Customer Reviews

The Cambridge Companion to the Recorder (Cambridge Companions to Music)

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Any recorder player will enjoy and learn from this book.

I have been playing the alto recorder for a year now. This book taught me a great deal about the instrument. What's even better,
the book carefully introduces the repertory and where to find and read about it.I am delighted to learn that I will never run out of material to play.

The book is written with care, verve, and love. However, the reader is assumed to have considerable knowledge, to know without explanation, for instance, the implications of wide windways and bores, and narrow windways (p178). The history of the 20th century recorder revival, of great interest to contemporary enthusiasts, is brushed off twice, as "described and discussed in several publications." Fine, then why not this one? This should have been dealt with more carefully. The illustrations are very poorly reproduced. I am still suffering from eyestrain from trying to find the recorder in Plate 27.

Overall, though, this is a book any recorder player will want.

This is the only easily available book about the history of the instrument, with nice chapters dealing with the history of the recorder and coments about the repertoire. so, if you love the recorder, it is a must buy.
My only complain is that they should include a chapter with systematic and more detailed description and analysis of all Telemann and Hendel sonatas. A non academic chapter about the instruments available in the market, with photos of the various sizes would enlarge the number of readers interested in the book.

A detailed History Lesson on the Recorder with some "how to" GEMs strewn in along the way...

For those who are seeking to expand their historical horizon on the development of the recorder and its role in music making through the centuries and broadly, the type and evolution of music written for it. Consists largely of factual texts - but with rather poorly illustrated low-res black and white photos/drawings - covering topics such as:
- the recorder and its music through the centuries;
- the use of recorders in an orchestra
- profressional players and their instruments
- the revival of the recorder and its role in education (there are some criticisms fr above reviews on the brevity of that topic which was insufficiently dealt with)

I was, however, not immediately drawn to the book when I first opened it ... but it appears to be an authority on the subject for those seeking it. Personally, for my current purposes, I much prefer Wollitz's Recorder Book which offers practical instruction - but the two books are mutually exclusive, covering totally different aspects of the instrument. To each his own. As a history book - almost first class.

Wollitz's book "instructs, inspires and aims to facilitate the mastery of recorder playing".
This book is very much a history lesson about the recorder with some "how tos" gems offered between the paragraphs.