What We Have Learned about the History of the Recorder in the Last 50 Years By David Lasocki have chosen to write about changes reviews. But I in our view of recorder history over I’ve found it Based on a lecture given at the ARS the last 50 years because Edgar Hunt’s more satis­ Festival, Portland, OR, July 8, 2012 The Recorder and its Music was pub­ fying to go lished exactly 50 years ago in 1962. back to The author writes about woodwind This book was the first published piece Hunt. instruments, their history, repertory, and of writing of significant length devoted A list performance practices. The third edition to the entire history of the recorder. of the major of his book with Richard Griscom, (An American dissertation by Lloyd sources is The Recorder: A Research and Schmidt, submitted in 1959, had cov­ found in Information Guide, was recently ered the territory better, but it was the Bibliog- published by Routledge. never published, in whole or in part.) raphy And despite the overview provided (posted on He recently won the Frances Densmore by the collection of essays in The the ARS web site); for a more compre­ Prize from the American Musical Cambridge Companion to the Recorder, hensive listing, see the third edition of Instrument Society for the most distin- published in 1992, Hunt’s book wasn’t the book Griscom and I wrote. guished article-length work in English superseded until 2007, with the publi­ published in 2010 for his two-part cation of János Bali’s A furulya, which is What is a Recorder? article “New Light on the Early based on the latest research. You might Hunt began his book with a chapter History of the Keyed Bugle.” be interested in making your own com­ called “The Origin of the Recorder,” parison of Hunt’s book with Bali’s, which is also about definitions, names Since he retired from his position as Head except that Bali’s happens to be in and sizes. He defines the instrument of Reference Services in the Cook Music Hungarian, a language that few Ameri­ this way: “The recorder is a tube, one Library at Indiana University in January cans speak. I will make my own com­ end of which is partly blocked, and 2011, he has been devoting himself to parison of Hunt’s view of recorder his­ shaped to form a ‘whistle’ mouthpiece. many unfinished writings and editions, tory 50 years ago with ours today. Here the tube is almost closed by a to his own publishing company I began my acquaintance with plug called the ‘fipple,’ leaving a narrow Instant Harmony, and to the practice the history of the recorder by buying channel or ‘windway’ through which of energy medicine. See his web site, Hunt’s book in its year of publication, the player’s breath is directed, across www.instantharmony.net. when I was 15, and reading it over an opening in one side of the tube, and over from cover to cover. Over against the sharp edge of the ‘lip,’ set­ the next few years, I wrote comments ting up vibrations.... The chief differ­ in the margins, such as “Speculation,” ence which separates [the recorder] “Source?” and “Nonsense.” My research from other fipple flutes ... is the fact career had begun.... that the recorder has a thumb hole in It might have been more appro­ addition to seven finger holes.” This priate for me today to look back 27 definition still works for us, except years to 1985, when I began to write that the terms “fipple” and “fipple an annual review of research on the flute” have been abandoned, because recorder, especially because the review scholars couldn’t agree on what part of I wrote for the May 2012 AR covering the instrument a fipple is. So now we 2010 is the last in the series. Or I could speak of “the block” and “duct flutes.” have chosen to look back to 1993, Hunt added that the recorder has when Richard Griscom and I compiled a “tapering bore ... generally cylindrical the first edition of our recorder bibliog­ near the mouthpiece, getting smaller in raphy, partly based on my annual the part with the finger holes, some­ 18 Winter 2012 American Recorder times straightening out again towards handtpyp, found in Dutch sources the other end.” And he went on to say from the 16th and 17th centuries, and that “The average recorder is made in their German equivalent, Handt flöte, three parts, known respectively as the in a German inventory of 1582. He head, which includes the mouthpiece, spoken in England after the Norman skipped over fleute d’Italien, an alterna­ fipple or block, and the lip....” We can Conquest. Then the word goes back tive name given by Philibert Jambe de see that he was describing the Baroque to the Old French recorder, and ulti­ Fer, and he didn’t know about flauta type of recorder, at least as interpreted mately the Latin recordari, to remem­ all’italiana, in an inventory from by 20th­century makers up to the early ber (re-, back, plus cord, from cor, heart Siena in 1548, or flauto italiano, in 1960s. Nowadays we need to consider or mind; thus, to bring back to mind). Bartolomeo Bisman tova’s treatise of Medieval, Renaissance, Classical, The Middle English Dictionary sets out 1677/1694, all of which mean “Italian Romantic, modern and ultra­modern no fewer than seven families of mean­ flute.” He also didn’t know flauto da 8 recorders, too. ings for “to record” in the 14th century, [otto] fori, “flute with eight holes,” In his chapter on design, Hunt deriving the instrument from the defi­ found in a 17th­century Italian tutor, does discuss recorders of the 16th nition “repeat, reiterate, recite, rehearse or the Florentine term zufolo, found in century, mentioning only one design: (a song).” The other definition that inventories from 1463 to 1700, which “a gentle narrowing follows the line of Hunt mentions, “to sing like a bird,” derives from the verb zufolare, “to blow” the inner bore most of the way down is not actually recorded until the early or “to whistle.” before gently flaring out.... The inner 16th century (forgive the pun). Hunt’s idea about possible English bore of these renaissance recorders My research has shown that in origins for the recorder presumably is wide in proportion to the length, other countries in the late 14th century relates to the accounts of 1388. An ear­ mainly because the taper is not as and early 15th, the Medieval terms for lier probable reference has now turned acute as is the case with the later tabor­pipe, such as the French flaüte, up in a letter from 1378 written by the instruments.” Despite his familiarity were taken over by the new recorder: Infante (Crown Prince) Juan of with Ganassi, Hunt also stated that for example, French fleute or flute. That Catalunya–Aragón, mentioning that such instruments have a compass of seems to have been true in England his ambassador was going to Valencia: an octave and a sixth. as well, where flute and recorder over­ “and send us the lutes and the flahutes As for the name “recorder,” which lapped until about 1430. After that the as quickly as possible.” Unfortunately, often brings up questions at parties and new term took over. Why did England it’s not clear whether the flahutes had on the Internet, Hunt noted “the gen­ need a new word for a soft duct flute? been made in Valencia or obtained erally accepted derivation ... from the Perhaps because it lacked any term for elsewhere. Anthony Rowland­Jones root verb ‘to record,’ which has many duct flute—not even the French term has shown that the earliest incontro­ meanings besides the basic one of ‘to flajol, the origin of flageolet. vertible depictions of the recorder are write down something in order that it Hunt noted that “The recorder has in paintings from the Catalan court can be remembered later.’ One of these had many different names in different of Aragón in Barcelona from about is ‘to sing like a bird....’” Hunt was mis­ languages ... deriving from the instru­ 1390, particularly from the work­ led by Brian Trowell’s discovery of a ment’s various features: its beak, the shop of the Serra brothers (below). payment for “i. [una] fistula nomine fipple or block, its sweetness of tone, Ricordo” (one pipe named Ricordo) in the fact that it is held straight in front the household accounts for 1388 of the of the player, possible English origins, future King Henry IV of England, and and to distinguish it from the German Trowell’s conclusion that “ricordo” was flute.” Here he forgot to take into Italian, meaning “memento.” Anthony account a term he well knew, the Rowland­Jones has gone back to the 16th­century French flûte à neuf trous, original accounts to discover that they “flute with nine holes,” which derived refer to, not “ricordo” but “Ricordour,” from the doubled bottom hole on thus demolishing Trowell’s theory in early recorders, allowing for playing one fell swoop. with left hand or right hand on top. Modern authorities do derive He mentioned in connection “recorder” from the verb to record, stem­ with Jacob van Eyck, but didn’t con­ ming first of all from the verb recorder sider here, the terms hand-fluit and in Anglo­French, the dialect of French www.AmericanRecorder.org Winter 2012 19 The Recorder in the Renaissance Hunt rapidly moved on from what he called “the doubts of the Middle Ages.” But we have new evidence of sets of three or four recorders in the early 15th century.