The song was a success with its second -year students. Daisy Lee, 8, says, in fact, it is her favorite song that she learned. “It’s an easy song, and I like rhythm and rhythm,” said Daisy, who added that his older brother also likes the Hit of the 80s stadium.
The perfect teaching tool
As the generations of educators who preceded it, Edwards uses the recorder to teach young students the fundamental principles of music, such as how to focus, how to breathe and how to recognize a certain note by sound.
Obviously, it is a work for which the recorder is well suited.
“There is really no other instrument, except perhaps the keyboard, where it is so easy for a beginner to make a sound,” explains Michael Lynn, professor of repertoire and baroque flute at Oberlin College and the conservatory in Ohio.
It is particularly easier to play than his wooden companions like the saxophone and the flute, he says, because the two forces you to train your lips in a certain way of producing a sound. With the recorder, all you have to do is blow in the mouthpiece on top, like a whistle.
It’s also cheap, and the size is right, explains Karen Dolezal, former music teacher at the Athens Montessori school in Athens, in Georgia, which is now retired. “It is a small portable instrument that small hands can control,” she explains.
The two educators say it’s great for teaching children how to read music. Unlike the guitar, which is written in its own language of agreements, or at the piano, which generally involves reading and playing several lines of musical annotation at the same time, the recorder forces you to read and play a line at a time. This allows children to quickly take the songs.
Brady Gerber, a music journalist based in Los Angeles, learned the recorder at school in the early 2000s. He remembers his simple pleasure to see how easy the instrument was to play.
“The recorder was incredible because I could really play music,” recalls Gerber. “I could learn a song relatively easily.”
The recorder also helped him navigate in the first days of his autism. “It was strangely stimulating,” he says. “I didn’t have to work very hard to do something. I didn’t feel like a stranger. “
However, the recorder is not without his difficulties. One particular problem is its holes. There are seven on the front and one at the back. The production of different sounds with them requires covering specific holes with your thumb and fingers. It can become a little delicate.
“” (The Recorde) is a very sensitive instrument, “explains Edwards, music teacher in Georgia. He actually bought and practiced on his own recorder first so that he could teach his students with confidence:
“If your fingers do not cover 100%holes, the right note will not come out.”
Daisy, eight, agrees. “Sometimes I’m just wrong the notes because I don’t cover the hole all along,” she said. “It can be a challenge, but it’s supposed to be a challenge, so it’s a good thing.”
From Renaissance to class
Although there are good reasons why the recorder found itself as the essential instrument for primary students, it did not start in this way. Its ascent actually dates back to the 15th century, when it was the instrument day -to -day During the Renaissance, not only among 8 years old.
“It was very often played in consorts,” explains Lynn, the music historian, referring to a popular instrumental whole type at that time. “So you would have recorders of different sizes playing together. An alto recorder, a tenor recorder and a bass recorder.” (The recorder that children play at school is actually the soprano version.)
A big fan of the recorder in his reign of the Renaissance? Henry VIII. King Tudor was also a musician and composer, and he wrote several songs specifically for the instrument.
King Henry VIII – Two compositions for recorders 1540
Finally, its popularity began to decline. “About 1740, 1750, the recorder began to demolish,” explains Lynn. It was supplanted by the transverse flute (this is the one you hold on the side), which remained the flute of choice until the beginning of the 20th century.
It was then that an instrument manufacturer of French origin by the name of Arnold Dolmetsch sparked a revival of the recorder. He started promoting him as an instrument to teach music in schools.
Dolmetsch and Carl Orff, the influential music educator and German composer behind “Carmina Burana”, are largely responsible for the recorder found in so many classrooms.
Well, them and the manufacturing industry.
With the rise of plastic injection moldings in the 1940s and 50s, companies began mass producer recorders and selling them in bulk to school districts for as little as $ 1.
In the early 1960s, the Lynn, the recorder began to resume elementary classrooms, explained.
He remembers learning the recorder as a young boy and seeing plastic versions everywhere. “They were very popular,” says Lynn. “It was really the start of this.”
He notes that since childhood, these plastic recorders have improved with improvements in technology and manufacturing.
A serious instrument
More than half a century later, the recorder remains capable of much more than “hot crosses”.
“It’s not just a toy,” says Dolezal. “It’s a serious instrument.”
Lynn agrees: “It is certainly an ill -understood instrument from a public point of view because most people have never heard a very nice recorder playing.”
This is partly because most students in the United States learn the recorder as an introduction to other wind instruments and never play it at a higher level. If they did, said Lynn, they would quickly discover how difficult it is to master beyond the bases and perhaps take the instrument more seriously.
At Parkside Elementary, it seems that students are already.
