Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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38 EECORDER KEOOEDER
Bacon twice alludes to ita solemnity ; Milton
speaks of its 'solemn touches,' and under the
name of 'the solemn pipe,' mentions it as one
of the instruments played on a, great occasion
in Heaven. Its sweetness was ineffable. Referring
to the effect of recorders used at a theatre
to represent a choir of angels, Pepys writes
'
But that which did please me beyond anything
in the whole world was the wind-musique
when the angel comes down, which is 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 ; that neither then, nor all the evening
going home, and at home, I was able to think
of anything, but remained all night transported,
so as I could not believe that ever any musick
hath that real command over the soul of a man
as this did upon me : and makes me resolve to
practice wind-musique, and to make my wife
do the like.' Some weeks afterwards he buys
a recorder, 'which,' he says, 'I do intend to
learn to play on, the sound of it being of all
sounds in the world, most pleasing to me.
The command ' '
recorders had ' over
the soul of a man,' and their
—power to mitigate and 'swage
With solemn touches troubled thouglits, and chase
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain
From mortal or immortal minds
may serve to explain why Hamlet, in the
frenzied state to which he had been wrought
by the spectacle of the murder of his father
played before his guilty uncle, should bethink
him of the calming influence of a consort of
' '
these instruments. Come, ' he cries, some
music ; come, the recorders. ' If Shakespeare's
design were carried out, instead of tlie two
musicians we generally see furnished with
little pipes not unlike penny whistles, there
would come upon the stage in the recorder
scene at least four recorder players carrying
instruments varying in length from nearly two
to nearly four feet. It is needless to say that
even the discant is far too stout to be snapped
like a twig, so that the act of violence sometimes
seen, the breaking to pieces of the recorder
borrowed of the player, would be as impracticable
as it is foreign to the true spirit of the
scene, and out of keeping with the nature of
the gentle Hamlet.
With the advance of the orchestra the
consorts of wind instruments broke up and
disappeared, only such members of each family
being retained as were most suitable for the
new combination. The member of the recorder
family which survived had a compass of two
octaves, from /' to /'", iingerings up to a'" being
sometimes given. About the end of the 17th
century the instrument ceased to be called the
recorder, retaining only the appellation of flute,
and descending after a time to that of the
Common flute. In France it came to be styled
the flute a bee. The change of name led to a
strange chapter in the history of music—
chapter which should be a warning to those
who attempt to reconstruct extinct instruments
out of preconceived ideas of what they might,
or must, have been. For more than a hundred
years the recorder was enshrouded in mystery.
It was asked, What was a recorder ? Sir John
Hawkins put forward the notion that it was
a flageolet, and persuaded himself that Lord
Bacon had spoken of the recorder as having
six holes, the number of those of the flageolet.
Burney, writing thirteen yeara after Sir John,
stated authoritatively that a recorder was a
flageolet, thereby revealing the secret that he
had availed himself of his rival's labours without
acknowledging his obligation. Next came
Mr. William Chappell, who brought himself to
the belief that he had discovered in a book of
instructions for the recorder the statement that
the instrument was pierced with a hole called
the recorder. He fancied that the recorder
took its name from the hole, and drawing
further on his imagination, supposed the hole
to be covered with a piece of thin skin. Finally,
Carl Engel acquired a Common flute (it is now
in the South Kensington Museum) in which
there was a hole covered with membrane. He
pronounced this flute to be a recorder of the
17th century, and explained that the hole thus
covered was intended to make the sound reedy
and tender ; whereas an examination of the
instrument would have shown him that his
recorder of the 17th century was made in New
Bond Street between 1800 and 1812, and that
the hole covered with membrane was so placed
that it was impossible for it to affect the tone.
The claim of the recorder to be considered
the head of instruments of the flute kind was
destined to be called in question. Its supremacy
was challenged by the transverse flute, an instrument
called by the French- the German flute,
to distinguish it from the recorder, which they
termed the English flute. In lip flutes, to
which family the German flute belongs, the
channel from which the jet of air issues (see
Flute) is formed by the lips. The control
exercised by the lips over the shape of the jet and
the size of the opening of the mouth-hole of the
flute enables the player to influence the intonation
and the quality of the tone, advantages (not
to mention greater power) more than sufficient
to compensate for inferiority in sweetness and
dignity. In Handel's orchestra the German
and the Common flute existed side by side, a
circumstance which enabled Handel to express
niceties of flute timbre to which we are strangers.
Thus in '
Judas Maccabseus ' he was able to
avail himself of the martial strains of two
German flutes for 'See the Conquering Hero
comes,' but to assign the cajolery of 'Wise
men flattering may deceive you ' to the cooing
blandishments of two Common flutes. We can