| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
The Recorder; some Historical Landmarks
that it is probably true to say that more recorders are made and sold than any other single musical instrument.
What has brought about this great modern revival of the recorder? In 1905 the late Arnold Dolmetsch began his researches into old music and musical instruments. After many years, he succeeded in making recorders, patterned on the old models he had discovered, but tuned to the concert pitch in use at the beginning of the twentieth century. Modern Dolmetsch recorders are tuned to the modern concert pitch.
A German instrument maker tried to copy a Dolmetsch recorder but succeeded only in mass-producing an instrument which looked like a recorder but did not possess the authentic recorder fingering. Realizing the value of a mass-produced instrument for popular music making, Edgar Hunt persuaded this German maker to produce cheap instruments with the authentic recorder fingering and these were imported into England in the nineteen-thirties. These cheap mass-produced instruments had the advantage of making the recorder well known and helped to increase the sales of the hand-made Dolmetsch instruments.
As more and more people began to play the recorder and to regard it as a serious musical instrument, so research began to be devoted to discovering period music, and because of this recorder players have now at their disposal a large and growing amount of sixteenth-, seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century music which was originally written for the recorder or is suitable for playing upon it. Further, a few modern composers have seen that great possibilities have presented themselves in this modem revival of the recorder and so have turned their attention to composing music which they regard as suitable for the great and growing group of recorder players. Their
16 |
||