In praise of the recorder
In 1668, Samuel Pepys said the recorder’s sound was ‘so sweet that it ravished me’
It’s time to put aside those painful memories of school music classes, says Tom Service, and welcome the renaissance of this often derided wind instrument
The recorder: the first and last instrument that millions of schoolchildren all over the world ever play, producing sounds of screechingly overblown noisiness: it’s no surprise that the recorder is still associated with the ends of so many promising musical careers.
So what is truly surprising is that, today, the recorder is the sound of cool. The instrument is the definitive soundworld of two of the most popular streaming series of the last couple of years. The galaxy far, far away of Disney’s The Mandalorian is conjured by the sounds of recorders: the composer Ludwig Göransson creates a recorderfestooned theme tune for a Star Wars spin-off story that’s centred on saving The Child, the baby-yoda lookalike Grogu. And in Netflix’s Squid Game, Jung Jae-il’s music uses recorders to make sounds of warped folksy innocence, a musical realisation of Squid Game’s murderously adult versions of children’s games.
The recorder’s current coolness is a return to its rightful place in our musical lives. In its earlier heyday, it was a pinnacle of royal status: Henry VIII had 76 recorders in his collection, he played at least one of them ‘dailie’, and in 1539 he employed the five Bassano brothers, a recorder consort from Venice. And the sound that recorders made was heard as sensually beautiful. Samuel Pepys, writing in 1668, said the recorder’s sounds was ‘so sweet that it ravished me; and indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick, just as
I have formerly been when in love with my wife’.
After volumes of consort music and a flurry of Baroque concertos, the recorder’s disappearance from the mainstream of music history in the 18th and 19th centuries has, in fact, been the reason for its resurgence in our time. That historical gap has allowed performers, composers and instrument builders to return to its possibilities with history-traversing creativity in the 20th and 21st centuries: from early music pioneers such as Frans Brüggen in Holland, for whom Louis Andriessen wrote one of the classics of the avantgarde recorder repertoire, Sweet; to the creators of the sci-fi instrumentarium of Paetzold recorders - a family of recorders that look like extras from Star Wars, and which produce a range of sounds that goes as deep as the double bass; to today’s virtuosos like Lucie Horsch, whose brilliance takes in the whole panoply of the recorder universe, from the tiny, piping garklein to the lowering sub-contrabass.
In today’s classrooms, you’re as likely to hear a jumbled twangling of massed ukuleles as the school instrument of choice, just at the very moment when the recorder is essential again, from concert halls to soundtracks. That’s a shame: let classrooms go into the galaxies of musical and historical possibility that belong only to the recorder!
George Crumb
Born 1929 Composer
Crumb’s gentle, even shy, exterior belied his tenacity as a composer. His adventures in music really were just that, as Crumb revealed himself to be one of American music’s great experimenters. Works such as Black Angels, Star Child, Vox Balaenae and the Makrokosmos series pushed the envelope in terms of the sounds musicians were permitted to make on the concert stage. Born in West Virginia into a musical family – both parents were musicians – Crumb latched onto composing as a teenager and studied at Charleston’s St Mason College, among other institutions. He found himself studying with Boris Blacher in Berlin thanks to a scholarship and returned to the US primed to take on his other great love, teaching. His longest tenure was at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught for over three decades. Students nurtured by him include composers Jennifer Higdon, Christopher Rouse and Osvaldo Golijov. He composed right till the end, putting the finishing touches to his final work in 2021.
Joseph Horovitz
Born 1926 Composer, Conductor
One of the great all-rounders, Horovitz was as at home composing chamber music as he was a television theme tune. Stage and screen were never far away during the Vienna-born composer’s career – he composed some 16 ballet scores and a clutch of small-screen tunes, among many other things. Hitler’s tightening grip on Austria led the Horovitz family to England, specifically Oxford, and it was at New College, Oxford where Joseph began musical studies. He moved on to the Royal College of Music in London and followed that with a year in Paris to study under Nadia Boulanger. Conducting was also a draw, and Horovitz secured the position of music director at Bristol Old Vic, his first professional role, in 1950. He would later conduct ballet and opera at houses around the world, including the Royal Opera House. Away from the stage, he taught at the RCM and composed chamber works and concertos, not to mention the 1970 ‘pop cantata’ Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo.
Also remembered…
Leslie Parnas (born 1931) was an American cellist who won silver at the 1962 Tchaikovsky Competition and went on to become one of the country’s most eminent musicians and recording artists.
William Kraft (born 1923) was an American composer, conductor, percussionist and teacher who was the long-time principal timpanist of the LA Philharmonic and a key figure in the city’s musical life.