The “Flauto Italiano” recorder in G

Some years ago a friend, a collector of musical instruments, he asked me to meet him to show me a recorder of a form that he had never seen in museums or other collections. Of course my curiosity was so much and ran to see what it was.
I also had never seen anything like this in museums. I saw only some resemblance to the representations of certain paintings. The fingering is that represented by Bartolomeo Bismantova in the Compendio Musicale   published in 1677.

In Italy, at that time, the treaties discussing the recorder, always describe it in G. For this reason I adopted, for my copies, the same name gave to it by Bismantova: “Flauto Italiano”, even if the instrument is in a single piece, not three, as  represented in the treaty.

On the front of the original, under the window, we observe the site of a small plate and on the rear the thumb hole is crossed by a small wood’s septum,  whose function was to be that of facilitating the emission of the high notes.

Our copy, made of maple with imitation ivory mounts to pitch 440, has an internal conical and slim profile which gives a nasal and light sound, different from either the sound of the baroque recorders as the Renaissance

 

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