Flute dynamics | The Music Stand - for people who make music and have other hobbies

Zi
Treble Clef

Posts: 1,316

Flute dynamics Mar 14, 2023 9:53:43 GMT

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Post by Zi on Mar 14, 2023 9:53:43 GMT

I suspect this might be a stupid question coming up. It's not entirely my fault. It's because authors say things in books and they don't entirely say why they say them... I was one of those irritating 'Why?' and 'How do you know?' children who never grew out of it...

Anyway, the latest comment was trying to explain why the recorder fell out of favour and the flute became the instrument of choice. This particular author says that:
'By about 1740 the recorder had ceased to have any part in these' [orchestra*]. She goes on to say that the demise has been put down to the recorder's relative quietness but she doubts this is the case because 'the recorder carries rather better than the baroque flute.' She suggests that 'The major cause of its demise was the lack of nuance and dynamic flexibility ... made it less suitable for [the] more overtly expressive style of writing introduced into European music in the mid-eighteenth century.'
Adrienne Simpson - The orchestral recorder from The Cambridge Companion to the Recorder p102

My questions are:
1. Does anyone know anything about how well the sound of the baroque flute carries?
2. The comment about recorder dynamics is extraordinary to me - beginners find recorder dynamics very difficult but I could reel off the names of professional performers who can 'do' dynamics extremely well so does the flute really have 'nuance and dynamic flexibility' that the recorder doesn't have?

Any pointers appreciated. I've never seen this particular reasoning for the rise of the flute and the demise of the recorder. I'd be really interested to hear it from a flautist's perspective. But obviously, any comments are as always appreciated! f_lute

*She is referring to the 'opera theatres' of Italy and at the Frecnh Court - the precursors of the modern orchestra.

Last Edit: Mar 14, 2023 9:59:47 GMT by Zi

“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.” — Johann Sebastian Bach

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pavane
Treble Clef

Posts: 580

Flute dynamics Mar 17, 2023 10:30:22 GMT

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Post by pavane on Mar 17, 2023 10:30:22 GMT

Like you, I know nothing apart from things I have read here and there, so all I have to contribute are some observations that are largely informed by second hand knowledge.

A common riposte to the "isn't the recorder a children's instrument" question is "Bach wrote for it" and while there is some truth in that, he actually wrote very little for the recorder, and rather more for the flute: the BWV1013 sonata that every recorder player (inc me) aspires to play was of course written for traverso and is almost impossible to play on the recorder without transposing it into a more friendly key (which itself is less friendly than the A minor of the original). Bach had a choice, and mostly chose the baroque flute over the baroque recorder. I'm fairly sure that the same is true of Telemann: he was himself a multi-instrumentalist and played the recorder, but I think (not as certain as I am for Bach) that he also wrote far more for flute - the 12 Solo Fantasias that, again, lots of recorder players aspire to play, were written for flute and, also again, need fiddling with in some way to make them suitable for recorder (thus losing the key progression of the originals).

It's hard not to conclude that later baroque composers, given a choice - as recorders must still have been very much part of the available pool of instruments that could be written for as there would be lots of musicians around who played them - chose the baroque flute over the recorder. I suspect the reasons for this are largely guessed at, as I'm not aware that eg Bach left a diary saying why he chose some instruments and not others.

As I understand it, you can vary the dynamics on recorder, but only by creating the illusion of altering them rather than by actually doing it. Sarah Jeffery has a video about it I think, and suggests strategies like playing quiet pieces relatively staccato so there is less sound being created and this will make it seem quieter. If you alter the sound level by altering your pressure of blowing, you quickly alter the pitch and go out of tune.

I don't play the flute at all so can't say anything from a point of absolutely knowing what I'm talking about, but I think you can alter the dynamics without altering the pitch. That might require some sort of compensation like a slight change in the angle of blowing, but you can do that on a flute, and you can't do it on a recorder. You can also change the tone quality by changing the way you blow which, again, you can't do on a recorder. So, I presume there really are some advantages to the composer in writing for flute rather than recorder. Having said that, baroque music is notorious for having very little in the way of playing instructions - I think many scores have nothing apart from key and time signatures, and the notes, and interpretation was left up to the performers, who would be working with the same set of assumptions and traditions that the composers were working in, so it probably came out as intended, but it means we don't really know what the composer had in mind.

Following on from that, as fashions changed, the assumptions of both composers and performers would have changed, so the system would continue to work and nobody would need to write down why a piece was to be played on flute rather than recorder (or even necessarily that it was, as it would probably have been obvious from the music, eg as mentioned above BWV1013 only really works on a flute). It's amazing how much fashion influences behaviour, so perhaps in the end it was as responsible as anything else for the change, which in turn meant that when the great instrument revolution occurred that saw brass instruments get valves, pianos replace harpsichords, and so on, it was the traverso not the recorder that got the Boehm treatment and thus marched on to a bright new future.

Zi
Treble Clef

Posts: 1,316

Flute dynamics Mar 17, 2023 16:33:14 GMT

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Post by Zi on Mar 17, 2023 16:33:14 GMT

What you say does have the advantage of making sense! I've read somewhere recently - maybe it was in the Cambridge Companion - that they were less fussy during the Baroque period and would adapt music to anything they had at hand. Apparently Bach rewrote things for different groups he had at his disposal and this was common. Perhaps the recorder was also affected by people being bewitched by what looked to be a better, more interesting instrument to play? I think my problem is that I hear people who can play extremely well so I wonder why dynamics could be an issue. It's easy to forget that Bach wasn't impressed by the early pianoforte and said so.

I do know that some people were extremely upset when the flute went metal - in fact they were so upset they reminded me of the outcry when Dylan went electric. It's really nice to know that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.” — Johann Sebastian Bach

themusicstand.freeforums.net/ - All musicians - budding or already in flower - welcome!