Baroque Music and Modern Love

摘要

The fact that recorder-playing Ben E. Edwards is our "People person" for March (the month designated "National Play-a-Recorder Month" by the American Recorder Society) is just a coincidence, but a happy one. Edwards, a member of ASTM International's Committee C09 on Concrete and Concrete Aggregates since 1976, has been playing recorders for decades. He remembers seeing a recorder in a shop window in 1955, being taken by the look of it, and immediately buying it. He learned how to play and now enjoys attending recorder workshops and playing with small groups locally. Recently, Edwards attended workshops in Vancouver and San Francisco. Though recorders were extremely popular during the Renaissance (King Henry VIII owned 76 of them at the time of his death, according to the ARS Web site), the small instrument fell out of favor once huge concert halls began to be built in the 19th century. However, the recorder has made a comeback, in part because of the workshops where Edwards and other recorder lovers play pieces by Bach, Telemann and other Baroque era composers, as well as music from the 13th through the 20th century. The workshops can be specifically recorder-oriented, or they may be more generally focused on period instruments, but the recorder is always an important factor in the music.