the one with some historical knowledge told in non-academic terms and omg GLEE
The school across the road from me is apparently having an outdoors music class today as I can hear horrible plastic recorders. And trumpets for some reason. But would you like to know the story behind why we learn recorder at school? Of course you do.
Okay, so there's this guy called Arnold Dolmetsch. He's a bit weird, in the sense that he wanted to find out what music would've sounded like in the Baroque and Classical periods when most people just thought that doing that was pointless. So he found all these original instruments and discovered that, hai guys, these instruments don't sound like ours. Among other things, they were tuned differently. So dear old Dolmetsch got a bit into this whole original instrument thing, and started making copies of viols and recorders and other outdated instruments that hadn't been played for over a hundred years. For some reason, Dolmetsch thought that learning the recorder was something that Should Be Done and for further (and probably weirder, but unknown to me) reasons, school boards agreed with him. It does make some sort of sense, a plastic recorder (they actually had wood ones in the 70s though) is quite cheap, portable and mostly unbreakable*.
So essentially, schoolchildren learn the recorder even though it's an antiquated instrument because Arnold Dolmetsch was weird and because they are cheap.
ANYWAY.
GLEE DAY TODAY OMG SO EXCITED GLEE KIDS HOORAY.
Note to self: stop checking inbox for PhD outcome email. It has been three days including today. Give it two weeks plz.
*A note. The recorder (when a properly done reproduction, made out of wood etc) was linked to the Early Music Movement of the twentieth century, which basically attempted to recreate the sound and style of the music from the Baroque and Classical periods (who cares about the Romantic period, apparently, and is where my proposal comes in) rather than playing Bach on modern instruments in modern style (i.e. no stresses on important beats. This is one of my most hated aspects of modern performance along with continuous vibrato). However, the recorders used by school kids are not made in period-appropriate materials, nor are they tuned to Baroque (or what we guess is Baroque) pitch. They are (largely, if we're talking the normal sized ones) tuned to A=440 which is modern pitch. If I remember correctly, most Historically Informed Performance groups use A=400 for Baroque pitch these days.
Okay, so there's this guy called Arnold Dolmetsch. He's a bit weird, in the sense that he wanted to find out what music would've sounded like in the Baroque and Classical periods when most people just thought that doing that was pointless. So he found all these original instruments and discovered that, hai guys, these instruments don't sound like ours. Among other things, they were tuned differently. So dear old Dolmetsch got a bit into this whole original instrument thing, and started making copies of viols and recorders and other outdated instruments that hadn't been played for over a hundred years. For some reason, Dolmetsch thought that learning the recorder was something that Should Be Done and for further (and probably weirder, but unknown to me) reasons, school boards agreed with him. It does make some sort of sense, a plastic recorder (they actually had wood ones in the 70s though) is quite cheap, portable and mostly unbreakable*.
So essentially, schoolchildren learn the recorder even though it's an antiquated instrument because Arnold Dolmetsch was weird and because they are cheap.
ANYWAY.
GLEE DAY TODAY OMG SO EXCITED GLEE KIDS HOORAY.
Note to self: stop checking inbox for PhD outcome email. It has been three days including today. Give it two weeks plz.
*A note. The recorder (when a properly done reproduction, made out of wood etc) was linked to the Early Music Movement of the twentieth century, which basically attempted to recreate the sound and style of the music from the Baroque and Classical periods (who cares about the Romantic period, apparently, and is where my proposal comes in) rather than playing Bach on modern instruments in modern style (i.e. no stresses on important beats. This is one of my most hated aspects of modern performance along with continuous vibrato). However, the recorders used by school kids are not made in period-appropriate materials, nor are they tuned to Baroque (or what we guess is Baroque) pitch. They are (largely, if we're talking the normal sized ones) tuned to A=440 which is modern pitch. If I remember correctly, most Historically Informed Performance groups use A=400 for Baroque pitch these days.