The Place of the Recorder in the Performance of Seventeenth-Century Italian Music

Peter Van Heyghen
Promotors: Kristin Van den Buys, Marc Vanscheeuwijck

Italian “Early Baroque” music has long captivated modern recorder players. Today, Italian canzonas and sonatas published between the 1610s and the 1670s are standard recorder repertoire, and recorders seem also indispensable in the revival of seventeenth-century Italian operas. This has led to a widespread perception that, during the seventeenth century, the recorder must have been a prominent instrument in Italian music, on par with other soprano instruments such as the cornett and violin. Additionally, it is often assumed that the most commonly used recorder size was the soprano in C, preferably with a wide-bore design.


However, as this research aims to demonstrate, this picture is the result of conflating several distinct performance practices from different times and places in the seventeenth century. While it is true that recorders continued to play a role in the performance of Italian music throughout the century, their prominence was never comparable to that of the cornett or violin. Similarly, while recorders were often used to perform instrumental parts not originally intended for them, this was not universal across all Italian musical genres, nor was it equally common in all European regions where Italian music was performed. Moreover, although soprano recorders were sometimes used for the performance of Italian music, they were never a solo instrument in the hands of Italian professional musicians. Finally, while it cannot be excluded that some players may have used wide-bore instruments, other bore designs appear to be more historically and aesthetically plausible.


As its title suggests, this research aims to situate the recorder within a broader musical and social context. The question of the recorder's place in the performance of seventeenth-century Italian music raises a number of issues and underlying questions that require exploration: Was the recorder used as a solo instrument, as part of an ensemble, or both? Which instruments were recorders combined with? In what genres and performance settings was the recorder employed? How frequently was it used in comparison to other melodic soprano instruments? Who were the musicians playing the recorder? What sizes of recorders were in use, and what ranges did they have, and in relation to that, what kind of musical parts were considered suitable for performance on the recorder? Were any particular aesthetic characteristics attributed to the instrument? And, finally, in relation to all questions above, were there any significant regional differences in its use?


The ultimate goal of this research is to inspire modern recorder players to embrace a more historically informed and aesthetically plausible approach to performing Italian seventeenth-century music through the insights provided by my findings.