing, there’s plenty to listen out for - in particular the use of melody in this classic sung by Andy Williams.

The main melody of the song is undeniably catchy - one of the character traits of any good pop song. But listen more carefully, beyond Williams’ vocals. Did you notice that 27 seconds into the song, the backing singers and brass section echo snippets of that same melody between the song’s phrases? At 1:06 we have another classic feature of pop songs - a sudden and pretty un-subtle key change as the music is abruptly pulled up a semitone from G minor to A flat minor.

This leads us into the central instrumental section (at 1:07) where the brass play the melody, but did you notice what the violins were doing at the same time? Listen carefully and you’ll hear they have a long, sinuous melody of their own, which slinks around above the brass. This is called a countermelody, as it works against the main tune. Can you follow the violins without getting distracted by the main theme? This can be tricky to do, but it’s a useful exercise as it’ll help you learn to pick out different melodies and rhythms in the music you play.

Sergei Prokofiev - Peter and the Wolf

For my final piece of music I’m going to talk about the concept of programme music. Most of the repertoire we play as recorder players is absolute music - that’s music which is abstract rather than descriptive. But sometimes we want to paint an aural picture, describing an event, scene or emotion. We probably overlook the programme music we encounter most frequently - the incidental music accompanying films and TV shows. Rather than existing as standalone concert items (although sometimes composers create concert suites from their music to make this possible), film soundtracks are there to support the visual images we’re watching and amplify the emotions the director is trying to convey.

For instance, Alfred Hitchcock originally intended the iconic shower scene in Psycho to be unscored, but his composer, Bernard Herrmann, persuade him to try it with the score he’d written to accompany it. The shrieking violins undoubtedly add to the horror of the scene, although in reality we see almost no blood and the violent sound effects were actually created by stabbing a melon! If you want to compare the moment with and without music you can see both versions here.

Often a composer will use a specific theme in programme music to help illustrate a person, place or idea - known as a leitmotif. Wagner was perhaps the greatest proponent of this technique, using over sixty distinct musical themes to depict people, places, objects and event concepts in The Ring - a cycle of four operas. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to listen to sixteen hours of opera - I have something more compact to illustrate the same point!

In Peter and the Wolf, a musical retelling of a Russian folk tale, Prokofiev not only uses a particular melody for each character in the story, but he also pairs these tunes with a specific instrument - for instance a high, twittering flute to depict the bird. Each time a character appears in the story we hear their theme and instrument, but Prokofiev also modifies these melodies to illustrate the activities of the characters. When the cat (depicted by the clarinet) climbs a tree (12:38 in the video), the clarinet line scampers higher and higher, to help us envisage the character jumping upwards from branch to branch, as you can see in the extract below. Likewise, at 26:26 the end the duck’s theme is heard with an ethereal string accompaniment, as we hear her calling from inside the wolf, having been swallowed alive.

View fullsize

Download the score here.

Now it’s your turn…

I hope some of the pieces I’ve talked about have perhaps opened your eyes and ears to new musical horizons and some of the tools composers use to write music. Now it’s your turn to do a little homework…

Next time you listen to a piece of music take a few moments to ask yourself some questions about what you’re hearing. Try to be as descriptive as possible with your answers to these questions. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the technical terms, but just having to use descriptive language of one type or another to identify what you’re hearing can be educational.

Here are some ideas to get you started…

Timbre - is the music being played by a monochromatic ensemble or has the composer written a score with lots of variety of tonal colours? For instance, a recorder consort or brass band would count as monochromatic, because all the instruments fundamentally produce the same tone, albeit at a variety of different pitches. In contrast, the instruments in a symphony orchestra produce infinitely varied tones, so composer can create different colours by giving a melody to the oboe, while the strings provide the accompaniment. Ask yourself which instruments you are hearing, distinguishing the flute from a bassoon or the trumpets from the violins.

Dynamics - how would you describe what you are hearing? Is the music quiet and ethereal, or perhaps loud and bombastic? How did the dynamic contrasts change the way you feel about the music?

Tempo - how would you describe the tempo? Is the music slow or fast? Does the speed remain constant (tap or clap along with the music to help you judge this) or is the speed more flexible and changeable?

Rhythm - what sort of rhythms has the composer used? Is the music crisp and staccato, or elegant and flowing? Do you want to march to it, or to sway along to a waltz? How does it make you feel? Don’t be afraid to move your body to the music – this instinctive movement may better help you quantify your response to the rhythm.

Tonality - how does the music make you feel? Music composed in minor keys often has a feeling of melancholy, while major keys can feel brighter and happier. But, as this article suggests, this concept is more common in western music than that of other cultures and there are exceptions to every rule. Think back to Music to Watch Girls By, which we listened to earlier - undoubtedly a joyful, lively song, but in a minor key.

Texture - think about the way the composer has structured the music. How would you describe the texture? You can use simple descriptive words - sparse, dense, lush, smooth, spiky. Also listen out for the way the composer has achieved this - do the voices imitate each other, or are all the parts playing together like a chorale? Or perhaps there’s a solo voice with a melody, which the lines are accompanying?

If you enjoy this exercise and find it helps you become more aware as you listen, you could perhaps get into the habit of making notes about what you’re hearing. Maybe take half an hour each week to listen to a piece of music and write down the things that stand out to you most. Which features appeal to you most? Do you find surprising commonalities between pieces music which, on the surface, seem very different? Does this process help you to understand music better and perhaps like works you might have dismissed before?

Have I made you think differently about music? I know I’ve asked a lot of questions in this blog post, perhaps more than just giving you information to absorb. Yes, there’s undoubtedly a place for mindless enjoyment of music, but understanding can help you appreciate it even more. These listening skills can be applied to any type of music, whether it’s by Handel, Brahms or Jimi Hendrix, and I hope perhaps I’ve helped you explore your musical world in a new way. If you’ve had a real ‘Eureka’ moment as a result of this, I’d love you to share it in the comments below. We all come to music from different places and I’d love to hear about your own individual musical discoveries this week.

Music in the world of podcasting

I don’t know about you, but when I’m on the road I often listen to podcasts rather than music to speed me on my way. What began as niche format around 2006, when the first Apple iPod was released, has become a mainstream form of media. Most broadcasters now also share their radio programmes in podcast format, and if you’re willing to spend time searching, there are individuals creating podcasts about a vast array of subjects.

The recorder has yet to feature in many podcasts but, if you’re interested in a variety of music there are plenty of shows that might pique your interest. While the Score Lines blog takes a break, I thought I’d bring together links to some of my favourites - all of them connected to music. Some of these are shows I’ve discovered via my subscribers, but others were already in my library.

While the podcast came about in response to a specific audio device, most of them can also be found via the providers’ websites so I’ll share those here, so as to open them up to as many people as possible - I realise not everyone uses a smartphone or MP3 player. That said, if you want to search for them in the podcast directory on your own portable device, many of them will be available there too.

Let’s make this an ongoing project which we can all contribute to. If you have a favourite music or recorder related podcast I haven’t mentioned here, please do leave a comment below or drop me an email and I can gradually add them into the list below.

The Recorder Podcast

Created by recorder maker Estelle Langthorne, these short episodes give a glimpse into the way recorders are made and how to get the best out of them. Find the Recorder Podcast at www.recorderpodcast.com.

Available to listen via a browser or via podcast apps.

Key Matters

Many thanks to one of my subscribers who led me to this one in response to my blog post about the theory of key signatures. Each 15 minute episode explores a particular key, talking about the characters of each one and some of the music composed with a given set of sharps or flats.

Find Key Matters here.

How to Play

This was another programme suggested to me by a pupil and each episode brings insights into a piece of music from the performer’s perspective. The mix of music covered is wide, but it includes Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.2 (which features the recorder) and other early music too.

Find How to Play here.

The Gramophone Classical Music Podcast

As you’d expect from a classical music magazine (which has been going for over a century now), the Gramophone podcast covers a wide range of musical styles. Some of them talk about the latest recordings, while others feature interviews with composers and performers, but with episodes stretching all the way back to 2009 you’re bound to find something to pique your interest.

Find the Gramophone Podcast here.

Available to listen via a browser or via podcast apps.

This Cultural Life

Another offering from the BBC, featuring In-depth conversations with creative people from the theatre, visual arts, music, dance, film and more. In it the host, John Wilson, invites his guests to talk about the influences on their own creative work. I particularly enjoyed a recent episode featuring the conductor Antonio Pappano.

Find This Cultural Life here.

Available to listen via a browser or via podcast apps.

Add to Playlist

I mentioned this podcast a few months ago in one of my Score Lines emails after the recorder player and flautist Heidi Fardell appeared on the show. Each programme features a playlist of five pieces of music, chosen by the hosts and guests. Each piece of music has a connection to the previous and following pieces and it never fails to amaze me how they are able to create links between apparently disparate styles of music.

Find Add to Playlist here.

Episode featuring recorder player Heidi Fardell

Available to listen via a browser or via podcast apps.

Desert Island Discs

This is surely the best known music podcast and you’ll never run out of episodes. Devised in 1942 by Roy Plomley, it’s been running ever since and there are now nearly 2500 episodes available to listen to in the archive. Each guest chooses the eight recordings, plus a book and a luxury, that they’d wish to have with them if they were stranded on a desert island and the choices can be very revealing. I bet most people have considered their own hypothetical desert islands discs and in the early days of the Score Lines blog I created my own recorder themed one!

Find the Desert Island Discs podcast here.

Available to listen via a browser or via podcast apps.

Tweet of the Day

Ok, I know I’m stretching things here, but there’s long been a connection between the recorder and birdsong in music, so I hope you’ll forgive me this one. These tiny little podcasts were originally devised in 2013 by Sir David Attenborough and were broadcast at 6am each day. Each one lasts less than two minutes, but it’s amazing how much you can learn about different birdsongs in such a short time!

Find the Tweet of the Day podcast here.

Available to listen via a browser or via podcast apps.

Sounding Pipes, Edition 7

It’s all too easy to get pulled into curious rabbit holes on the internet, scrolling endlessly between videos on platforms like YouTube, and it can become a tremendous timewaster. But there are plenty of gems hidden among the nonsense too. Every time I discover something I find interesting I save it, to share with you in my periodic Sounding Pipes playlists. Currently I have a huge list remaining on my longlist, so I think it’s fair to say there’s plenty more to share and inspire you in future editions!

For this seventh edition I’ve pulled together a collection of performances in which the recorder is combined with other instruments - some more surprising than others. We often hear the recorder in partnership with string instruments, but less so with brass or modern woodwind. I think these recordings show just how flexible our favourite instrument really is in the right hands, and I hope you derive as much enjoyment from them as as I have seeking them out to share with you.

Telemann - Concerto in F major, TWV 42:F14

Allegro - Loure - Tempo di Minuett

Croation Baroque Ensemble: Stjepan Nodilo - recorder, Bruno Grošić - horn and the Croation Baroque Ensemble.

Most modern brass instruments would be overpowering when combined with a recorder (although I did once play a duet for sopranino recorder and trombone!) but instruments from the Baroque period have a gentler tone and can be great partners. Telemann was a multi-instrumentalist himself (playing flute, oboe, violin, viola da gamba, recorder, double bass and more besides) so he wasn’t afraid to bring together instruments you might otherwise not consider pairing together. Here we have a delightful Concerto for recorder, horn and continuo, which demonstrates the flexibility of earlier members of the brass family.

Gordon Jacob - Suite

Daniel Koschitzki & Clair-Obscur Saxophone Quartet

Back in Edition 2 of Sounding Pipes I shared a movement from Gordon Jacob’s Suite, performed by Annabel Knight with a string quartet - the instruments originally named by the composer. Imagine my surprise when I discovered this new version, where our soloist is accompanied by a saxophone quartet! At face value you’d think four saxes would overpower a single recorder, but a combination of sensitive accompanying and the use of modern recorders makes for a wonderful effect. The tone of a saxophone is just as flexibile as any string instrument, and you can sense there’s a real connection and unanimous sense of intent between Daniel Koschitzki and the members of the Clair-Obscur Saxophone Quartet. I’ve long been a fan of this piece, but I think the use of saxes brings renewed life to the bluesy harmonies of the Pavan and the bossa nova rhythms of the Burlesque (movements 3 and 4 respectively).

Dario Castello - Ottava Sonata

Anna Stegmann - recorder, Inga Maria Klaucke - dulcian & Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya - harpsichord

We come back to the early years of the Baroque period for this Sonata by Dario Castello - part duet, part duel, for two very contrasting instruments. Anna Stegmann chooses a descant recorder to contrast with the dulcian - an ancestor of the modern bassoon - and the effect is enchanting. It may well have been composed originally for violin, but music from this period was often played on a variety of instruments so I don’t think we should have any hesitation in borrowing repertoire this good if it fits our recorders!

Viktor Fortin - Walking the dog

Clémence Grégoire - recorder & Tomás Braun - guitar

This humorous movement by Viktor Fortin is one of four character pieces for bass recorder and guitar, and it proves to be an attractive combination. I can’t help but wonder what breed of dog the composer had in mind when writing this. Thinking of the dogs I’ve met over the years who share these relaxed characteristics, my mind wanders back to the Basset Hound belonging to my clarinet teacher when I was teenager, who used to sing along in my lessons!

Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto in G minor, “La Notte”

Apollo’s Cabinet

https://youtu.be/kV3SnDAPrkA?si=BPZYu9EFtBJiBEXH

Vivaldi composed a good number of concertos for the recorder, but this one for flute is often purloined as a pseudo-recorder concerto too, even though it was originally intended for the flute. Vivaldi’s title, La Notte, conjures up a whole host of images and Apollo’s Cabinet have chosen to focus on the concept of this being a nightmare. The addition of theorbo and some subtle percussion played on a tenor drum add to the colour palette. The dramatic staging just adds a finishing spooky touch!

Which of those did you enjoy the most? I’d love to hear what you thought of my choices in the comments section below. Do you have your own favourite pieces featuring the recorder alongside other instruments? If you do, please do share them so we can all continue our musical explorations!

Arranging and composing for recorder consort

The recorder has a wider range of native repertoire than many instruments thanks to its long history. We have Renaissance consorts (many of which were composed for unspecified instruments so they’re definitely fair game for recorders), a plethora of Baroque sonatas and concertos (even a smattering of consort pieces from the period) and a vast array of works composed since the recorder’s 20th century revival. But still we have a perpetual desire to broaden the range of music we play. This invariably leads us to raid other sources for music we can borrow, including vocal and instrumental repertoire.

If, like me, you want to explore beyond the recorder’s native repertoire you have three choices - transcriptions of pre-existing music, making more creative arrangements or composing something from scratch. Let’s consider each of these in turn…

Transcription

I would class this as a piece where you can take a work and transfer it quite simply to recorders. You might need to change the key of the music (more about that later) or play a little with the parts to make them fit, but otherwise it’s generally a fairly simple process. This approach often works well with vocal music and many Renaissance instrumental works will translate easily to recorders too.

Creative arrangement

In this category you might choose to create a new piece from a tune you already know - for instance combining folk tunes and adding your own twist of creativity. I think this could also include arrangements of music which isn’t immediately obviously suitable for recorders. Perhaps a piece for piano where you have to create individual lines from a more homogenous texture.

Composing

Handel’s manuscript

Here the only limit is your own imagination!

You have complete control over the choice of instruments, style of music, level of difficulty and much more. Whether you feel comfortable composing may depend on your musical knowledge and level of experience, but I would argue there’s nothing to stop you having a go. As with writing a novel, I would suggest you begin by drawing on your own experiences. Perhaps start with your recorder, noodling around with the sort of musical shapes you enjoy playing and if something great comes to you try writing it down. You could begin with a single line and work on from there. Even if you never share the music with anyone else you’ll learn from the experience and it’ll give you a greater understanding of what composers do. You don’t need fancy music typesetting software for this - all that’s required is some manuscript paper, a pencil and eraser. You can even download and print manuscript paper from the internet these days. Blanksheetmusic.net will even insert the clef for you before you print.

I’m going to focus mostly today on arranging as that’s my main area of expertise - I’ve never been much of a  composer. But many of my tips will apply just as much to composing, so if that’s what tickles your fancy do read on…

Let’s say you fancy trying your hand at arranging or transcribing - where’s a good place to start?

Again, personal experience of music can lead you in a particular direction. Is there a piece of music you’ve heard that you’d like to try on recorders? Or maybe you have a favourite composer who neglected to write for your favourite instrument? These ideas may be enough to get you started, but I have some other ideas about the type of music you could mine.

Vocal music

Don’t be overambitious to begin with - pick something simple for your first arrangement. Vocal music often works really well because the range of the human voice is very similar to that of the recorder. Maybe begin with a hymn tune or a simple piece of Renaissance choral music? If you have a work for soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices, the chances are it’ll fit perfectly on descant, treble, tenor and bass recorders.

Renaissance instrumental music

Many pieces from this period don’t specify the instrumentation and may work well on recorders. If the music was originally for viols you might have to change the music from alto or tenor clef to something more familiar. You may find the notes need a little adjustment (shifting occasional low notes up an octave for instance) to fit the recorder. Unless you’re arranging the music for low recorders (tenor downwards) you’ll almost certainly need to shift all the notes an octave higher to make them fit, but we’ll talk about recorder pitch later.

Later music

Music intended for modern orchestral instruments may have lines which are too long for a single recorder to play, but we’ll look at how to cope with this in a while. It’s often tempting to try and fill the classical and romantic gap in the recorder’s repertoire, but sometimes pieces just don’t translate to recorders well. Many years ago I heard Wagner’s Procession to the Minster from Lohengrin played by a brass band and wondered if it might work on recorders. A brass band is a monochromatic ensemble (all the instruments basically make the same type of sound), just like recorders, so it seemed logical. Of course, a brass band has a much wider dynamic range and sadly I discovered a recorder orchestra (even if it’s made up of 130 people) just doesn’t have the same impact as a brass band at full power. It was a useful learning experience though, even if the music has only been used once!

If you’re considering arranging music originally intended for a symphony orchestra it’s worth bearing in mind the effect the transition to recorders may have on the impact of the music. Orchestral music derives a lot of its colour from the use of different instruments - for instance a melody played by a solo oboe against a string accompaniment. With a monochromatic recorder ensemble we lose this variety of colour so you may need to find ways around this. For instance, you could double a line an octave higher (say, a treble line doubled by sopranino) to bring a little sparkle. Some orchestral music will work this way, while other pieces just seem to lose their magic. That said, don’t be afraid to try - if nothing else you’ll learn something in the process!

The example below comes from my arrangement of The Shepherds’ Farewell by Berlioz. You can see that at bar 45 I’ve chosen to give all the music to the lower instruments to create a contrast of tone colour.

View fullsize

Keyboard music

A recorder transcription of keyboard music which contains clear musical lines (a fugue for instance) can be very effective. On the other hand, keyboard music (whether for piano, harpsichord or organ) can take many forms - single lines for each hand, chords or arpeggio patterns. These can require some imagination and creativity to make them work on recorders, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend keyboard music as the ideal starting point if you’re new to arranging.

The examples below come from Bach’s Little Fugue in C major. The original (on the left) is composed for keyboard, but the different voices are clear within the music so it transfers very easily to four recorder parts (on the right).

View fullsize

View fullsize

Listen to music for inspiration

As you listen to music ask yourself if you can imagine it being played on recorders. This is where my arrangements often start - sometimes I’ll hear a piece which immediately strikes me as being ‘recorder-like’ in some way. For instance, the Palestrina Sicut cervus I shared as a consort last year was something I discovered via YouTube. Its beauty and simple lines immediately struck me as being recorder-friendly so I went in search of the music.

Where to search for music?

Actually tracking down sheet music has become immeasurably easier over the last twenty years. Once upon a time you had to buy a physical book of sheet music or hope to find it in your local library. Now a search online can be all that’s needed. My first port of call is always the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) which is a vast repository for music that’s out of copyright. If you’re looking for something by a composer who died more than 70 years ago there’s a good chance you’ll find it here.

Other useful sources are the ChoralWiki (previously known as the Choral Public Domain Library or CPDL), 8Notes and the Mutopia Project. All of these sites offer free access to public domain music, but many have a paid tier to remove adverts or allow you unlimited downloads.

Getting started

Whether you’re arranging or composing for the recorder here are some basic pieces of practical advice which will help you get started.

Notation

Recorder notation can be confusing at first and sometimes trips up the unwary. You’ll often hear people talk about recorders in F and recorders in C. This suggests they’re transposing instruments, like the clarinet (which comes in B flat, A and E flat varieties). In reality all the letter describes is the pitch of the recorder’s lowest note. Therefore a recorder in F (treble, bass or sopranino) plays an F if all the finger holes are covered. Unlike real transposing instruments, any note on a recorder is written at its sounding pitch.

This brings us onto clefs….

Recorder clefs

All recorders either play from the treble or bass clef - which clef largely depends on the pitch of the instrument. Generally, any recorder down to the tenor plays from treble clef, while bass and lower use the bass clef. Having said that, some bass and great bass players prefer to play from treble clef so they don’t have to learn to read bass clef.

One small complication is the use of a little 8 above some clefs. This indicates that the instrument in question either sounds an octave (eight notes) higher or lower than the written pitch. This is a purely practical thing, so no one has to read too many leger lines. If descant recorder music was really notated at playing pitch, the lowest note would be in the third space of the stave and the high C would have five leger lines, making it very hard to read! As a result it can look as though treble music is higher in pitch than descant music because it tends to have more leger lines - something often confuses people.

Here’s a chart showing the clefs and sounding ranges of each type of recorder - you can see how using the octave clefs results in far fewer leger lines for some of the instruments:

View fullsize

View fullsize

Recorder ranges

While we’re thinking about notation, let’s also consider the range of notes you might use for each recorder. For most recorders, the easily useable range is two octaves and a note. Yes, higher notes are possible, but not very user friendly. It’s a good idea to think about the type of players you’re arranging the music for. Professionals should be able to play the entire compass, but if your intended audience is made up of middle of the road amateurs I would go for a more modest range. Fluent players will probably be comfortable with two octaves, but if you’re aiming your arrangement at those who are less confident I would restrict yourself to around an octave and six notes from each instrument’s lowest note.

Here’s another chart showing the written ranges for each instrument. Each instrument shows the range you could expect from advanced players, followed by an easier playing range for those who are less experienced.

View fullsize

View fullsize

Choose your instruments

Before you start arranging you need to decide which recorders you’re planning to write for. If you have a particular group in mind, do they have the full range of instruments? It’s no good writing a piece for the classic descant/treble/tenor/bass (SATB) quartet format, only to find that no one plays the bass! If you have access to more players, doubling up the inner parts (say, two treble and/or two tenor parts) can add richness to the sound because it allows you to write more layers into the music.

The following example comes from A Thousand Christmas Candles and you can see how the arranger has chosen to have two treble and tenor parts to increase the richness. He also uses octave doubling of the melody (shown by the circled bars) to create greater depth.

View fullsize

What sort of sound world are you aiming to create? An SATB quartet can be quite high pitched, while a low consort of tenor, bass, great bass and contrabass creates a much mellower effect. If you have enough players at your disposal, doubling lines at the octave can also be an effective way to enrich the sound. This works especially well in Renaissance music where the texture and harmony is often quite simple to start with.

In my arrangement of Bach’s By the Rivers of Babylon I chose to double the tenor melody line on great bass to enhance and enrich the sound.

View fullsize

Key signatures

Here I would encourage you to be kind! I’m sure you know from experience that playing in keys with many sharps or flats can be difficult on the recorder. This is largely because the accidentals often require forked or cross fingers (think of E flat on the treble, or B flat on the descant). These notes not only have a slightly different tone colour (sometimes weaker) but because such fingerings are more complex they can be difficult to play at speed and tuning can also be more of a challenge.

Many years ago a tutor on a course I attended arranged the Hebrides Overture by Felix Mendelssohn for a massed playing session in its original key of B minor. Two sharps isn’t so bad, but by the time we got to the point in the overture where the music shifts into F sharp minor only a small handful of us were actually able to play the fast moving semiquaver scales in three or four sharps!

Sometimes such difficulties can be overcome by transposing the music into another key entirely. For instance, I’ve recently arranged a part song by Sir Arthur Sullivan, originally composed in A flat - a key signature of four flats. I knew most recorder players would find this very difficult, so instead I shifted every note down a semitone into G major (just one sharp in the key signature) and every group I’ve tried it with has thanked me for my kindness because it’s much more playable!

Beware of troublesome notes

There are a handful of notes which can be particularly awkward, regardless of the playing ability of the musicians and it’s sensible to avoid these if you can.

For example, top F sharp on the treble can only be played in tune by using the top G fingering and then stopping the bottom of the recorder with your knee. (The same applies to top C sharp on the descant). This requires a degree of gymnastics more easily achieved while sitting down, but even then there’s a small risk of clouting one’s teeth with the recorder if you’re not careful! Professional players will be practiced at this technique but less advanced players often hesitate when faced with a top F sharp and the resulting sounds can be very variable. One way around this is to place the line requiring a top F sharp into a descant line, where it will be placed in a more comfortable part of the instrument’s range.

There’s other note which requires less dental jeopardy, but nonetheless is also probably best avoided - top C sharp for the bass recorder. This fingering works well on smaller instruments, but for some odd reason it’s reluctant to speak on many basses - in particular plastic models. If you really need this note to be played by a bass there is an alternative fingering (shown below) which produces a sweet tone, but it can be tricky to find if you haven’t practised using it. Alternatively, slurring to the C sharp from the previous note will sometimes overcome the problem.

A fingering for top C sharp which works on all bass recorders.

Think about the voicing of your musical lines

As I’m sure you’re aware, not every note in a recorder’s range is dynamically equal. The lowest notes are quiet and fragile, while the tones in the upper register are stronger. You can use this to your advantage when arranging. If you need a melody line to sing out from the middle of the ensemble you might be better to place it higher in the range of a tenor recorder rather than low on a treble. This way you can influence the way any one musical line will either pop out of the ensemble or recede into the background.

Dynamics and range

This topic relates to the previous one because you can also use the natural characteristics of the recorder to create dynamic contrasts.

If you want your piece to end with a quiet chord, place the notes low in the instruments’ range. In contrast, if you’re after a triumphant fanfare to finish you’ll be better placing the notes higher in the range for added strength. Equally, if you include dynamics in the music, don’t be surprised if a top C on a descant isn’t played pianissimo - it just isn’t the nature of such high notes!

It’s worth noting that the recorder is capable of playing genuine dynamics, but how successful they are will depend on the ability of your players. Varying the speed of breath creates some dynamic contrast, but the pitch will often slide up or down a little with high or low breath pressures. Advanced players will frequently employ alternative fingerings to combat this issue - for instance playing a slightly sharp fingering for a quiet note so they can blow more gently and remain in tune. For many players this may be beyond their technical comfort zone, so be realistic about your expectations.

Ensure everyone has some musical interest

There’s nothing worse than playing in a consort and realising the descant line is the only one to contain a melody. Yes, accompanying is an important and enjoyable part of ensemble playing, but the joy can wear off if all you have is oom-pah-pahs! When arranging music, do try to ensure everyone has at least a small slice of the action. It might be you’ve chosen a piece to arrange which has a cracking bass melody in the middle section, or perhaps you could decide to give the tenors the tune while the descants and trebles play a light accompaniment above them. Your players will thank you if you give everyone some interest rather than just an accompaniment of long notes.

Get creative with accompanying patterns

If you’re creating accompaniments from scratch rather than just transcribing another composer’s lines, don’t be afraid to play and explore different textures. There is a place for sustained long notes, but sometimes you can add rhythm to create more variety. For instance, an ostinato rhythm (one that repeats) can add a sense of excitement and drive. In this extract from my own Polish Folk Song Suite, I’ve used arpeggio patterns to create a more interesting texture around the melody.

View fullsize

Articulation and slurs

While the recorder may not have a huge dynamic range, it does excel in its variety of articulation. Using staccato, accents and slurs can add so much character to a performance so don’t forget to employ these in your arrangements.

Recorder players often have a love/hate relationship with slurs - largely because the more complex nature of our instrument’s fingering makes some of them challenging. Most players are happy to play short slurs of two or three notes, but if you choose to use long, melismatic slurs it can be hit and miss whether they’ll be played. If you really want them played as slurs (rather than just indicating the length of a phrase) it’s worth noting this in the score, although that still doesn’t guarantee the players won’t inadvertently cut them down into smaller slurs anyway!

While we’re on the topic of slurs, it’s worth noting that some are harder to play than others. For example a slur across the transition from low register (covered thumb hole) to upper register (pinched thumbhole) can be a little ‘clicky’ because of the number fingers that have to be moved. It’s always good practice to take the time to play through all the parts yourself to see if they work comfortably. Doing this gives you a chance to make any tweaks before releasing your carefully honed work into the wild.

Coping with long melody lines

If you venture into less obvious musical realms (for instance music for orchestral instruments) you’ll sometimes come across melodies which are too wide ranging to be played by a single recorder. This problem can be solved by sharing the melody across two instruments, with a note or two to link up between them. Below you’ll see two examples of places where I’ve done exactly this. The first is from my arrangement of Bach’s Esurientes, where the alto vocal line was a too long to be played comfortably by just the tenor recorder. Here I’ve shared it out between tenor and bass (the red lines show the path of the melody), so the breath demands are easier and the melody is always played in a strong part of the recorder.

My second example comes from an arrangement of Eric Coates’ London Bridge March. He writes a wonderful swooping melody which fits beautifully on the violin, but has too great a range for one recorder. Instead I’ve shared it between treble and tenor recorders and each voice switches back to accompanying figures when it doesn’t have the tune.

Exploring extended techniques

This may be a new term to you, but it describes the way composers sometimes use less traditional methods of playing a recorder. Our instrument is capable of so much more than just blown notes, such tapping the recorder with your fingers, blowing across the labium, using the just the head joint - the possibilities are endless! These effects are often used in contemporary music and can be a great way to create pictorial effects in your music. This example comes from Judith Bush’s Midwinter Miniatures. Holding one’s fingers across the labium creates a whistling tone which enhances the impression of a frozen winter wind whistling through the house and is so effective in performance.

View fullsize

Extended techniques is a subject large enough for an entire blog, but if this concept intrigues you I encourage you to watch Sarah Jeffery’s video about the topic.

Learn from other arrangers and composers

As you begin your journey as an arranger or composer, one of the best things you can do is to learn from others. Find every opportunity to play in consorts, using the score to see how the composer or arranger has constructed the music. Take note of where the melody lines occur within the ensemble and how the composer/arranger voices the other instruments so as not to obscure the tune. Look at the way he or she uses dynamics and articulation markings to bring light and shade to the music. Exploring music from the inside can be so inspiring.

Listening to music will teach you a lot too. Listening to recorder consorts can open your ears to the way different instruments have an impact on the sound of the music, while exploring repertoire played by other instruments may give you ideas for pieces to arrange.

Always be curious and don’t be afraid to explore unfamiliar types of music - you never know where inspiration will strike.

Talk to other composers and arrangers

The recorder world is a very friendly one and if you meet a composer or arranger at a workshop or playing day the chances are they’ll be only too happy to chat with you. One of the best ways to pick up advice is to ask questions of those who already have experience, so don’t be afraid to speak to people you already know or meet at recorder events.

Over to you…

Is there anything I’ve missed out? Do you still have questions? If so, do leave a comment below and I’ll endeavour to fill any gaps. Or perhaps you’ve already had a go and you have tips of your own. Please feel free to share you thoughts and ideas with us in the comments so we can all learn more about composing and arranging.

Maybe you’ve already made some arrangements or compositions and you want to share them with others? Over the years several of my Score Lines subscribers have contacted me with their own arrangement and compositions and some have appeared in my consorts library, becoming popular downloads. If you have a piece you’re proud of why not get in touch and perhaps we can bring your creations to a wider audience - don’t be shy!