What’s a recorder society?

The other day, I glossed over the description of what I was doing for the Boston Recorder Society (BRS) in 2002, so I thought I'd expand on that for this post. Since it's been on my mind, I'll tell you some of what I was doing that the current organization isn't.

Note that all of this is from the publicity, and a bit of hearsay from people who are still going -- I haven't actually been to a meeting for over a year.

For the 6 years I was involved in putting together the program and the publicity (2002 through 2007), there were a couple of points I always had to argue with the rest of the committee:

1. Describing the classes in terms of the music being played rather than the level of players in them.
2. Having a class open to players of other instruments.

I also made it really easy to volunteer to help out with the work of the organization, set up a concert series, and published the names of the board members, both on the web and in the newsletter.

Class Descriptions

This is the more important of the two points. Here's a description from the 2006 brochure, which I compiled:

16th Century Italian Madrigals with Héloïse Degrugillier (9 meetings)
Play some of the most dramatic music of the renaissance. This class will explore the madrigals of Da Rore, Arcadelt, and others. We will work on ensemble skills, expressive playing, and fundamental recorder technique.

And here's the description of the class taught by the same coach on the current website:

Heloise Degrugillier (group C) Players should know at least three instruments, play "alto up", be fluent with cut time and eighth note beats, and be comfortable reading one on a part.

If you wanted to pass tests and validate yourself by moving up to a more "advanced" group, I can see that you might prefer the second class, but if you wanted to play music with people who were excited about it, and you didn't already know the people involved, I can't imagine why you'd even think of going to a class with the current description.

Now you can make an argument that when I was doing the brochure, many people were insecure about deciding from the brochure what class they wanted to take, because I didn't usually say anything at all about the level of playing required for the class. Thus some peole worried that they wouldn't be able to do what the class expected. Other people worried that they'd be stuck in a class with people who couldn't play very well.

My contention always was that the coaches should make the decision about whether the people who wanted to take their class were capable of playing the music. And since we believed that a class shouldn't run unless at least 6 people signed up for it, anything we said about how advanced everyone in the class was going to be was usually a lie, because it was rare that there were really 6 advanced players who wanted to take the same class.

And a further argument in favor of not describing the levels in the brochure is that people weren't really deciding what class to take from the brochure, because the September meeting was always a "shopping" meeting, where you could meet the coaches and see what the classes were like. This seems like a better way to decide than by counting how many instruments the other members of the class could play.

Other instruments

The main reason I always pushed for a class that allowed other instruments besides recorders is that I really wanted the BRS to be an organization that served all the recorder players in the Boston area. When I joined, there were a couple of advanced recorder players who were coming and mostly playing Dulcian (an ancestor of the bassoon), and I benefitted a lot from being able to play with them.

A secondary reason is that there's a lot of really good recorder music that wouldn't historically have been played in an all-recorder ensemble, so having viols or dulcians does in fact make the recorder playing experience better than it would be with only recorders.

In fact, although the current class descriptions don't make it clear who's invited, the current organization does believe they should welcome the "right kind" of other instruments. Their statement says:

No more loud instruments We are sorry to announce that we will no longer be accepting loud instruments in our ensembles (including serpents, shawms, and krummhorns).

There is apparently somewhere a slightly longer list of proscribed instruments, but it specifically does not include cello, which is the other non-recorder instrument which someone's actually been bringing. As played at recorder society meetings I've been to, the cello player is at least as loud as the serpent player, and a less good sightreader of Renaissance rhythms than the krumhorn player.

So in my opinion, that decision probably has to do with considerations other than musical ones.

But we already knew that based on the way they describe their classes.

So what is a recorder society?

When I was on the board (including the two years I was the administrator), I thought it should be an organization that brought together all the recorder players in the area of whatever level.

This is why I ran things the way I did.

The current organization has decided that it's an organization that lets the established coaches coach the players who want a once-a-month playing opportunity. Note that this offers nothing to either the less-experienced professionals or to the advanced amateurs who want more serious ensemble-playing opportunities, and it's unclear how much it does for beginners who need to get their first ensemble experience.

All the coaches they've hired are good musicians and good teachers, and although you couldn't tell that from their descriptions, if you sign up for their classes, you will probably learn something from them.

This Sunday, September 20, is their first meeting of the year, so if what they're offering is what you want, you should go.

If you want anything else out of a recorder society, you should probably look elsewhere. I don't see any reason why a recorder player who isn't interested in the monthly meetings should feel any desire to join to support their other work, because if there is any other work, I don't see it. If you want to do any other work, I don't see any suggestion of where you would go to volunteer.

Related posts:

1. Too good to be true
2. Played at an English Country Dance
3. Going to Amherst