Several people, all of whom I respect, have pointed out that my style of recorder playing is almost directly contrary to how the recorder is taught and played nowadays, at least in the UK and the USA. This is an attempt at explaining where I come from.
If you choose one of the notes near the top of the first octave – say A or B on a C instrument, or D or E on an F instrument, and play it right from niente to the maximum breath you can give it, you will notice four important changes in tone quality. This implies five bands of (fairly) uniform tone quality – five tonal registers.
The first register covers a very narrow band only just above niente – indeed, depending on the player, the note and the instrument it may not sound at all. It has a very pure tone that has a strangely ghostly quality, and surprisingly well in tune, but it is very slow to speak. This has been exploited by several modern composers, most effectively in my opinion by the greatly lamented Markus Zahnhausen in such pieces as “Lux Aeterna”. Zahnhausen refers to it as the “harmonic” register, and often uses the string harmonic notation of a circle above the note. Unfortunately other composers use the term “harmonic” in several other senses, so I will instead call it the “pp register”.
The second register covers a wide band from the top of the pp register all the way to about mp – rather further on some instruments. At the quieter end it is decidedly flat (unless the player compensates for the flatness) but as the breath is increased it becomes sharper until at the top it is in tune. This register is perhaps the most contentious in terms of description nowadays: it is described as remote or thin, delicate or weak, emotive or underblown… but however it is described, everyone agrees on its existence. In view of its volume range I will call it the “p register”.
The third register covers a narrow band from about mp to about mf, with the exact limits depending on the instrument. The quality is on most instruments strong and full, but relatively inflexible. This tone quality is nowadays referred to as “centred”, so I will call it the “c register”.
The fourth register covers a fairly wide band from the top of the c register, that is about mf, up to the top limit of loudness of the note. This register is not unlike the c register in tone, but has a blaring, brassy quality overlaying it. Like the p register it also sharpens with increasing breath, though usually not as noticeably. Again, in view of its volume range I will call it the “f register”.
Lastly, as the breath pressure on the f register is increased, the note will suddenly “crack” or “break”, either changing to a note roughly an octave or a twelfth higher, or else losing tone completely and just producing white noise. Confusingly, some composers in the ‘60s and ‘70s of the last century referred to notes produced this way as “harmonics”; I won’t. This is not really a register; if I ever need to I shall simply refer to it as “above the break”.
Now at present, the standard teaching style and therefore performance style demands that the player shall only use the c register, unless the composer explicitly requires the use of another register. (This does happen – or did. I have already mentioned Zahnhausen’s use of the pp register; there are also occasional explicit uses of the f register, especially by composers of the middle of the last century – usually marked by references to “brassy” tone.) If these demands are obeyed, it becomes impossible to play outside of the dynamic range mp to mf; anything quieter has to be faked by shortening the notes, so sacrificing smoothness, and anything louder has to be faked by playing the notes tenuto. Ironically, this style also insists on the lightest possible tonguing to produce a very legato feel – in direct conflict to the use of shortened notes for quietness.
I am at least two generations older than this – arguably three, because I began learning in the 1950s and 1960s, and from books. Inevitably the books I was learning from represented the style of the generation earlier, a playing style that had roots in the 1920’s. Indeed, the instruments I was playing – cheap wooden school recorders by Schott or (later) bakelite recorders by Schott or Dolmetsch – reflected the same style. This style, at least as I learned it, did not avoid either the p register or the f register – quite the opposite; the books taught how to use the fingers to keep accurate intonation throughout all three registers – p, c and f – without even mentioning the register changes.
But perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I misunderstood. What evidence is there for this style of play? Perhaps the real players even then only used the c register? We need to look at the evidence.
Recordings from before 1960 are few and far between, and of poor quality by our standards, and I do not know of any surviving film material at all; it is very difficult to be sure what the player is actually doing. All we can say is that the dynamic range appears to be much greater than from a modern player. But we do have accounts from the time of the concerts in Haslemere and in the Wigmore Hall before WWII, and Carl Dolmetsch, who was a professional violin player as well as a professional recorder player, has left us in various interviews his own account of why he came to specialise in the recorder; the primary reason was that he found the recorder just as expressive as the violin, but complementary to it. I can not imagine anyone who only uses the c register saying that the recorder is as expressive as a violin; doesn’t it reveal just how much “modern” recorder playing has thrown away?
Music is a different matter. The 1930s and 1940s were a Golden Age of English recorder composition, largely through the campaigning, the sponsorship and the commissioning of recorder works by Arnold and Carl Dolmetsch. Many are still in print, so it is easy to check my statements.
Are they written only to be played only in the c register? Emphatically no. The dynamic range is from pp to fff – impossible in just the c register. Furthermore, there are passages that are marked p but the notes are slurred or marked tenuto – or even both – which makes faking p by shortening notes impossible. Similarly, there are passages marked ff which are also marked staccato, or written as separated notes – again, impossible to fake in the c register. Finally, there are long held notes marked p, and at least one which is not only p at its start but has a step change to pp halfway through.
The only attempt I have seen to justify this while keeping the c register is a claim that they were all “really” written for flute, and that the marking for recorder is an afterthought, so the dynamics should be disregarded by recorder players. Unfortunately for this, the dedications of the pieces are invariably to recorder players – usually but not always Carl Dolmetsch. Also my wife is a flautist who has taught me the basics – and we agree there is no way a flute could play the simultaneously strongly tongued and rhythmically precise passage work – for example, in the third movement of the Bates Sonatina. Nice try, but no cigar. These were written for recorder, and reflect recorder playing as it was at the time.
Next, we have books from the period – tutors, mostly, but some textbooks for “advanced” players. These are unanimous: there is no mention at all of a distinction between the f, c and p registers. What there are, are careful descriptions of how to keep the notes in tune at piano and pianissimo, as well as at fortissimo – far outside the c register. There is no awareness at all of tone changes between the three registers; it is clearly assumed that a good player can play from fortissimo to pianissimo in tune all the way, and will do so in performance. The descriptions match perfectly the demands of the music that I described above; the use of genuine dynamics over a wide dynamical range, the independence of staccato and tenuto markings from dynamics, the ability to change the loudness of a long note part way through – all these are covered in the books.
Is it that the writers were unaware of tonal changes? No. They show great awareness of one tonal change – but not based on dynamics: they are very concerned with the tonal difference between “straight” and “forked” notes. They emphasise the importance of alternative fingerings for the straight notes that can be used to iron out this difference, and how these forked alternatives interact with the move from first to second octave.
Finally, we have the instruments. I only had the cheapest possible instruments, but they are ultimately based on the original Dolmetsch models from the 1920s, as were all instruments at the time. (Yes, I know about the German claim that recorders were still being made there in an unbroken tradition from Baroque times. They have found an obscure family in an obscure village that claimed still to be making recorders into the 1920s. Well, I have seen no evidence that recorders were actually made by them in the 20th century – simply a mention on a list of what they could make is not evidence. Nor have I seen any evidence that any of their recorders have survived; without actual survivors we can not be sure they were recorders and not flageolets, csakans or even pennywhistles. In any case, even if they were making some kind of recorder, it was completely unknown at the time – the well-known German makers from the 1920s onwards were completely uninfluenced by them and entirely derived from Arnold Dolmetsch and his approach of examining and imitating true Baroque models.)
Now those instruments do not have a strongly marked transition between the p, c and f registers. It is there, but it is much wider and less distinct than in most modern British instruments. Furthermore, the c register is nowhere near as pure in tone as in modern British instruments, it has a thinner, hollower tone. Therefore since the p register lacks the “weak” tone quality except perhaps right at the bottom near pp, the difference between the two registers is far less. An ordinary player like me was unaware of the change between the p and the c registers, and only vaguely aware of the change between the c and the f registers.
This fits in well with the evidence of the books. Clearly they were written for the instruments like mine, which did not have sharp register changes, and which therefore had a usable dynamic range from p to at least ff. And this fits in well again with the evidence from the music.
There is one more piece of evidence from the instruments: the whisper key. This was invented by Carl Dolmetsch and was a key that opened a hole very close to the block (in one design, actually through the block) that was operated by the player’s chin. Its purpose was to allow the player to use the whole dynamic range right down to niente, but without the straight fingerings developing a forked tone, which the use of finger leaking and finger shading tended to do. But it is useless for the c register. This is incontrovertible evidence that the recorder player from this period expected to use the full dynamic range of the instrument from pp to f.
So what changed?
The first instruments that I came across which had a noticeable transition between the c and p registers were the first plastic Aulos instruments, and especially the Aulos tenor. It was criticised at the time for its poor tone below mp, but it was fine for a cheap school instrument, and it was much lighter than the other school tenors. After this point I lost track of the detailed designs, simply playing my own instruments with the full 1930-1960 dynamic range, and listening when I could to recorder players like Franz Bruggen and later Michaela Petrie. I think it is fair to say that for most of this time I only listened to Dutch or Scandinavian players, and they all kept the wide dynamic range I was used to, as well as a wide gamut; Franz Bruggen regularly played adaptations of flute music with a three octave range, and it was he who introduced the “left hand pinch” technique for stabilising the third octave notes. I had no access to Australian or American players, and I was unaware of any British players in this period. I did have to replace instruments from time to time, but I always found myself replacing them with German makes like Moeck or Mollenhauer, because they matched my style of playing, without truly realising how different they were from current UK models.
For behind my back, the whole attitude to recorder playing was changing, at least in the UK. The emphasis was more and more on Baroque recorder music; the pre-Baroque and Renaissance repertoire was played as if it were Baroque, with an even tone in which the instruments blended rather than staying distinct; the 19c and 20c repertoire fell out of favour; few UK composers were composing for the recorder, and there was no showcase event for them, since the Haslemere Festival fell out of popular view in the 1960s and we lacked a charismatic ambassador like Carl Dolmetsch or David Monroe who could bring the recorder out of its bubble to ordinary music lovers. Baroque music does not need a wide dynamic range; what it needs is a consistent, very clear tone – the tone of the c register. Recorder players seem to have relied more and more on the c register, and the techniques to support the old dynamic range fell firstly out of favour and then out of knowledge. Consequently recorder makers in this country concentrated only on a beautifully smooth-toned c register, leaving the f register to become uglier and uglier and the p register to become weaker and weaker. As part of this movement they worked hard on the forked fingerings, using a large number of small design changes that eventually almost eliminated the tonal difference between forked and straight fingerings within the c register.
Eventually teaching focussed down on this narrow style; the Baroque repertoire became the backbone of the syllabus, at least for the grade exams; the c register – “centred tone” – became the only acceptable sound, and the 20c, 19c and even the 17c and earlier repertoire was forgotten or, much more rarely, reinterpreted into the straitjacket of the c register.
The present situation is, then, that England and much of the USA has shrunk back, adopting a very restrictive style of playing on instruments incapable of any other style, and throwing away almost all the tonal and dynamic flexibility of the earlier recorders in favour of a “centred” tone which is indeed very beautiful, but completely lacks any variety.
In mainland Europe the situation remained very much as it was left at the end of the 1970s. Most players continued with the style of recorder that descended from the Dolmetsch tradition, and its use spread out into folk and rock music, but generally there seems to have been a feeling that people didn’t quite know where they were going. Its use in other music genres, though, did put pressure on players (and therefore makers) towards equality with other instruments, flexibility, expressiveness, dynamism and vigour. Curiously, exactly what Carl Dolmetsch meant when he spoke of a recorder as expressive as a violin. Was he a player – or a prophet?
But as I say, most of this is hindsight; I myself was playing in my own little Dolmetsch bubble, unaware of the changes around me.
In this period there was one event that should in retrospect have sounded alarm bells. Carl Dolmetsch had invented the bell key some time in the 1950s or 1960s, but it had never become widely used – apparently because “keywork is not authentic on a recorder”!! (Presumably no one had actually looked at the surviving Baroque and earlier recorders??) But at some time in the late ‘60s Daniel Waitzman and Friedrich von Heune began to campaign for the wider use of the bell key, railing vigorously against the archaic, pseudo-authentic, “fairylands forlorn” image of the recorder, and demanding that a modern form of recorder with a bell key, a wide dynamic range, capable of playing three octaves, and whose basic volume was enough to be capable of playing alongside other orchestral instruments should be designed and brought into common use. Significantly in retrospect, they quoted the example of a professional recorder player who had returned an instrument to its maker because it was too loud to match with lutes and viols!
They got nowhere. It should have been clear to me then that English recorder players were retreating into a narrow, pseudo-baroque sugar-sweet view of the instrument. It should have been, but it wasn’t – mea culpa.
Consequently it was only in the 1990s that I began to play with other recorder players again, and discovered that I used a far wider dynamic range than they did – usually getting compliments for it, but not always. Joining the SRP was the first time I heard about “centred” tone and how desirable it was to use it exclusively; to be frank, I took no notice, putting it in the same wastepaper basket as the insistence on virtually no tonguing on all passages, not just legato ones, as well as anything else claiming that “the recorder is a flauto dolce, and therefore must always be soft, gentle, smooth and with sweet, constant tone”. Yuk. At this time I began to be aware of the differences that had developed between UK and German instrument styles, and typified by the very well-known English maker whose recorders “don’t do top F# - Telemann never uses it so I don’t”. (Actually Telemann does use top F# quite freely; but those works where he does have mostly not been published, because the recorder “can’t play top F#”.) This was especially obvious in recorder “weekends” and “festivals” where the teachers almost always began to insist on centred tone at intermediate level and above.
So when I needed to replace first my treble and then my tenor, I did not look at English or American makers – I went to the German makers, and especially to Mollenhauer, who were beginning to produce “modern, innovative” instruments – the “Evo” range – which actually were the descendants of the 1950s style that I was used to, and of the type of recorder Waitzman and von Heune had campaigned for (except that incomprehensibly they lack a bell key). The difference between the p and c registers is there, and is stronger than in my old instruments, but the tone quality of both registers is much more like that of the old instruments. Furthermore, the designers state quite clearly that they expect the recorders to be played over the full dynamic range from ff to niente – and to prove it, the latest instruments even have a whisper key – but operated by a finger joint.
But I may have been being unfair to the USA. The “Eagle” recorder is very much of the same type as the Mollenhauer Evo series – volume enough to play with orchestral instruments; over two and a half octaves; full dynamic range – including a whisper key – and the change from the p register to the c register almost completely vanished, even more so than in the Mollenhauer. But perhaps this is not so surprising; the Eagle is based on the pioneering work of the late (and greatly missed) Adreana Breukink who was a pupil of Franz Bruggen in the Netherlands. It is in fact not an American design, but a Dutch design manufactured in the USA.
So what do I do? I want to play with other people, but all my recorders are either from the 1960’s or else from the modern revival of that tradition. People want me to play with just centred tone – but my recorders won’t really do that. I do not play a “modern” flauto dolce; I play a “traditional” flauto acerbo. All I can do is use my old recorders so that the volume is not overpowering, and play them as far as possible using the closest I have to a modern centred tone and using constant volume. Is this acceptable? Apparently not, but it seems to be the best I’ve got. Unless you have a better idea?