The Renaissance recorder was played by blowing directly into a beak-shaped mouthpiece and the pitch was varied by changing the fingering on the holes – a set of seven on the front of the instrument and a single thumb-hole at the back. During this period the instrument was generally made of a single piece of wood, but today it usually ...
The first known examples of the recorder date from the Middle Ages. It became hugely popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods and then, surpassed by the concert flute, it largely fell out of use in the professional arena. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, it was redesigned by Arnold Dolmetsch and subsequently enjoyed a ...
As ensemble music became more popular during the sixteenth century there was increased demand for wind instruments that could elegantly negotiate the lower ranges. Large versions of wind instruments intended for the higher registers lacked volume and agility and were often difficult to play. Various elements of existing instruments – the bass recorder’s crook and the shawm’s double reed, for ...
design. In the sixteenth century, the viol family was developed like this, consisting of treble, tenor and bass viol, as were the violin family, the recorder family, the lute family and the crumhorn family. Cornetts, shawms, trombones and flutes also came in different sizes. Besides consort instruments, there were a few others that ...
wedged on to a thin metal tube, as in the case of the oboe and bassoon, it is more like a thin spatula tied on to an open-topped recorder mouthpiece. A single-reed woodwind instrument called the chalumeau had evolved in the seventeenth century, possibly as a development of the recorder. The clarinet was invented at the beginning of ...
the invention of the ‘speaker key’. Nobody, though, is certain who the inventor of the speaker key was. Chalumeau By the middle of the seventeenth century, the recorder had become an immensely popular instrument but it had many drawbacks, not least of which was a lack of volume. Attempting to overcome this flaw led directly to the ...
a hook, and the narrow cylindrical body flared only slightly, making the instrument lower in pitch than one with a conical bore of the same length. Like the recorder, there was a thumb-hole at the back of the instrument and a set of seven fingerholes running down the front. Concealed inside a wind cap was a reed on ...
influence of Lady Llanover, who encouraged makers and players to settle on her estate; it continues to be played there. Styles & Forms | Renaissance | Classical Instruments | Recorder | Renaissance | Classical ...
chamber music is almost always professionally performed on authentic instruments. Examples of reconstructed ensembles include the viol consort (usually six viols: two trebles, two tenors, two basses), the recorder consort (of four to six recorders of varying sizes) and the trio sonata, in which a continuo group (usually harpsichord plus a bass instrument such as a bass viol ...
Already a successful instrument in the Renaissance, the Middle Ages and indeed earlier, the flute has a long continuous history. The Renaissance flute was made of wood in one or sometimes two pieces, with a cylindrical bore and six finger holes. Its distinguishing feature was that it was not blown into directly like the recorder: the player held ...
fan. Flageolet Another member of the flute family, the flageolet is an end-blown flute that encompasses a wide range of instruments. It is most similar in design to the recorder, consisting of a mouthpiece and a main body, with finger and thumb holes, made of ebony, ivory or boxwood. It was popular in England during the ...
The tape recorder, invented in 1935, had been used early on to record concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic, but it was not until 1948 that Pierre Schaeffer, a technician at the Radiodiffusion Française studio in Paris, conceived his Etude aux chemins de fer. This was the first piece of musique concrète, an experimental technique that ...
The organ is an instrument of extremes – the biggest, the loudest, the lowest, the highest, the oldest, the newest and the most complex, it is also among the smallest, the most intimate, the most modest, and the simplest. Organ Extremes The aptly named portative organ – much played from the twelfth ...
The medieval pipe was played by blowing directly into a mouthpiece, like a recorder or penny whistle. Although it usually had only three holes to finger, by varying the force of blowing, players could achieve a working range of about one-and-a-half octaves. It was played with the right hand; the left hand held a thick, stubby beater ...
‘flutier’ as the pipes became shorter. Gradually organ-builders introduced ‘reed’ pipes, which concealed a vibrating reed and had an oboe-like sound. Some flue pipes were open tubes like a recorder, while others were stopped – they had their ends plugged, which dropped their pitch by an octave, widening the compass of the instrument. All organs require air ...
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