ABSTRACT

Three classes of musicians have always played the recorder since at least the early Renaissance: professionals, adult amateurs, and children. With the possible exception of Ganassi’s Fontegara, no extant early instructions could have provided adequate instruction for professionals. This is hardly surprising, because such musicians have always been taught orally. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods they served as apprentices, receiving their training from masters with little or no written assistance. Since the mid-twentieth century, would-be professionals have generally begun with private teachers then gone on to music schools or conservatories, instruction books serving primarily as a source of exercises, studies, and progressive repertory.