PHILIPPE BOLTON
HANDMADE RECORDERS & FLAGEOLETS
A transitional recorder by Richard Haka in Edinburgh
© Edinburgh University |
This ivory descant (soprano) recorder was made in Amsterdam by Richard Haka. It is very different from most of the other instruments by this maker, which are in the true baroque style. Its bore is wider and far less tapered. Its range is more than two octaves. The fingerings are those given in Mersenne's chart, but the variants described by Blankenburgh in the manual bound with Jacob van Eyck's Fluyten Lust Hof also work. The pitch is around 442 Hz. The slim profile is typical of a certain number of transitional recorders. According to common practice of the time, the bottom hole is bored on both sides of the instrument to enable playing with either hand uppermost. On arriving in Amsterdam Haka may have copied some of the recorders commonly played at the time by Dutch players. In this case this instrument might be of the type that would have been played by Jacob van Eyck. The recorder is now in the Edinburgh University Collection, at the Reid Concert Hall.
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