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DOUGLAS MACMILLAN. The Recorder in the Nineteenth Century. Mytholmroyd: Ruxbury Publications, 2008. 192pp., illus. ISBN 978-1904846-33-8 (paperback). Price: £14.95
It is a meritorious venture to publish a book on the subject of the recorder's role in the nineteenth century - an era often called 'an unexplored dark age of the recorder's history', a sentiment also expressed in the book's preface. The author, Douglas MacMillan, who undertook the project in the first place as his doctoral thesis, "The Recorder 1800-1905', for the University of Surrey, has condensed its contents to a handy length. This inexpensive soft-cover book, offered by the diligent Recorder MusicMail service, may easily find its way into the hands of interested recorder players, not to mention the odd musicologist. Therefore several caveats are in order.
The book's title, 'The Recorder in the Nineteenth Century', may suggest an all-inclusive essay. The author nevertheless came to the decision to limit his research to material about instruments constructed according to the principles of the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, but he excluded progressive models of duct flute such as csakans and flageolets. His reason for doing so in the case of the csakan is problematic, as it is based on an organological misinterpretation. He denies that the csakan is a real recorder, using as arguments that 'it may be fitted with many keys, and the bore of the instrument is more cylindrical than that of the recorder' and 'the instrument never developed a consistent form'. In fact the csakan was built after a standard concept - like one type of recorder it had a contracting conical bore - and was fitted optionally with from one to thirteen keys, according to the budget of the customer. As keys have neither in the past nor the present been an argument against an instrument being classed as a recorder, and as other characteristics of the construction make it clear that the csakan is really a recorder modernised for the requirements of the nineteenth century, this type should not be excluded from the evolution of the instrument. Moreover, the 'English flageolet' that came on the scene in the 1790s...