Recorder music

You may have first encountered the recorder in your school days as a small child when the simple act of moving fingers and blowing down a tube resulted in the wonder of different notes, melodies and for those who stuck with it, a choir of recorders playing an ensemble of sounds. For those captivated by the experience, the recorder may have led to a flute, oboe or clarinet but for most it will remain only the memory of a childhood and perhaps childish experience.

Tunes for beginner recorder players

For beginners, Three Little Pieces on Five Notes: March, Song, Dance for descant (soprano) recorder are very easy but rewarding tunes using only the most common left hand notes. There are then Three Suites which introduce the young player to ensemble music – a first important step in experiencing the joy of playing with others.

For other easy and beginner recorder pieces, click here.

Music for more advanced recorder players

Simple music for children is far from the whole story that recorder music can tell. Pieces like Andrew Challinger's Ballads, Blues and Riffs for recorder ensemble make impressive performances.

Buy sheet music for Ballads, Blues and Riffs

Another such virtuoso piece is David Bedford’s, Piers de Résistance for descant (soprano) and sopranino recorders which requires the performer to play both instruments at the same time in certain places.

Recorder music in history: the middle ages, renaissance and baroque works

Perhaps the most famous comment on the recorder music of the day is that entered by Pepys in his diary of February 1668:

“… The wind musique … 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 thing of any thing, but remained all night transported, so as I could not believe that ever any musique hath that real command over the soul of a man as did this upon me …”

Clement Jewitt, a relative late-comer to the world of composition, but someone who has made his mark both musically and philosophically has a growing catalogue of recorder ensemble transcriptions of music from the late middle ages, with Three 13th Century Motets and from the renaissance, Pavans 1, 3, 5 and 6. J.S. Bach also receives a treatment by Jewitt: “The Air from Suite 3 (popularly known as Air on a G string) makes a highly effective recorder quartet piece. The Andante from Brandenburg number 2 is less well known, but, falling into a related key for the arrangement, makes an apposite complementary piece.”

What recorder music have you yet to discover?