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Tell most people you play the recorder and they will look at you strangely and wince as they conjure up an image of a room full of primary school children making horrible noises on their descant recorders.
Despite suffering from this image problem the recorder is, in fact, a serious musical instrument and has had music written for it by the likes of Georg Phillipp Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi and even Johan Sebastian Bach. It reached its peak of popularity in Europe in the Baroque era in the 17th and 18th centuries before falling out of favour as larger orchestras became fashionable. It has enjoyed something of a rejuvenation since the early music movement became popular in the middle of the twentieth century.
The recorder is a member of the flute family in which sound is produced by a thin jet of air striking a sharp edge. It has a fully chromatic range of just over two octaves which makes it much more versatile than tin whistles, flagolettes, and other similar instruments which can usually only play in one or two keys.
Recorders come in a number of different sizes, each having a bottom note of either C or F. The instruments played by members of Trio Grosso range from the Great Bass, which has a bottom note an octave below middle C, to the garklein floetlein which has a bottom note of C two octaves above middle C. The complete list (lowest to highest) is:
There are also different styles of recorder with the earlier Renaissance recorders having a wider bore, more powerful sound, but smaller range than the later Baroque instruments. The recorders shown here are (from left to right): a Baroque descant, a Renaissance alto, a Baroque alto, and a Baroque sopranino.
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