The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #8707   Message #2914059
Posted By: Jack Campin
25-May-10 - 01:35 PM
Thread Name: recorder music
Subject: RE: recorder music
Music teachers like to think of their pupils as using "music for recorder" (or "...for cello", or "... for trumpet", or whatever), and that's what's printed on thousands of sheet music covers, but most of the recorder's earliest repertoire was meant for any instrument that could play it.

Most of us here play folk music a lot of the time, and most folk tunes work on most recorders. You don't need that "for recorder" label on music you get. You will sometimes come across effects that only work on the violin - if so leave them out or look for alternate ways to do them. You will very rarely find a folk tune version using an effect that only a recorder can get.

Probably the tunebook I've used more than any other is "Kerr's Merry Melodies for the Violin", book 1. It's a collection of Scottish tunes published around 1880, at a time when hardly any recorders were in use, and Kerr can't have ever imagined a recorder playing from his book, but most of it works fine. It's never gone out of print.