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September 2005 Program Notes
Music for Recorders
by Mary Burke
Tonight's program is devoted to an instrument that has enjoyed centuries of popularity, and could justly be regarded as pervasive in European music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras—and yet, it never quite found its way into the spotlight to the extent that other equally distinguished instruments did.
The recorder as we know it appeared (or evolved) in Europe during the Middle Ages. Like many other instruments, it was made in a range of sizes corresponding to the ranges of the human voice (soprano, alto, tenor, bass). Over the centuries it underwent numerous alterations and improvements in design, and was called by a bewildering variety of names; prior to the 20th century, recorders had been called (in assorted languages) flute, hand flute, beak-flute, English flute, Italian flute, 8-hole flute, 9-hole flute, sweet flute, common flute, and more. They were made with conical bores or cylindrical bores; in one piece, two pieces, three pieces; with or without double holes. But however it looked and whatever it was called, everyone knew the recorder.
Recorders proved popular with the enthusiastic amateur musicians of the aristocracy, as well as more modest households. Madrigals or other vocal music worked perfectly well for a recorder consort, as did dance music; one might also play in a mixed consort, with recorders joined by various combinations of plucked and bowed strings. The instrument continued to thrive into the 18th century, taken up eagerly by Europe's rising middle class. By mid-century, however, the transverse flute had largely supplanted the recorder in both homes and concert halls.
Recorders were also a vital part of the professional music scene. They became a standard component of Renaissance wind bands, including city waits, court consorts, and theater bands. The performers in these groups generally played many types of wind instruments, changing their configuration to suit the demands of a given piece or venue. During the Baroque era, too, most professional recorder players were proficient on other instruments (usually, but not invariably, woodwinds), and in fact made most of their living from the latter.
Although a sizable repertoire of solo sonatas and small-scale chamber works existed for recorder, its role in the orchestra tended to be less prominent. Composers frequently chose the recorder's unique sound to create a particular color within a large ensemble, as Lully often did in his operas and ballets; alternately, it could represent a particular affect or idea. Numerous composers from Charpentier to Buxtehude to Handel wrote arias with obbligato recorder parts to symbolize concepts as diverse as death, angels, mourning, peace, pastoral life, and love.
In the instrumental repertoire, concerti and other works with recorder solos are relatively rare, but many of them came from the most illustrious composers of the day: Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Telemann, Bach. They encompassed various forms, from the French dance suite to the concerto grosso to the Venetian-style solo concerto, as well as unique hybrids.
The Concerto Pastorale of Johann Pez is one such hybrid. It is typical insofar as it uses the recorder to emulate the sound of shepherds' pipes; however, it is unusual in giving us both fast and slow pastorale movements, and in combining abstract movements and French court dances into a sort of concerto-suite. Alessandro Scarlatti's fifth Sinfonia di concerto grosso similarly splices together the operatic overture and the four-movement da chiesa concerto.
Incurable overachiever Georg Philipp Telemann can always be counted on to cover everyone's needs, and he served recorder players very well indeed (perhaps because he was one himself). In addition to numerous delightful pieces of chamber music and obbligato parts in cantatas, Telemann produced a number of concerti and suites for one and two recorders, sometimes in combination with other instruments. Tonight we will hear the well-known A minor suite for one recorder, a French suite with occasional visits to Italy and Poland, as well as the B-flat major concerto for two recorders, which is in an Italian form despite its French titles. A notation in one of the manuscript sources for this piece seems to indicate that a bass recorder was meant to play the continuo line in some passages.
Like his contemporaries, J.S. Bach tended to relegate the recorder to obbligato parts in his vocal music, but he more than made up for this with the second and fourth Brandenburg Concerti. The fourth is of the concerto grosso type, with the two recorders and violin forming the concertino group (though it follows the Venetian three-movement solo concerto scheme); Bach later reworked it into the version heard tonight, shifting the key from G major to F and giving the intricate violin part to the harpsichord.
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