CityRecorder Classes 2023

CityRecorder Workshop Class Descriptions

Participants will be asked for their first choice for each class period. Each topic is offered at two levels, with a different teacher for each level. Classes marked ** are friendly to large recorders.

  Early Morning Classes  
9:30 – 10:45 a.m. & Saturday & Sunday

❦ Brilliant Teacher, Star Pupil: Isaac & Senfl** (Booth, Haas)
At the court of Maximilian I, Isaac raised the humble German Renaissance song to an art, and Senfl took it to a new level.

❦ Orpheus Britannicus (O’Brien, Begley)
Henry Purcell was the greatest English composer of the Baroque era. Among the many genres he explored in his short life were the last flowering of the instrumental fantasia and the latest fashions in theater music.

  Late Morning Classes  
11:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Saturday & Sunday

❦ The Dynamic Duo: Du Fay and Binchois (Hellauer, Horst)
Everyone then and now agrees these two 15th-century Franco-Flemish composers were the greatest of their generation, but they differed in important ways. How?

❦ Point/Counterpoint: J. S. Bach (Begley, Booth)
With every style of music that he touched, Bach expanded its capacities. Composing in nearly every instrumental and vocal genre of the high Baroque, many of Bach’s works sound brilliant on recorder consort.

  Early Afternoon Saturday  
2:00 - 3:15 p.m. Saturday only

❦ Sing it, Sister! (Mor, Hellauer)
The nuns at the Convent of Las Huelgas in 13th-century Castile were like no other monastic ladies: Their abbess heard confessions and performed other sacraments, and they sang (and you can play) a collection of brilliant, complex polyphony at the avant-garde of their day.

❦ Venice, Cradle of the Canzona ** (O’Brien, Iadone)
This glorious idiom for one to many choirs sprang forth in the churches of La Serenissima; the genre spread during the late 16th century first to other Italian cities and then across Europe.

  Late Afternoon Classes Saturday  
3:30 - 4:40 p.m. Saturday only

❦ “The Rat’s Tail,” “The Cat’s Paw” (Iadone, Mor)
Nobody knows why these and other charming and sometimes challenging animal pieces were included in an otherwise rather sober 15th-century Glogauer Liederbuch instrumental collection.

❦Still Here!! (Haas, O’Brien)
Gorgeous polyphonic masterpieces from the 20th-century recorder revival—Vaughn Williams? Hindemith? Katz? Other?—and even more recent works for recorder consort.

  Early Afternoon Sunday  
2:00 - 3:15 p.m. Sunday only

❦ “Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens?” ** (Begley, Booth)
Not always! The late Renaissance composer John Dowland could tear your heartstrings, to be sure, but he could also set your feet and spirit dancing.

❦ French Chansons of Love, War, and the War of Love (Mor, Hellauer)
Edith Piaf didn’t come out of nowhere; French composers have been passionately memorializing the war of love and the love of war for centuries.