Bass recorder, boxwood with brass keys, German?, 1570-1620

'Boxwood in one piece, with brass mounts. The holes are steeply undercut, obliquely in the cases of front holes 1, 3, 4 and 6. A fish-tailed brass key, with brass leaf spring and leather pad stitched on with thread, is partially enclosed within a removable boxwood barrel pierced with six rosettes of airholes. At the top of the instrument is a removable cap (probably not original) with a blowing hole not quite in the centre of the top. Under the cap, the upper end of the instrument is partially cut away, presumably to make a space to contain a sponge for absorbing condensed moisture, leaving the full length of the wind-way intact.'

Anthony Baines, Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-Keyboard Instruments (London, 1978), p. 85.

This instrument formed part of the collections of Carl Engel (1818 - 1882) and was sold to the museum for £3.

From about 1500 until 1650, recorders were often played in consort, in as many as eight different pitches, ranging from sopranino to great bass: this example, a bass recorder, was the third lowest in pitch. It could have been made in Germany or in Northern Italy, possibly in Venice, where the finest recorders were reputedly made and where Silvestro Ganassi published one of the earliest tutors, or instruction manuals, Opera Intitulata Fontegara (1535).

303-1882