Instruments - Part 22

 Recorder

The recorder appeared as a musical instrument in the Middle Ages and was popular in Baroque music.  One of the first paintings showing a recorder is The Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1500, one of the bizarre surrealistic fantasy paintings by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch.  Above is a detail of the part of the painting showing musicians in Hell.  The recorder isn't the large instrument slanting across the image.  No; below that is a musician with an instrument stuck up his ass.  That's the recorder.

For a better view of what a recorder looks like when it's not stuck up someone's ass, here's a modern painting by Mexican artist Felix d'Eon called Portrait of Dante as a Flautist.  Hundreds of years ago, "flute" meant recorder, which has caused confusion ever since.  In any case, Dante is holding a recorder, not a flute.

What's the difference?  A flute, also called transverse flute, is held sideways to the mouth and played by blowing air across a hole near the end.  A recorder is played by blowing into the end of the instrument, like the one above.

But, unlike other instruments where you blow into the end, like the clarinet or oboe, in which the sound is produced by one or two vibrating reeds, the recorder has no reed.  Its sound is produced by what's called a whistle mouthpiece that has a hole near the end that you blow into.  Air moving past this hole creates vibrations.  That's how a whistle produces sound (and, by the way, also how an organ pipe produces sound).

The pitch of the sound is altered by covering or uncovering holes along the length of the instrument, so the player can produce all the notes of the musical scale.

Recorders were traditionally made out of wood, though today inexpensive recorders are made out of plastic.  Above is a recorder player in the 2010 Näcken competition in Sweden, in which contestants imitate Näcken, naked water sprites who in Scandinavian folklore played enchanted melodies in a stream or lake.

In this 1952 sculpture by Max Rieder in Salzburg, Austria called Musical Graces, one of the Graces is playing a recorder.  Another is playing a triangle, and the one you can't see is playing panpipes.  A strange combination of instruments, IMHO.  (A little triangle music goes a long way, since it sounds like a telephone ringing.)

We end with this recorder player in silhouette.  Some may not consider the recorder a very exciting instrument, but apparently this guy does.