Well-Tempered Woodwinds

Geoffrey Burgess

Description

Friedrich von Huene (1929– ) is arguably the most important manufacturer of historical woodwinds in the 20th century. Since he began making recorders in 1958, von Huene has exerted a strong influence on the craft of building woodwind instruments and on the study of instrument–making, as he has helped to shape the emerging field of Early Music performance practice. Recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the American Musical Instrumental Society, the National Flute Association, and Early Music America, he has remained at the forefront of research and design of historical copies of recorders, flutes, and oboes. In a compelling narrative that combines biography, cultural history, and technical organological enquiry, Geoffrey Burgess explores von Huene's impact on the craft of historical instrument–making and the role organology has played in the emergence of the Early Music movement in the post-war era.

Preface: A Domestic Music Room in Brookline
Introduction: Why Recorders?
1. Childhood in Paradise
2. Flight from Eden
3. Training in a New World
4. Friedrich the Great: Founding an Empire
5. Trading Old Flutes for New
6. Heydays
7. At the Hub of an International Network
8. Cause to Celebrate
9. The von Huene Legacy
Epilogue
Appendix 1. Von Huene Family Tree
Appendix 2. Summary Chronology
Appendix 3. List of Honors
Appendix 4. Recordings of Brandenburg IV with Recorders
Appendix 5. List of Instruments Produced by von Huene Workshop
Appendix 6. Recorders and Traversos heard in the recordings by Frans Brüggen
Appendix 7. General Discography
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Music
• History
• Woodwind instrument
• Criticism
• Multiple signal classification
• Biography
• Wind instrument
• Musical instrument
• Musical Instruments
• Woodwinds

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9780253016508
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Well-Tempered Woodwinds

PUBLICATIONS OF THE EARLY MUSIC INSTITUTE Paul Elliott, editor
Well-Tempered Woodwinds
Friedrich von Huene and the Making of Early Music in a New World
Geoffrey Burgess
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Geoffrey Burgess
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-01641-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01650-8 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
Endpapers: Front: Measurements of alto recorder by Jean Hyacinthe Rottenburgh (Brussels Musical Instrument Museum, no. 2643a) by Friedrich von Huene, 1966. Rear: Entwurf einer Altblockfloete, 1967: von Huene s production drawing for the Moeck-Rottenburgh alto.
Frontispiece: Friedrich von Huene.
Dedicated to the memory of Frans Br ggen (1934-2014), whose charismatic performances introduced the instruments of Friedrich von Huene to audiences around the world and inspired a generation to believe in the recorder and traverso .
I believe in improving the facility and versatility of the recorder to make it also a modern instrument, thereby giving it a future as well as a past.
-Friedrich von Huene
Contents

Preface: Why Recorders?

Acknowledgments

Prologue: A Domestic Music Room in Brookline
1
Childhood in Paradise
2
Flight from Eden
3
Training in a New World
4
Friedrich the Great: Founding an Empire
5
Trading Old Flutes for New
6
Heydays
7
At the Hub of an International Network
8
Cause to Celebrate
9
The von Huene Legacy

Epilogue: Amid the Mementos of an Active Life

Appendix 1. Von Huene Family Tree

Appendix 2. Friedrich von Huene Summary Chronology

Appendix 3. List of Honors

Appendix 4. Recordings of J. S. Bach s Brandenburg Concertos with Recorders, 1941-1993

Appendix 5. List of Instruments Produced by the Von Huene Workshop

Appendix 6. Recorders and Traversos Heard in Recordings by Frans Br ggen

Appendix 7. General Discography

Notes

Bibliography

Index
Preface: Why Recorders?
Over the past decade, Friedrich von Huene has devoted considerable energy to transcribing and recording J. S. Bach s Well-Tempered Clavier for recorder consort: a fitting culmination to a career dedicated to designing and making woodwind instruments for the performance of Baroque music. In addition to establishing a world-renowned workshop in Brookline, Massachusetts, now in business for over fifty years, Friedrich established a reputation as an eminent scholar in his field, a highly regarded performer and teacher, and a prime catalyst in the establishment of Boston as the early music capital of the United States. Beyond these professional achievements, anyone who has ever encountered von Huene, whether in the workshop, lecture hall, or on the concert platform, cannot fail to have been struck by his generosity of spirit, and well-tempered gentility. It is perhaps these personal qualities above all else that saw him through the changes of fortune that he encountered on his life s path.
On Friday afternoons, when tempers are frayed and the weekend still seems too far away, workshop talk turns bawdy. The guys laugh about their esoteric jobs and claim jokingly that the only reason they re in the business is because recorders are such persuasive chick magnets. But, if the sex appeal of recorders seems ludicrous, what are they good for? Their simple means of tone production accounts for their presence in cultures around the world. The recorder also had a venerable presence in European music, with a Golden Age stretching from the sixteenth to mid-eighteenth century, coinciding with the rise of the Renaissance and Baroque musical styles. It is now known that recorders did not vanish entirely from European and American musical culture during the nineteenth century, but their presence was still slight until the incredible explosion of interest in the twentieth century that, virtually overnight, resulted in a vigorous new industry of recorder manufacture. Certainly, recorders had, and continue to have, enduring musical and social importance.
It was in the mid-twentieth century that recorders took on a specific cultural significance in the reawakening of interest in early music. After two wars that shook Western society, left Europe in rubble, and shattered the personal confidence of millions, the rediscovery of music from earlier centuries became, in the words of Raymond Leppard, among the most vivid and potent instruments of hope that all is not and will not be lost, that some values are constant and likely to remain so. 1 Spanning the interwar years in Germany to the flourishing of the early music movement in the United States, Friedrich von Huene s life both paralleled and participated in the reaffirmation of hope through the rediscovery of earlier musical practices.
The recorder is often seen as the archetypal old instrument. Before its attributes were rediscovered through practical use, it was viewed with derision, dismissed as an antique curiosity. Recorder, fipple flute or English flute: a Medieval flute, blown by means of a whistle mouthpiece and held vertically. . . . The want of character which distinguishes the timbre of the whistle-flute is due to the paucity of harmonic overtones in the clang. 2 This definition from the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica is representative of opinions from a time when the recorder had been out of general circulation for over a century. 3
Most historians explain the recorder s demise in the latter part of the eighteenth century as the result of its limited tonal and dynamic range, and inability to adapt to changing musical tastes. Also called flauto dolce , it was considered soft, and while in some circles its unobtrusive tone was seen as a virtue, in the twentieth century audiences and critics were happy to accept the judgment passed down by history that it was a poor substitute for the transverse flute. Reviewing a 1951 recording of Bach s Brandenburg Concerto IV, the Boston Globe s critic dismissed Carl Dolmetsch s and Edgar Hunt s recorder playing as bubbling, na ve, and overtone-less: unimportant to the nature of the music itself which is just the same with modern winds. 4 However, once well-built instruments were available, attitudes quickly changed, and many listeners were surprised that the recorder could take an assertive musical role.
Even though the recorder, compared to the voice, violin, and keyboard instruments, was relatively peripheral in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, it played a leading role in the twentieth-century early music revival. Along with the viola da gamba, historic keyboards like the harpsichord, spinet, and clavichord, and the lute, the recorder was among the first instruments to be revived. Over the course of the early twentieth century there was a growing awareness that their usurpers-the transverse flute, cello, piano, and guitar-were no real equivalents. Indeed, the modern history of these instruments followed remarkably similar trajectories. Arnold Dolmetsch led the way for the modern manufacture of all four, recorders being the last to be revived in the 1920s. Given the cultural rapport that had been established between them it seems natural that, from 1960, von Huene should have shared his first workshop with the harpsichord builder Frank Hubbard, one of the first to insist on basing his designs on historical models. Just as Hubbard set a new path against revivalist harpsichord makers like Pleyel and Sperrhake, von Huene moved away from modernized and improved recorder designs that ignored the instrument s heritage and compromised its musical qualities.
Even more than other key instruments in the early music revivial, the recorder bridges the highbrow and lowbrow. Its unique qualities and connotations cover the gamut from childlike innocence to sophisticated artistry. As well as satisfying the needs of amateur community-based musicking, it has played an important role in education, and found a place in the professional concerts as early music transitioned from counterculture to mainstream. This gave it versatility to adapt to the changing musical climate.
The concept of early music has itself gone through significant transformations. It has shifted from being a simple historical designation referring to music composed before 1800, to a distinctive, historically based approach applied to the performance of all Western art music from before the invention of recording. The study of performance practice-the rediscovery of how music may have sounded in previous periods-took written documentation as its basis rather than living tradition. This opened a vast terrain of possibilities that, over the past century, has given rise to a diversity of creative initiatives, some more sincere as historical endeavors than others. The recorder moved with these shifting tides, adapting to new doctrines and cultural values. Through close attention to the design of historical instruments and by applying his own understanding of the music written for them, von Huene played a decisive role in bringing about the recorder s metamorphosis from infantile toy to object of beauty and tool for music