bass recorder
A bass recorder is a wind instrument in F 3 that belongs to the family of recorders. • Illustration — Recorders from Michael Praetorius's Syntagma Musicum (1619), the fourth and fifth from the left show front and back view of an F bass (basset) • Illustration — Baroque recorders. From left to right: contrabass, great bass, basset, tenor, alto, soprano, sopranino The bass recorder plays an octave lower than the alto or treble recorder. In the recorder family it stands in between the tenor recorder and C great-bass (or quart-bass) recorder.
bass recorder
Irmgard Otto · Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung, Musikinstrumenten-Museum / Irmgard Otto · Onlinesammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin: 1106525 · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Due to the length of the instrument, the lowest tone, F, requires a key. On modern instruments, keys may also be provided for low Fsharp, G, and Gsharp, and sometimes for C and Csharp as well. In the early 17th century, Michael Praetorius used the diminutive term "basset" (small bass) to describe this size of recorder as the lowest member of the "four-foot" consort, in which the instruments sound an octave higher than the corresponding human voices. Praetorius calls the next-lower instrument (bottom note Bflat 2) a "bass", and the instrument an octave lower than the basset (with bottom note F 2) a Großbaß, or "large bass". The bass is usually the lowest instrument of the recorder consort, but it may be used as an alto in "eight-foot" register in the so-called "great consort" or grand jeux, in which case two larger sizes of bass recorder take the lower parts and a tenor may be used as an optional descant.
In the recording of Led Zeppelin's song "Stairway to Heaven" that appears on their untitled fourth studio album, John Paul Jones played four overdubbed bass recorders. Composer Ludwig Göransson employed a bass recorder for the opening melody of the TV series The Mandalorian. The melody features prominently throughout the series, as well as in the 2026 film The Mandalorian and Grogu.
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The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Bass recorder, revision 1362415061 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
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These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.The Bass Recorder Takes Center Stage. 18 February 2021.
- 2.Praetorius, Michael. 1619. Syntagmatis Musici Michaelis Praetorii C. Tomus Secundus De Organographia. Wolfenbüttel: Elias Holwein, in Verlegung des Autoris. p. 34, and supplement plate IX.
- 3.Sachs, Curt. 1913. Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente, zugleich ein Polyglossar für das gesamte Instrumentengebiet. Berlin: Julius Bard. p. 50.
- 4.Baines, Anthony C. 1967. Woodwind Instruments and Their History, third edition, with a foreword by Sir Adrian Boult. London: Faber and Faber. Reprinted with corrections, 1977. This edition reissued, Mineola, New York City: Dover Publications, 1991. p. 247. Reprinted again in 2012. .
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