ABSTRACT
Several book-length studies deal with the topic of “extended” or avant-garde recorder techniques in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These three are the most important: 1209. O’Kelly, Eve Elizabeth. The Recorder in Twentieth-Century Music. M.Phil, thesis,
Goldsmith’s College, University of London, 1985. Vol. 1: The Recorder, Its Music and Technique in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 2: A Catalogue of Twentieth-Century Recorder Music. The first volume considers the instrument, gives a history of its revival, surveys the
modern recorder repertory (serious rather than educational; conservative and avantgarde), then discusses avant-garde techniques. The catalog is arranged by medium (pieces for one recorder, then those for two recorders, etc.). Each entry gives the (O’Kelly) catalog number of the work, composer’s name and dates, title and publication date, publisher, commercial recordings (if any), and exact instrumentation. There is a composer index and a list of publishers (address given as city and country only). 1210. O’Kelly, Eve. The Recorder Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990. xiv, 179 p. ISBN 0521366607. ML 990 .R4 O5 1990. In book form, O’Kelly’s study of the recorder in the twentieth century (item 1209) has
been improved by making the order of some of the sections more logical, bringing the writing up to date in the light of new research and compositions, and borrowing Herman Rechberger’s tables of nonstandard fingerings for the alto recorder (see item 1217). Unfortunately, the catalog has also been cut down considerably, so that instead of “comprising as full a listing as possible of modem recorder compositions,” it now “contains some 400 works out of about 800 known to me,” the selection having been made on the basis of suitability for professional or semiprofessional performance, current availability, and “sufficient musical merit.” It still represents one of the best books ever written about the recorder. Reviewed by Pete Rose in American Recorder 31, no. 4 (December 1990): 31-32 and P[aul] C[lark] in Recorder Magazine 10, no. 4 (December 1990): 113. 1211. Vetter, Michael. Il flauto dolce ed acerbo [The flute, sweet and sour]. Part 1:
Anweisungen und Übungen für Spieler neuer Blockflötenmusik= Instructions and Exercises for Players of New Recorder Music. Celle: Moeck, 1969. Edition Moeck Nr. 4009. 87 p. OCLC #7684727. Parallel text in German and English. The long-awaited magnum opus by one of the two main pioneers of avant-garde
recorder music. (A note states laconically that the five-year delay in publishing occurred for “many reasons…for which neither the publisher not least the aut[h]or can be blamed.” Whether the reader could really “be sure that Michael Vetter’s method is today as actual [up to date] as at the time of its beginning” is another matter.) As these quotations suggest, the English translation is quaint enough to be humorous but still accurate enough
to be understood. The title of Vetter’s book celebrates the transformation of the recorder, by means of new techniques, into “a new instrument which combines and mixes the characteristics of the flauto dolce with that of a ‘flauto acerbo’ in a natural way.” Nearly half of the book consists of fingering charts-for regular notes, flageolet tones, and multiphonics in the open, closed, and covered registers. The remainder consists of discussions of embouchure, articulation, breathing, vibrato, and dynamics, illustrated with music examples from the literature of the avantgarde (or, in some cases, Baroque or modern derrière-garde). Fifteen pages of exercises at the end explore these special techniques. Daniel Waitzman, in his review (American Recorder 11, no. 1 [winter 1970]: 16-19), notes that no attempt is made to identify the relative importance of individual fingerings in the list. He also questions the need for special “white noise” fingerings, since such sounds can be produced “with virtually every fingering, through variations in embouchure.” Vetter does not mention covering or shading the window, or humming or whistling into the instrument. Another objection that might be made, incidentally, is that all recorder fingerings, and particularly the special ones, are very much dependent upon the individual instrument (Vetter used to play a Moeck); therefore, tables have limited value. Waitzman concludes-and we concur: “Despite its limitations, this is a book that must be studied by all serious students of the recorder, whether or not they are interested in playing twentieth-century music.” Also reviewed by David Lasocki in Recorder & Music Magazine 3, no. 4 (December 1969): 146. Instead of working on part 2 of the book, which was to have been about electrifying the recorder, Vetter wrote four pieces of music (including Rezitative and Figurationen), which “together are more or less a compendium of what I had to say about the electrified recorder” (fax to David Lasocki, June 24, 1998).
