7 March: Recorders

March is Play the Recorder Month. Here are 10 things you might not know about the recorder:

1. They’ve been around since the 14^th century. The earliest example was found in Göttingen, Germany; it was around 10 inches (256 mm) long and carved from a single piece of plumwood.
2. The name of the instrument derives from an old usage of the verb “to record”. Before it was possible to record things using tape, the word record meant to learn or memorise. This instrument was easy to learn and use for learning and practice.
3. In fact, Shakespeare makes reference to how easy it is in the third act of Hamlet when Hamlet asks Guildenstern to play the recorder for him. Guildenstern claims he doesn’t know how, and Hamlet insists that “'tis as easy as lying.” Shakespeare also used the recorder to provide incidental Music in his plays.
4. Henry VIII, while mostly known for collecting wives, also collected recorders. He had around 76 of them by the time he died. When he wasn’t playing them himself, the royal professional recorder consort and other recorder masters would play them so they didn’t just gather dust.
5. In classical music, if a composer wanted to invoke pastoral scenes or birdsong, they’d often use a recorder. Georg Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, and Johann Sebastian Bach all incorporated the instrument into their compositions.
6. The recorder most people learned in school is a soprano recorder. This is largely thanks to the composer Carl Orff of Carmina Burana fame. He was a proponent of music education for children, and believed playing a note and singing it went hand in hand when learning music. The soprano recorder has a similar range to a child’s voice, so it was the instrument of choice.
7. Recorders actually come in a huge range of ranges and sizes. The smallest and highest in pitch is the garklein, just six inches long. The five most common sizes are Sopranino, Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass. The largest is the sub-contrabass recorder, which stands 8 feet tall. There are only about three of these in the world. A recorder that is 16 feet tall exists, but even though it’s fully functional it’s virtually impossible to play it.
8. Orchestras made up entirely of recorders are a thing. However, if you were going to be serious about setting one up, you’d need at least 540 different sizes of recorder and at least 60 musicians to play several of them each.
9. During the second world war, RAF prisoners of war being held by the Germans were given recorders to play to pass the time.
10. Modern musicians have used them as well. Paul McCartney incorporated it into the Beatles song “Fool On The Hill” and recorders have appeared on tracks by The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Lou Reed and even Jimi Hendrix, although the latter was a musical snob who so ashamed to have played a recorder that he asked it to be listed as a flute on the album credits.

Character Birthday

Prince of Energy, a student who was a member of the original Freedom League. He was a foreign student, who told his friends he was from “somewhere near the Hungarian border” and was a farmer’s son studying on a scholarship. He never finished his degree as he left when his father died suddenly to “take over the family business”. He was, in fact, the Crown Prince of Galorvia, going home to be crowned King and marry the princess Helena. His friends in England never knew what became of him. Some years later, knowing it was inevitable he was going to be killed in a rebellion, as well as sending his twin daughters and many assets to safety in England, left a substantial legacy anonymously to his friend Peter Mayfield, allowing him to buy the mansion in Darrowburn which is the home of the G-Men. He appears in Running in the Family, From a Jack to a King and as a ghost in A Very Variant Christmas.

Running in the Family

An alien craft approaches Earth. The alien on board is a fugitive, fleeing from an arranged marriage to freedom on our world. She befriends James, a genetics student, and shares her knowledge about the future of the human race with him. 

A science experiment gone wrong gifts James with superhuman abilities; but they come at a price, leading him to mentor others like himself. He founds a group of amateur heroes called the Freedom League.

The Freedom League suffers a string of losses and tragedies; it seems doomed to failure; but one of its members, Peter Mayfield, has vowed to form a group of his own. He is determined to keep his vow, despite having lost Rosemary, the one person he wanted by his side to help him.

Lizzie Hopkins is a talented young athlete and dancer. Peter sees her in action and guesses her exceptional abilities are far more than they seem. He offers to train and mentor Lizzie - but her mother is violently opposed to his suggestion.

As soon as she is old enough, Lizzie takes matters into her own hands; she seeks out Peter and his group for herself. She soon makes a discovery which shakes her world at its very foundations. Her search for the truth will resolve many unanswered questions, but it will also stir up old heartbreaks dating back to the Freedom League's early days.

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