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Judging Recorders on an Historical Basis
Bob Marvin

One way to evaluate recorders could be simply to say, “This I like, that I don’t.” A more nuanced approach might be to explore the fortes and foibles of various instruments in various musical contexts. Here, I’ll consider historical contexts, how early music probably sounded, and the implications for choosing appropriate instruments.

I hope that even in subjective lapses, my opinions can at least stimulate a more satisfyingly intimate realization of relations among music, instruments, and players,

The keynote of baroque music was dramatic, personal expression, the reaction of an individual to events that form a coherent narrative. So you might judge an instrument by the role it could play in music. Recorders were mostly minor figures in greater dramas, and only in minor works received top billing. The basic character of a recorder’s sound is innocence, a tone easily produced, without much effort, and simple in its attack. The ungenerous might say “too easily” educed, like the smile of Browning’s “Last Duchess,” and suggest that “simple” refers to a lack of wit. This character can be disguised, and even largely suppressed, in both making and playing recorders, but it’s been long felt that innocence and simplicity can heighten both religious and amorous experience. Sophisticated wit counts for little in moments of truth with either God or lovers. So a recorder can connect the spiritual and the carnal in ways explicitly unspeakable, to show the heavenliness of romantic love and the humanity of God. Such a theologically sophisticated instrument after all! The “pure” tone of a recorder can actually be quite complex (with organized “noise” that’s musically important, while defying analysis), so, as the simple pipe of a simple rustic, it can play a Figaro-like role in subverting the recognized social order, by showing the rich, but muted timbre of the lowly. It may not be obvious how to realize these roles in music, but as on the stage, deep and thorough conviction will usually out.

A really good player is always adjusting the degree to which personal artistry and control inhibit the instrument’s intrinsic character, varying the dynamic relation between these two elements of music; so, a recorder’s ability to give and take is another consideration.

Most baroque music lay on, or just off, a franco-italian axis. Italians were famous for the extravagance of their personal expression, and most instruments played roles more suited to a histrion than to the subtle jugglers of ambivalence in today’s theater. From the evidence of harpsichords, high pitch, and an early preference for small numbers of voices in counterpoint, Italian music probably had a bright, incisive sound. “React swiftly, react strongly, and tell a story” might be the Italian motto. An instrument should imitate vocal effects with flexibility of dynamics, tone-color, and attack. The violin was the solo instrument, and Alberti figures sound better without pops and clicks between notes and registers. Every man a virtuoso, but with a dramatic feeling that goes back to laude and through ricercare and madrigals.

French music was more sensual, with a deeper diapason. It had a more formal structure, and related more to corporal movement, which unappreciators heard as formulaic dance patterns. The French themselves heard vigor, and probably enjoyed the image of a virile gentilhomme with an erect viol between his legs. When not downright vigorous, the music could be majestic, plaintive, or gaie, but always with a strong character, and within the limits of le bon goût. These characters can be admixed in varying tinctures, and the genius of French music seems to be in the precise expression of the variety of such confections. Rather than presenting a varied drama, French music shows the mixtures, sometimes odd and bizarre, of humors and human temperaments. The French don’t fear paradox, and are commonly weaned on logical contradiction. And the music is sensual, in timbre and in movement. They kept the noble plaintiveness of the viol long after the rest of Europe took up fiddling, and danced their way through even serious operas. A good proving ground for a French instrument might be a run around the mock mockery of 16th century voix de ville, the agréments à gogo of Hotteterre’s Musette method, and the affective sung dances of L’Affillard’s Très faciles principes….

German music borrowed extensively from Italian and French, but it’s hard to say how deep, as well as broad, that borrowing was. Did they imitate the light, vigorous poise of the French (the superficial polish that permits a view within) or the frenetic reactivity of Italians? To what extent did they add good German substance (far be it from me to say “heaviness”) to these foreign tastes that were disdained while being envied and admired? Did Telemann hear his A-moll suite as real French music, or as is the modern tradition, with little to do with French style and the movements’ titles? I see “sincerity” as the main feature of German culture (despite there being no really equivalent German word), so a German recorder, besides having both (or neither) French and Italian qualities, and easy top notes, might have a menschliche voice, with lots of Herz and Seele.

English music might be like the German, but largely unburdened by “soul” and “sincerity”, and with fewer demands on upper notes. A little French, a little Italian, Scots and Irish to taste.

Renaissance music was more internationally uniform, but with variants at the fringes of time and place. There was a harmonic revolution in the early-mid 15th century, the contenance angloise, coming from Britain, home of harmony, to France. The general sound of this harmony, rich in thirds and sixths, with sparing use of dissonance, lasted well into the 17th century. It arrived later and less thoroughly in Italy and Spain, and started earlier in Britain [this is not clear]. Renaissance recorders seem to have been made to exploit this sound to a powerful effect. A secondary criterion is ethos, or character. There’s little evidence that the renaissance sought excitement in music, although many movements are thrillingly spine-cracking; perhaps normal life was exciting enough. Music’s job was to put people back together again after being torn apart by life’s hurly-burly, the humors set again in balance, the hesychastic, calm ethos restored. Music could exercise the humors (divided into the expansive diastolic, and contracting systolic ethoi) and through catharsis purge their excesses. Integer vita (“whole life”), sprezzatura (“cool disdain”), and musica reservata (just what was reserved or on reserve?) may touch on the notion of one’s proper self and balance. So a renaissance recorder needs to take you through variations of the four humors, and, with an overall grace of sound, get you back to sanity. Of course it does all this, powerful harmony and Samsonite (“out of the strong came the sweet”) ethos, in ensembles (just as even baroque instruments should react strongly with other sounds). With the arrival of the contenance angloise came a couple generations of rather lyrical, but not very text-sensitive music in France. Then came Josquin and the boys, with an age of fast, virtuosic music full of lots of notes and bouncy syncopations that often seem at odds with sad texts (a hesychastic mayonnaise of the immiscible systole and diastole?). Then, towards the middle of the 16th century, music became slower again, and the words more important. So more and more, through the second half of the 16th century, recorders playing madrigals, etc. need to express text, the sounds, syntax, and meaning of words; and some of the earlier qualities may need to be sacrificed. You may need a gentle, noiseless attack on upper notes more than the powerful sound and sense of ethos that are often incompatible with it.

Back to the fringes, there’s mention in the renaissance of church and chamber voices, the latter more expressively modulated, the former ringingly space-filling. Some Italian and Spanish music well into the 16th century seems to benefit from this “church” sound, which may be a remnant of earlier medieval sonorities. In recorders, this seems best heard from cylindrical bores, which are commonly thought of as “medieval.” Knowing almost nothing about medieval styles of sound and playing, we can’t say much more than such recorders should make strong, clear harmony in early laude, etc. For playing dances and in oddly mixed ensembles, it’s anyone’s guess, although noisy, breathy “folk” flutes seem more interesting.

About “Ganassi” recorders, there’s little to say except they should roughly follow his fingerings and shape, and stick to music roughly of his time. The design seems closer in timbre to earlier “cylindrical” flutes, with their “harder,” clearer sound, than to later ones, but what, if any, proper use they had is not evident. A wide range of 15th-16th century “solo” music (and frottole) might be their bailiwick.

Not many people and cultures think of themselves as “transitional,” yet the term is applied to recorders for early 17th-century music, as if they were holding their breath for what we call the high baroque to begin. Frescobaldi as a “transitional” composer? Music of that time needs a certain “flexibility,” but perhaps a clearer “Italian” tone than the coy, covered sensuality of the later baroque. Early Italian organs often had less complex and varied stops than their northern cousins, sometimes just the same timbre repeated at various pitch levels, that bright, strong “church” voice. And a baroque violin can have a hard, pure sound in Italian music.

A recorder as an instrument for music per se may not be the same tool as for personal projection or introspective satisfaction. Its best test is in a musical context, what it does making music, and how it contributes to an overall sound and impression.

Photo: Randi Rosenblum

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