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Music
Bladder Pipe
Cornamuse
Dulcian
Gamba
Harp
Harpsichord
Kortholt
Lizard
Lute
Organetto
Pipe and
Tabor
Psaltery
Rebec
Recorder
Sacbut
Schalmei
Serpent
Shawm
Shofar
Viol |
You must have played one of these at school ' I
know I did. The principle of the recorder or whistle mouthpiece seems as old
as mankind. The instrument's essential features are the lip (cut near the
top of the body), the fipple (a block of wood inserted in the end to be
blown), and the windway (a narrow channel along the fipple through which air
is blown against the edge of the lip to produce sound).
It is difficult to document the recorder's early history due to the
inability to positively identify what is and what is not a recorder in
medieval art. Perhaps the earliest portrayal is an eleventh-century carving
on a stone pillar in the church at Boubon-l'Achambault, St George, France.
For more information on the early recorders, see Nicholas Lander's medieval
recorder page.
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