- This topic has 47 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated October 11, 2023 at 12:26 pm by
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@Pavane – I’ve just received notice of your really interesting post but I can’t see it here. This has happened to me too in the past. I suspect the board is a little confused. If you can’t see it could you repost it? If you can see it then that would be useful to know too.
I did something and it disappeared, but wouldn’t let me re-post because it duplicated an existing post. I’ve tried reloading the page, deleting cookies, etc, but the problem persists. I’ll try again now as maybe your subsequent post will clear some sort of caching that the server is using. Here goes:
For some reason, it hadn’t occured to me that the descant book was supposed to be easier!
It’s all a bit silly imho. Lots of recorder players complain that it’s “unfair” that schools assume learners will move onwards and upwards from recorder to a “proper” instrument if they show promise, but then effectively replicate this by assuming everyone will start on soprano and move “up” to alto. The Schott Anthology series, as I said above, annoyingly does this. In the UK, ABRSM is particularly bad in this respect, as you can only take soprano exams up to grade 5 and must switch to alto if you wish to go up to grade 8. Yet, as you and Linden say, it’s actually harder to make the soprano sound good.
With these particular books, it’s actually a bit difficult to tell to what extent the difficulty level of the pieces changes between books. The Schott website says of the soprano book that it is part of the ABRSM syllabus (grade 2,3) whereas the alto book is part of the ABRSM Summer 2006 syllabus (grades 1-3) and the Trinity syllabus 2007 (grade 6), which seems to indicate that the easiest and most difficult pieces were both in the alto book. Perhaps they both have a range of pieces and the difference is the the pieces were originally for either soprano or alto, rather than being transcriptions.
Aha – tried to post a quick follow-up saying Success! and the server blocked that too, so it’s doing more in the way of tracking posts than some do. I’ll wait a little and try again with this one.
Aha – tried to post a quick follow-up saying Success! and the server blocked that too, so it’s doing more in the way of tracking posts than some do. I’ll wait a little and try again with this one.
But it’s jumped from 1841 to 1843 – Don’t you just love these bugs!
Anyway, I was going to add to that that currently I’m working on the Schott Renaissance Book 3 for the treble which is labelled Grades 5 and 6! There’s no way I’m Grade 5 yet! perhaps next week 🙂 Like you, I would like some consistency!
That’s great! And maybe you are Grade 5 – I know you said you stopped for a while and forgot everything, but that doesn’t really happen. It might get rusty, but it’s still there somewhere, and only needs polishing up.
Consistency would be good. It’s hard to tell how pieces are graded. I like playing “good” studies because they can be enjoyable pieces but tend to be internally consistent in terms of difficulty, whereas a piece of music might be do-able at G4 level apart from a couple of notes that are more like G6 level.
When I stopped the descant – I was around 3/4 with forays into 5 I think. My sight reading is pretty good. Or was. But the treble I started a few months ago, at Grade 0 and it’s zooming along. I find it much easier to play than descant. The top notes are much, much easier. They don’t require whizzing air through to hit them. Top C on the descant can be really awkward though D is a lot easier irritatingly. And it balances better. My husband has been seriously impressed. In fact, even I’m impressed. As you say, why is that the treble picks up from Grade 6. Am I soon to find something that’s really hard about treble that I haven’t found yet?
Re the grades – and with the recorder certain notes are harder or easier given different recorders. It’s not exactly an exact science.
As an aside, I’ve been reading about vibrato and thought I’d give it a whirl!
I’m beginning to think I may need to do my own transcriptions, to acquire a) easier pieces for F recorders and b) harder pieces for C recorders!
It’s really frustrating how many pieces only come in either F or C versions. Since I’ve got into the habit of only playing the tenor, I transpose everything that’s for an F instrument to a C. It’s a bit tedious but generally only takes a fraction of the time it takes me to learn a new piece, so the overhead isn’t that great in relative terms.
Largissimo – I’ve tried to post a link but the forum isn’t accepting it so I’ll PM you. I’d suggest Hugh Gorton’s books. But it depends what kind of thing you want.
There’s a wide variety of music in his books and if you buy directly from him you can use Paypal – my last order was post free too – I don’t know if he has a minimum spend for that though. He has samples on his site to give you an idea. 🙂
Nice thread, time perhaps, to reanimate it.
A dear friend just sent me a copy of the “(25) Capricen für Altblockflöte Solo” by Quantz. In this edition, from Amadeus Musikverlag (BP 387), which is quite reasonably priced, the pieces have been transposed to fit the treble recorder. Great fun to play, they sound more difficult than they perhaps are, though there are still plenty of challenges (for me, at least). My recommendation, start with No. 6.
Aldo Bova has done Youtubes discussing a couple of Quantz Capriccios. And he played some others. Are they from that book do you think? Your ‘they sound more difficult than they perhaps are’, is encouraging.
Descant and treble recorders.
https://www.instrumentalists.freeforums.netThe 25 pieces for recorder from Amadeus are from a larger Amadeus collection of 60 pieces, “Capricen, Fantasien und Anfangsstücke” for transverse flute.
As far as I know, they are all from the “Fantasies and Preludes” i.e. “Caprices and other pieces for the exercise of the flute” from the collection of Giedde. The very legible original can be found at IMSLP here: https://imslp.org/wiki/Fantasies_and_Preludes%2C_Giedde_I.45_(Quantz%2C_Johann_Joachim)
The caprice (capriccio) on page one is the first caprice in my Amadeus booklet for treble recorder.
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