Day 23 | Recorder31
For today's Recorder31 post we take a look at some tenor recorder repertoire!
Tutor books
There aren't really specific tutor books for the tenor recorder, as the soprano/descant tutor books can be used. Most of the tutor books are aimed at a younger audience and combine learning the recorder with learning to read music, such as Fun & Games and Red Hot Recorder. For an adult beginner we recommend Scoppola's Method for Descant Recorder.
Der Fluyten Lust-hof
Jacob van Eyck's Der Fluyten Lust-hof is the biggest collection of music for a single wind instrument ever! It is a collection of themes and modos (variations) where the modos get progressively harder. The themes are a mixture of folk tunes, popular songs of the time, psalms, dance tunes and church works. Popular pieces include Fantasia & Echo (watch Anna Stegmann's performance from earlier this month), Doen Daphne D'over Schoone Maeght and Pavaen Lachrymae. The collection (published in three volumes) is a must for every recorder player. It is a great resource that can be used for technical work as well as used to find a short contrasting piece for a recital programme. Whatever stage you are at in your playing journey, you can enjoy playing and exploring this collection. It is for soprano recorder, though lots pf the pieces work really well and are very effective on the tenor.
Play-along Books
There are lots of play-along books available with a variety of repertoire. The Schott Anthologies are great and available for the renaissance and baroque periods. There are also the Dowani books with a variety of German, Italian and English baroque music. Again these state that they are for the descant but sound great on the tenor.
Renaissance & Baroque
Once again many editions of renaissance and baroque music that work fantastically well on the tenor will often be scored 'for the soprano/descant". The Renaissance recorder is a lovely collection of early pieces. The transitional repertoire of the Early Baroque is nice to explore on the tenor recorder, with Masters of Early Baroque being a good introduction to this repertoire. For baroque music, Die Klammermusik by Telemann is a great coolection of partitas that work really well on tenor. These are for any melody instruments and are a lovely addition to a concert programme.
C20th repertoire
There are lots of C20th works specifically for the tenor recorder. It has been extensively written for by Japanese composers due to it's similarity in timbre of the shakuhachi, which can be seen in Fragmente by Shinohara amongst others. The sound of the tenor recorder is in many ways more flute like, and with it having a bottom note of C, it works well for pieces written for flute such as Debussy's Syrinx.
Our 5 tenor recorder highlights:
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