The Art of Playing the Recorder

This book constitutes the definitive work on recorder technique. Although its author, a leading virtuoso performer on the recorder and transverse fl ute, describes it as “a broad overview of the basic techniques of recorder-playing,” it is actually more a miniencyclopedia on the subject. It consists of six chapters devoted to virtually every aspect of basic recorder technique, as well as a chapter on the requirements of a recorder suitable for serious work. Each topic is fully explained, with regard not only to the needs of the beginner, but to those of the advanced student and the aspiring virtuoso as well.

Besides surpassing all existing works on the subject in depth, accuracy, and rigor, this book offers the first–and probably final–codification of the technique of the bell-keyed recorder, an instrument which represents the most significant advance in recorder design since the eighteenth century. As such, it will be of value not only to those interested in the recorder as a historical woodwind, but to those concerned with expanding the recorder’s capabilities beyond its eighteenth century limitations. Moreover, much of the information it contains on aspects of recorder technique common to other woodwinds will be of interest to students, teachers, and performers on other instruments, notably the flute, in its Baroque, modern, and intermediate forms.

DANIEL WAITZMAN, winner of the Concert Artists Guild and International Bach Society competitions, and recipient of a Solo Recitalist’s Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, has been critically acclaimed as a leading virtuoso and composer on both transverse flute and recorder. A graduate of the High School of Music and Art and Columbia University School of the Arts, his teachers included Samuel Baron, Otto Luening, Bernard Krainis, and Paul Henry Lang. His solo appearances include the Bach Aria Group, Amor Artis Chamber Orchestra, Clarion Concerts, Musica Sacra, Queens Symphony Chamber Orchestra, National Chorale, Long Island Baroque Ensemble, and the Mostly Mozart Festival. He has toured the United States and Canada as soloist and chamber musician, and has taught fl ute, Baroque flute, and recorder at Queens College-CUNY, and at Hofstra University. A pioneer in the revival of older musical styles as the basis for contemporary musical composition, Mr. Waitzman’s compositions include a D Minor String Quartet in memory of Otto Luening; a D Major Flute Quartet; a String Symphony; a Harpsichord Concerto; Sonatas and Trios for Flute, Recorder, Oboe, Violin, Cello, and harpsichord, fortepiano, pianoforte, or clavichord; three Organ Tri...