The recorder is often seen as the daggy instrument you first played at primary school.
But a small group of 50-somethings are doing all they can to change the reputation of the well-known instrument.
Each Friday in the middle of Brisbane’s CBD, the women come together to play recorders of all shapes and sizes.
As someone who has lived next door to primary school aged children who were very conscientious about practising their recorder, I feel this quote deep in my soul:
"I thought recorders were simple enough especially since they play them in primary schools.
“Little did I know, it’s easy to make a note, it’s not easy to play well.”
It gets a bad rap because it’s generally the first instrument children play and it’s annoying as fuck when it’s played poorly.
Listen to 30 children poorly play hot cross buns on the recorder and tell me you like the recorder.
Listen to some of Telemann’s recorder concertos if you think you hate it. The recorder is a beautiful instrument when a) played by someone who knows what they’re doing and b) playing music that was written specifically for it.
Sorry dude, still kinda hate it.
Hey, at least you hate it for more valid reasons now.
Perhaps something more contemporary?
Recorder can sound great. But not so much in the hands of an 8-year-old.
Sounds a little medieval fair cosplay for me, but I can appreciate it a lot more than the squawking of primary school recorder lessons.
Taking front stage and swinging the whistle around like the lead guitarist in a rock band is certainly something new though.
I guess you’ve never listened to baroque era classical, or seen a concerto performed live?
I don’t even know what half of those words mean. I am quite uncultured. Sometimes I hear tinkling pianos and slidey violins on the radio and it sounds nice. That’s about the limits of my musical involvement.
Actually I played bassoon back in the day so I’m kinda hamming it up a whisker, but I was no JS Mozart Beethoven.
You probably already know this then, but for anyone genuinely unfamiliar:
Baroque is an artistic period that followed shortly after the end of the Middle Ages (what we think of as medieval), and so naturally shares similarities to medieval music in terms of instruments and compositional techniques. Composers during that period, like Telemann, were often commissioned by royals and had their works performed at court, which is another reason we associate them with that “medieval” sound.
Soloists in concertos and other works composed for a specific instrument often add visual flourishes to their performance. I guess part of it is to enhance the overall feeling from the perspective of the audience, but I’m sure the soloists also feel genuinely passionate about the music and like to express themselves while performing it.
shortly after the end of the Middle Ages
At least in music (I don’t know about architecture and other artforms), the Baroque era comes after the Renaissance, so it’s quite a long way removed from mediaeval—about 150–200 years removed, to be precise.
It depends what you’re using to classify the beginning and end of periods in history and culture. The Middle Ages has been said to have lasted as late as 1500, with Baroque beginning as early as 1600, which would suggest at most a century between them. Within the context of classical music, that is a fairly short amount of time. If you were specifically focusing on music itself, those eras could begin and finish earlier as they aren’t necessarily directly tied to other aspects of history.
Of course, human culture does not have hard transitions but rather gradually evolves over time, particularly when it comes to art, so even with the Renaissance separating the Baroque and Medieval eras of music there are still similarities between them.
The precise starts and ends of musical periods are obviously fuzzy and any attempt to definitively say that this is where it is is inevitably going to be wrong.
That said, I still find it a fun conversation to have for its own sake. People naturally like to find ways to put things into discrete boxes. And as a rule of thumb, I’ve always used Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo as the start of the Baroque, but I don’t really have a marker for the start of the Renaissance. (For completeness, my usual marker for where Baroque music ends is the death of Bach, and the Romantic period starts with Beethoven’s 3rd symphony—that last is the only one I feel particularly strongly about as more than just a convenient marker.)
But if we say 100 years, I don’t agree that it’s a short time. The entire common practice period lasted about 3 centuries, so a 1 century gap is pretty significant when you think about how much music evolved over that time. Obviously there are some notable similarities—particularly in timbre—between mediaeval and Baroque music. However—and maybe this is just my bias as someone whose study mostly focused on the common practice period and 20th century, and whose personal interest is mostly in the Romantic and 20th century—I think that the differences between the Baroque and mediaeval are pretty stark, with the Baroque having more in common with Classical and even Romantic eras.
@[email protected] Come up with a list of 10 band names to suit a band consisting of 50 year old women playing internal duct flutes
Certainly, here are 10 band names that might suit a group of 50-year-old women playing internal duct flutes:
- FluteMatriarchs
- Duct Divas
- Resonant Rhythms
- FluteFusion50
- MellowTones
- Silver Serenades
- Ducts of Wisdom
- Harmonic Maturity
- Eternal Echoes
- WisdomWind Ensemble
I like 4.
Just dropping this here…
And in the same vein… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQzkTZtL1EM
Brilliant! Gonna have to do a mix with this one
Stupid little thing, but in highschool I played in a woodwind ensemble playing bassoon. My friend composed an arrangement of aud lang sine or whatever it’s called for the ensemble for a Christmas concert, and he threw in an 8 bar section where we swapped over to recorders. It was both funny and pretty cool. Sounded great in the hand of good woodwind players.
I haven’t touched a recorder in decades. But I play the clarinet and saxophone, and a little while ago on a lark I picked up a tin whistle.
Do cheap recorders in the hands of non-recorder woodwind players sound considerably better than cheap tin whistles in the hands of non-tin whistle woodwind players? Because that tin whistle sounded awful in my hands.
I’m going to go ahead and say yes. Never heard a tin whistle, but recorders sounded decent with light pressure and a mind for intonation. Kids just blast them and don’t even know what intonation is hahaha
Never heard a tin whistle
I can almost guarantee you that’s not true..
It’s similar to a recorder, but smaller and with a much brighter tone, so possibly harder to get the best sound out of.
It’s so strange to me that so many people get forced to play the recorder for a while in school, yet basic education of the musical world is completely absent. Perhaps taking the kids to a few different kinds of concerts would do away with such weird takes like “but fans of the recorder say the instrument’s reputation is undeserved”. Music schools for example like to do outreach concerts for kids where they show off and explain instruments etc.
On the topic of recorder performances, people like to criticize the recorder player in the youtube comments, but I like how the group Red Priest interprets and performs music.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Each Friday in the middle of Brisbane’s CBD, the women come together to play recorders of all shapes and sizes.
Former primary school teacher Lindy Morrison only began playing the recorder when she retired.
She loves the way the instrument feels in her hands and the fact that it’s made from natural wood.
"It’s made of grenadilla [hardwood]; therefore, it has a more resonant sound, and the wood is one of the favoured ones for making good-quality recorders.
"One performance that’s stayed with us was playing in a stairwell at City Hall because of the acoustic and it was so, so wonderful.
The group hopes people will stop giving the recorder a bad rap — and start to look at it differently.
The original article contains 549 words, the summary contains 119 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
start to look at it differently.
The way it looks isn’t the problem…
Maybe if it had flames painted on it, and maybe something cool written in lighting font? Like ⚡DEATH ☠️ CORDER⚡
I played violin in elementary school specifically to avoid being in the same room with people trying to play recorders. I’m aware that it can be played well, but it still feels like nails on a chalkboard to me, even decades later
I mean, beginners sawing away at student-grade violins typically don’t sound great either.
At least it doesn’t sound like someone drowning a cat
It does sound remarkably like nails on a chalkboard, though.
Oh
While this is true, it’s still better than listening to a bunch of recorders
