Medieval Music, Recorder

You must have played one of these at school ? I know I did. The principle of the recorder or whistle mouthpiece seems as old as mankind. The instrument's essential features are the lip (cut near the top of the body), the fipple (a block of wood inserted in the end to be blown), and the windway (a narrow channel along the fipple through which air is blown against the edge of the lip to produce sound).

It is difficult to document the recorder's early history due to the inability to positively identify what is and what is not a recorder in medieval art. Perhaps the earliest portrayal is an eleventh-century carving on a stone pillar in the church at Boubon-l'Achambault, St George, France. For more information on the early recorders, see Nicholas Lander's medieval recorder page.

 

 

 

 

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