Boxwood with brass mounts and key, German, about 1600

''Almost identical with 20/1 [Bass recorder, Museum No. 303-1882] and with the same marks. The instrument has been considerably damaged, and a pointed cap of a different wood has been provided at a later date.[20/1 is described by Anthony Baines (p. 85) as 'Boxwood in one piece with brass mounts ... 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...'] - Anthony Baines, Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-keyboard instruments(London, 1998), p. 85.

This instrument was bought for £3 by the Museum in 1882. It had been part of the collections of Carl Engel (1818-1882), an eminent musicologist from Hanover, who published the Descriptive Catalogue of the Musical Instruments in the South Kensington Museum in 1874. The South Kensington Museum was renamed the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1899.

Anthony Baines, Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-keyboard instruments. (London, 1998), p. 85: 'Many such examples are of north Italian provenance, but not all, some being probably German, others English.' The 1882 registered description states that it is German, and this probably was the opinion of Carl Engel (1818-1882), the leading musicologist of his day and the previous owner of this instrument.

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 Opera Intitulata Fontegara (1535).

306-1882