Instruments of Love: The Recorder as an Instrument of Love

RESCO logo

The RECSO TORCH network are hosting an event on 'Instruments of Love: the recorder as an instrument of love', speakers Douglas MacMillan and Isobel Clarke.

While brass and percussion are often linked with military scenarios, the recorder is particularly analogous with pastoral, supernatural, and romantic scenarios. Our paper will explore the representational use of the recorder as an instrument of love, examining its use in public performance, as well as in domestic music-making.

We will draw upon examples including Handel’s Acis and Galatea and John Walsh’s publication of amorous operatic arias for solo voice with alternative recorder transcriptions. Literary sources, including diary evidence, will be also considered, and the paper will be illustrated with musical examples played on recorders from the Bate Collection.

All welcome, no need to book in advance.

 

Romanticism and Eighteenth-Century Studies Oxford

Contact name: Alice Little

Contact email: alice.little@music.ox.ac.uk

Audience: Open to all