Recorder Music for Beginners - Volume 1

The present collection has been compiled for descant recorder. This instrument was ousted from use in the age of the Viennese Classics, and it has regained its rights only in the present century. This explains why the collection comprises-in addition to new Hungarian music-almost exclusively Renaissance and Baroque works. As it is well known, the masters of old times put down their works only "in outline", and the music has to be reconstructed by a practised performer. This collection is intended to help in assimilating the spirit of these old styles. All the old works are given here in both their original and ornamented variants. The ornamentations have been taken over from contemporaneous arrangements, and where none were available, we worked them out on the basis of contemporaneous performing practice. All the solutions serve only as suggestions; with his expanding stylistic knowledge the student himself should also boldly invent and extemporize ornamentation!