ABSTRACT
Having examined all of Vivaldi's works containing one or more parts for recorder or flute, one arrives at a very complete picture of their musical language and of the instrumental technique required from their performers on these instruments. There are several passages in Vivaldi's music for instruments of the flute family that betray his direct practical knowledge of the instrument. The intensive use of what we have called by analogy the 'open strings' of the recorder and flute points likewise to a personal familiarity with these instruments. Vivaldi knew very well, as did Telemann, that the recorder is an instrument related closely to the bassoon – and less closely than one might imagine to the transverse flute and oboe. Both the recorder (in its common forms) and the bassoon are pitched in F, and the two instruments share a large number of fingerings.
