City Recorder Classes 2025
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. If you intend to bring large recorders (C great bass and F contra), you will be asked to indicate that when choosing classes.
**Friendly to large recorders.
Early Morning Classes
9:30 – 10:45 a.m. & Saturday & Sunday
❦ The Boys of Burgundy: Music of Du Fay and Binchois (Begley, Mor)
A stroll through their songs and song-like motets by the leaders of the first generation of the 15th century. Savor this transitional period flavored with late Medieval symbolism, the sweet and lyrical English guise, and the early expressive rhetoric of the Renaissance.
❦ A Brief but Brilliant Light: Music of Henry Purcell (Deskur, O’Brien)
The greatest English composer of his era began (at age 11!) and ended (at age 36) his compositional career with birthday odes for the monarch. In between, he blessed the English musical scene with songs, theater music, and, at the end of his life, even sacred works. His youthful fantasias are challenging chromatic adventures.
Late Morning Classes
11:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Saturday & Sunday
❦ Women’s Work (Booth, Haas)
Pieces by female composers through the ages, from the amazing 2024 collection selected and edited by Eric Haas. The Von Huene Workshop has announced that those registered to attend CityRecorder will have $5 off the price if ordered from VHW ahead of the workshop; call Eric/Von Huene Workshop at 617-277-8690 or email Click here to show mail address. Purchase not required.
❦ Echoes of the Crescent: Music of the Ottoman World (Mor, Stern)
We will explore the musical traditions that flourished in the vast 16th-century Ottoman empire, from classical Ottoman music to songs and prayers, to Balkan and Middle Eastern dances. Teachers will alternate days.
Early Afternoon Saturday
2:00 - 3:15 p.m. Saturday only
❦ Johann Sebastian Bach (Booth, Stern)
Need we say more? **Large recorders welcome.
❦ Machaut: He Wrote it All (Begley, O’Brien)
Chansons, lais, mass, motets—we will play a selection from this most important French composer and poet of the 14th century.
Late Afternoon Classes Saturday
3:30 - 4:40 p.m. Saturday only
❦ John Dowland: His Heart Was Heavy, His Feet Were Light (Deskur, Iadone)
A look at the many moods of his brilliant dance works. **Large recorders welcome.
❦ English 20th-Century Music: Works by Ralph Vaughn Williams & the father of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Begley, Haas)
The early 20th-century craze for bamboo pipes attracted many well-known composers of the period, including Ralph Vaughn Williams, whose attractive fresh tonal style was influenced by his interest in folk music, and organist and composer William Lloyd Webber, the father of the composer of Cats (!). **Large instruments a possibility.
Early Afternoon Sunday
2:00 - 3:15 p.m. Sunday only
❦ Taking the Waters with Handel and Telemann (Mor, Stern)
Everyone knows of Handel's famous 1717 suite, written to boost King George's popularity, but fewer have heard of Telemann's aquatic work, Hamburger Ebb und Fluth, written only six years later to honor the 100th birthday of the Hamburg Admiralty. Come on in, the water's fine. **Large recorders welcome.
❦ Fall Migration: Music for the Birds (Booth, Iadone)
Composers from the Middle Ages and Renaissance and beyond found the subject of birds irresistible. Class will glimpse some of these musical migrations that portray human and ornithological foibles high and low.
