Micrologus; I fistula nomine Ricordo

82-20 I FISTULA NOMINE RICORDO

Today's Micrologus is entitled: "I Fistula nomine Ricordo,” which is an incongruously Italian entry in the household accounts for the Earl of Derby for the year 1388. It translates literally as "a flute called 'Keepsake'" but the use of the original word ricordo seems to have caught on after that time as a generic term for end-blown flutes in England. I am referring, of course, to the recorder.

More than any other instrument, the recorder is associated with the revival in interest in early music. It might almost be said that the recorder is recognized by the general public as a symbol of activity in early music. But behind this symbol, this Platonic ideal of "the recorder,” there is a rich history of changes in both design and repertoire, and that is what we will be exploring on today's show.

Although the 1388 ricordo reference is the earliest to connect the word and the instrument, end-blown flutes can be seen in Western European painting as far back as the l2th century. We have very little knowledge of these early recorders however. The earliest preserved specimens are some fragments dating from around 1400, and from these, we can determine that medieval recorders had a basically cylindrical bore. This no doubt resulted in a robust tone, but it also limited the size of the instruments since fingerholes in a cylindrical-bore recorder increase substantially in size toward the bottom of the instrument. Thus, a recorder of about 18 inches in length (corresponding to what we now call an "alto") is the largest practical size for human hands, and paintings of the Middle Ages support this by showing only recorders of this size or smaller.

The art of making recorders after old originals has seen increasingly high standards set in the last ten years, with instruments by Bob Marvin of Quebec, Frederick Morgan of Australia and David Ohannesian of Seattle among the most highly prized by players. Marvin and Morgan in particular are noted for their ability to design fine instruments of types which are known to have existed, but of which no specimens have survived. The first recorder you will hear is one such instrument from my own collection: a cylindrical-bore recorder in G made by master recorder builder Bob Marvin. The piece is Oswald von Wolkenstein's "Es fuegt sich."

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It is likely, given their obligatory small size, that besides playing such solo works, recorders in the Middle Ages were also used to play the top line in performances of polyphonic music, such as this instrumental version of Guillaume Dufay's chanson "Entre vous gentil amoureux,” as performed by the Jongleurs of Ann Arbor.

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Some time in the course of the 15th century recorder makers discovered that they could reduce the size of the fingerholes—and thus make larger instruments possible—if they tapered the bore so that its narrowest point was around the last fingerhole. Because the bore then flares out again toward the end of the instrument, we usually refer to such recorders as being of a "choke-bore" design—a reference to that internal narrowing.

No doubt the first larger size attempted by makers was what we would now call a "tenor,” so that when in the early 15th century, chroniclers tell us of four recorders playing together, it might well have sounded like this performance of Johannes Ciconia's "Ut te per omnes,” again featuring the Jongleurs.

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After the turn of the next century, in 1511, a German theorist by the name of Sebastian Virdung published a little treatise on musical instruments which showed that the most common sizes of recorder in his day were a treble in G, a tenor in C, and a bass (or basset) in F. For the first time, too, he shows the use of a key: to play the bottom note on the bass. Virdung's three sizes are well-suited to playing the music of his contemporaries, such as that by Heinrich Isaac and Ludwig Senfl. We will hear one short piece by each of these masters. The first is Senfl's "Lamentatio,” and the second is “O Venus bant" by Heinrich Isaac. Both are performed by the Weiner Blockflötenensemble.

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Throughout the Renaissance recorders continued to be made using the choke-bore design. They also began to be made in an increasing variety of sizes from just a few inches to several feet in length. Indeed, there is a great bass recorder preserved in a European museum which measures out at 2.85 meters, that is, 9-1/2 feet! This is even more remarkable when it is noted that Renaissance recorders were made in only one, or at most, two pieces.

Because the low recorders are seldom heard today, we are going to listen to a performance which uses only low recorders. From the 1599 collection of Valentin Haussmann we will hear a dance performed by the Weiner Blockflötenensemble.

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I should note that up to this point in the program, all of the instruments you have heard were made by master recorder-maker Bob Marvin. The 16th century also saw the first method-book on how to play the recorder: Il Fontegara, published in 1535 by Sylvestro Ganassi. Not only is this the first recorder method, but it also ranks as the first method book on any instrument to be published in our culture. Ganassi deals primarily with how to ornament simple progressions in a florid manner and while he himself does not give any complete pieces for recorder in this style, his successors, Girolamo Dalla Casa and Giovanni Bassano, do provide some examples. This solo repertoire is intended for a fairly high-pitched instrument. Actually, Ganassi gives a fingering chart for a recorder with a bottom note of G and a range of about 2-1/2 octaves— almost an octave more than choke-bore recorders. Both Bob Marvin and Frederick Morgan have begun to produce such instruments, but no recordings are available of one yet, to my knowledge. We will, however, hear an alto recorder by Morgan in this performance by Scott-Martin Kosofsky, of a ricercata by Giovanni Bassano.

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In the 17th century, the interest in higher recorders as solo instruments continued while the use of consorts of recorders faded. In fact, the soprano recorder is favored in several important collections from the 17th century. The most famous of these is Jacob van Eyck's Der Fluyten Lust-Hof (The Flute's Pleasure Garden). From that collection we will hear the final variation of “Engels Nachtegaeltje,” performed by Frans Brüggen on a soprano recorder made in Amsterdam c.1685 by Richard Haka.

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The great design revolution for recorders—and indeed for all small woodwind instruments—came towards the end of the 17th century at the hands of the Hotteterre family of woodwind makers. They changed the bore so that it tapered all the way to the bottom end, and this resulted in a clearer sounding, extended, and more-in-tune high register. They also began the practice of making the instrument in three sections, and adding the elaborate turnery for decoration, and for strength at the newly created joints. Jacques Hotteterre le Romain was also the author of a brief but very important method-book for recorder, transverse flute, and oboe. We are going to listen to a "Gigue" from his Second Suite for Two Instruments without basso continuo, performed by Kees Boeke and Walter van Hauwe. They will be using Morgan copies of an alto recorder by the French builder Bizey, and you may notice the characteristic mellow tone which is at least partially due to the very low French chamber pitch at the time—about a whole step below our modern A=440.

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By about 1700 the alto recorder had become established as the solo recorder, and most of the repertoire was written with it in mind. This is the time of the many wonderful solo and trio sonatas, concertos and cantatas which feature recorder. Naturally, fine instruments were in demand and the finest of the time bore the names Denner, Bressan or Stanesby. From the recorder repertoire's most prolific provider, Georg Philipp Telemann, we hear a section of the "fantasia in G" performed by Frans Brüggen on an alto recorder made c.1700 by Stanesby.

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By the fourth decade of the 18th century musical taste was changing rapidly and demanded much more dynamic inflection than the recorder could manage. It was therefore gradually eclipsed in importance by the transverse flute, or traverso, whose merits were promoted and demonstrated by the theorist/composer/performer Johann Joachim Quantz. Quantz did have some appreciation of the recorder, however, and it is appropriate that the final selection on today's show is from a work by Quantz which combined the rival instruments: The second movement of his Trio Sonata for Flute, Recorder, and Basso Continuo, performed by Robert Willoughby, flute; Michael Lynn, recorder; James Caldwell, viola da gamba; and Lisa Crawford, harpsichord. The flute in this recording, by the way, is by Grenser, and the recorder is a copy of a Bressan.

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You've been listening to a program exploring the history and repertoire of the recorder.