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Compiled by Nicholas S Lander

Medieval period

The recorder is the most highly developed

member of the ancient family of internal duct
flutes, flutes with a fixed windway formed by a
wooden plug or block. Hitherto, it has been
distinguished from other internal duct flutes
by having holes for seven fingers and a single
hole for the thumb of the upper hand.

Perhaps the earliest illustration of a recorder

as such is The Mocking of Jesus <
https://www.recorderhomepage.net/wp-
content/uploads/2022/06/astrapaseutychi
os_mocking.jpg> (after 1315), a fresco from
the Church of St George, Staro Nagoričane, a
village near Kumanova in (Yugoslav)
Macedonia, painted by the court painters
Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, in which a
musician plays a cylindrical duct flute, the
beak and window/labium of which are clearly
visible, as are open holes beneath three lifted
fingers of the player’s uppermost (left) hand
and four holes for the fingers of the lowermost
hand (also off the instrument).
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 <
https://www.recorderhomepage.net/wp-
content/uploads/2019/10/astrapaseutychios_mocking_3.jpg>
The Mocking of Jesus (after 1315), Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, detail

The centre panel of La Virgen con el Niño

[Altarpiece of Our Lady of the Angels],
depicting a Virgin and Child surrounded by
angels playing musical instruments (dated ca
1385, but possibly as late as 1400), painted by
Pere (Pedro) Serra for the church of Santa
Clara, Tortosa, now in the Museo Nacional
d’Art de Catalunya Barcelona, shows what is
clearly an alto-sized cylindrical recorder.
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 <
https://www.recorderhomepage.net/wp-
content/uploads/2019/10/serra_virgin_1385-
90_3.jpg>
La Virgen con el Niño (ca 1385)

Pere Serra, detail

Before the 14th century, there are a number of

illustrations of ambiguous ‘pipes’ which may
(or may not) be duct flutes that may (or may
not) be recorders. Amongst the earliest is one
of the 28 spirally arranged scenes on the so-
called Bernward Column (ca 1020), a bronze
cast from Hildesheim Cathedral (Germany)
which depicts Salome dancing to the
accompaniment of a straight cylindrical pipe
which has four holes visible, the lowest
slightly offset. It is clasped between two
hands, just above which there is a notch (?
window); the mouthpiece is beak-shaped, and
the player (a man) does not have the inflated
cheeks characteristic of shawm players.
:
 The Bernward Column: Salome Dancing

(c. 1020), Hildesheim Cathedral

And there are a number of other 11th-century

examples, including a carving depicting King
David and the Psalmists on an 11th-century
stone pillar in the church at Bourbon-
l’Achambault, St George, France which shows
an ambiguous pipe that may be a duct flute
(flageolet or recorder), accompanied by rebec
and syrinx.

Amongst the oldest surviving more-or-less

complete recorders, the so-called Dordrecht
Recorder dates from the period 1335–1418. It
was excavated from a well at the ruin of the
Huis te Merwede (House on the Merwede)
near Dordrecht, Holland.

The Dordrecht recorder

This medieval recorder is most obviously

characterised by its narrow, cylindrical bore
(the internal tube passing down the middle of
the instrument), which is largely responsible
for the instrument’s tuning and response.
:
 A second more-or-less complete medieval
recorder dating from the 14th century has
been reported from Göttingen (northern
Germany) where it was found in a latrine in
Weender Straßer 26 in 1987. This so-called
Göttingen Recorder is part of the collection at
the  Stadtarchäologie Göttingen and has been
described by Hakelberg (1995), Homo-
Lechner (1996), Reiners (1997), and Doht
(2006).

The Göttingen recorder

The Göttingen Recorder is made in one piece

and has a thumb hole and holes for seven
fingers, the lowest of which is doubled. It is
256 mm long and is also made of fruitwood, a
species of Prunus. Its beak is damaged, which
probably explains why it was discarded. There
are narrowings of the bore between the first
and second finger holes and between the
second and third finger holes, as well as a
very marked contraction close behind the
seventh hole. The bore expands to 14.5 mm at
the bottom of the instrument which has a
distinctive bulbous foot.

Hakelberg (2002 & pers. comm. 2003)

 reports a third 14th-century recorder
fragment found in the town of Esslingen, near
Stuttgart (southern Germany), where it was
excavated from the sediment of the mill
channel of the  Carmelite Monastery.

The Esslingen recorder

Interestingly, the Esslingen Recorder shows

the very same characteristic turning profile as
the Göttingen recorder. These fragments are
preserved in the Landesdenkmalamt Baden-
Württemberg, Stuttgart.
:
 Utt (2006) reports that a fourth 14th-century
recorder was found during an archaeological
dig in August 2005 by Andres Tvauri in Tartu,
Estonia (near the border with Russia). Like
both the Göttingen and Esslingen instruments,
the ‘Tartu Recorder’ was also found in a latrine
in the backyard of 15 Üikooli Street. Other
artifacts found with the Tartu Recorder allow it
to be dated from the second half of the 14th
century (Tvauri and Bernotas 2005, Tvauri and
Utt 2007).

< https://www.recorderhomepage.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/08/tartu.jpg>
The Tartu recorder

During the late medieval period, Tartu was an

important Hanseatic city connecting Russia,
especially Novgorod, with Western Europe.
The body of the Tartu recorder is made from
maple, the block from birch.

A fifth medieval recorder was found in a latrine

in the old Hanseatic city Elblag (in former
times Elbing) southeast of Danzig in Poland
(Naumann 1999, Kirnbauer and Young 2001,
Kirnbauer 2002).

< https://www.recorderhomepage.net/wp-
content/uploads/2013/08/elblag_recorder.jpg>
The Elblag recorder

The Elblag Recorder is intact and has been

dated to the mid-15th century. Like the
Dordrecht, Göttingen, and Tartu recorders, the
Elblag recorder lacks the beak-shaped
:
 mouthpiece characteristic of the modern
instrument. As with the other surviving late
medieval recorders, the lowest interval of the
Elblag recorder seems to have been a
semitone. It was thus likely to have been
pitched around d”, a tone higher than a
modern soprano recorder.

A sixth medieval recorder was found after the

Second World War in a latrine in the city of
Nysa in Silesia, Poland, and dates from the
14th century (Mateusz Lacki, pers. comm.
2011). It is housed in the Muzeum w Nysie.
The instrument is made from elder wood
(Sambucus nigra). Although the block is
missing, details of the window and labium are
unmistakable. The blowing end of the
instrument is truncate rather than beaked. It
has single holes for seven fingers as well as
the usual thumb hole. Again, the lowest
interval of the Nysa recorder seems to have
been a semitone.

A seventh medieval recorder (DK-

Copenhagen: Musikhist. Mus. Inv. D9745),
together with other objects, was found in 1919
during an excavation in central Copenhagen
by archaeologists from the Danish National
Museum. The instrument cannot by dated
precisely, but was found amongst
predominantly ‘late medieval objects’, which
suggests a date in the second half of the 15th
century. The recorder is well preserved, but
extremely warped, and the block is missing. It
is 283 mm long, made of boxwood, and has
seven fingerholes on the front and a single
thumbhole on the rear. The lowers fingerhole
is doubled so that it can be played either right
or left-handed. The outer profile is slightly
waisted, narrowing from 20.5 mm at the top to
c. 16.7 mm at fingerhole 4 from which it
expands to 23.5 mm at the foot. The turning is
far from smooth with a single ornamental
groove at the end of the windway and the
upper end of the window. A unique feature is a
flat surface on the front of the instrument
extending almost its full length from the block
:
 downwards. Rather than undercut, the
somewhat oval fingerholes are slightly conical
with the larger diameter at the outer surface.
The windway is very short (22 mm) and there
is no beak as such. Two holes on the side of
the recorder in line with the middle of the
block having a diameter of c. 4 mm suggest
that the block was originally secured by a
transverse peg or by means of a cord which
might also have enabled the recorder to be
suspended around the player’s neck. The
window, labium and windway are crudely and
irregularly fashioned. Part of the labium seems
to have been broken off. The internal bore
consists of two cylindrical sections: the upper
12.7 mm in diameter, the lower c. 10.3 mm
(Bergstrøm 2020). Opening the lowest finger
hole prouces a whole tone (Lasocki, in Lasocki
& Ehrlich 2023: 2).

Clearly, we need a lot more information about

those medieval recorders which have not been
particularly well documented, to date. Most
modern reconstructions are conjectural ones
with the lowest note tuned to the tonic of their
natural scale. Only a few reconstructions have
been made with the lowermost interval a
minor second (notably by Eugene Ilarianov
and Tim Cranmore) but these involve
complications of fingering that would have
limited their performance. As Rowland-Jones
(2014) suggests, it seems more likely that the
archaeological examples are transitional
instruments representing attempts to extend
the range of the flageolet (six-holed pipe) by
adding an additional hole for the little finger of
the lowermost hand and another for the
thumb of the uppermost hand.  The seventh
finger hole would have been closed only for
the leading note in the lower octave, and the
instruments were otherwise simply tuned and
played as flageolets. The thumb hole could
have been used to provide an easily playable
middle tonic, and it would soon have found
other uses.

For a more extended account of the medieval

:
 recorder see Lander (1996–2023).

References cited on this page

Bergstrøm, Ture. 2020. “A Late

Medieval Recorder from Copenhagen.”
Galpin Society Journal 73: 220, 240,
244.
Doht, Julia. 2006. “Die Göttinger
Blockflöte [The Götingen
Recorder].” Tibia 31 (2): 105–7.
Hakelberg, Dietrich. 1995. “Some
Recent Archaeo-Organological Finds in
Germany.” Galpin Society Journal 48:
3–12.
⸻. 2002. “Was von einer
‘Klangschaft’ blieb? [What Remains of a
Soundscape?].” Archäologie in
Deutschland – Das Magazin 4: 31–32.
Homo-Lechner, Catherine. 1996. Sons
et instruments de musique au moyen
age: archéologie musicale dans
l’Europe du VIIe au XIVe siècles
[Sounds and Musical Instruments of the
Middle Ages: Musical Archaeology in
Europe from the 7th to the 14th
Century]. Collection des Hesperides.
Paris: Editions Errance.
Kirnbauer, Martin. 2002.
“Musikzeugnisse des Mittelalter
[Musical Finds from the Middle
Ages].” Archäologie in Deutschland 6:
54–55.
Kirnbauer, Martin, and Crawford Young.
2001. “Musikinstrumente aus einer
mittelalterlichen Latrine.”
Institutsbeilage der Schola Cantorum.
Lander, Nicholas S. 1996–2023. “A
Memento: The Medieval Recorder <
https://www.recorderhomepage.net/instruments/a-
memento-the-medieval-recorder/>
” Recorder Home Page.
Lasocki, David R.G. 2023. “The Era of
Medieval Recorders, 1300-1500.” In The
Recorder, 1–47. Yale Musical Instrument
Series. New Haven & London: Yale
University Press.
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300118704/the-
recorder/ <
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300118704/the-
recorder/> .
Naumann, Norbert. 1999. “Der Schatz
aus der Latrine [Treasure from the
latrine].” GEO Epoche 2: 116–23.
Reiners, Hans. 1997. “Reflections on a
Reconstruction of the 14th-Century
Göttingen Recorder.” Galpin Society
Journal 50: 31–42.
:
 Rowland-Jones, Anthony. 2014. “When
Is a Recorder Not a Recorder? <
http://www.fomrhi.org/vanilla/fomrhi/uploads/bulletins/Fomrhi-
127/Comm%202008.pdf> ” FoMRHI
Quarterly 127: 6–10.
Tvauri, Andres, and Rivo Bernotas.
2005. “Archaeological Investigations
Carried out by the University of Tartu in
2005.” AVE, 101–10.
Tvauri, Andres, and Taavi-Mats Utt.
2007. “Medieval Recorder from Tartu,
Estonia. <
http://www.kirj.ee/public/Archaeology/2007/issue_2/arch-
2007-2-3.pdf> ” Estonian Journal of
Archaeology / Eesti Arheoloogia
Ajakiri 11 (1-2): 141–54.
Utt, Taavi-Mats. 2006. “The Tartu
Recorder.” ERTA Newsletter 23: 2.

Cite this article as: Lander, Nicholas S. 1996–

2023. Recorder Home Page: History: Medieval
period. Last accessed 15 June 2023.
https://www.recorderhomepage.net/history/the-
medieval-period/

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