sopranino recorder

In his Syntagma Musicum (1619), Michael Praetorius describes this size of recorder, only a whole tone higher, with G 5 as its lowest pitch. He calls it exilent (highest) in Latin, and kleine Flöte (small flute), klein Flötlein (small little flute), or gar klein (really small) in German. According to Praetorius, it is the smallest of eight sizes of recorder in a complete "Accort oder Stimmwerk" (set of all voices), and sounds a quintadecima (a fifteenth—that is, two octaves) higher than a cornett. Such a complete set includes a total of twenty-one instruments, including a pair of exilents, and two each of the two next larger sizes, Discantflöten in D 5 and C 5. However, Praetorius recommends restricting recorder ensembles to the five deepest sizes, because "die kleinen gar zu starck und laut schreien"—"the small ones scream so". The sopranino in G is most probably the instrument Claudio Monteverdi calls for in L'Orfeo (1607), by the name flautino alla vigesima seconda (little flute at the third octave). In 18th-century England, the sizes of recorder smaller than the treble in F (which was called simply "flute") were named according to their interval above it, and often were notated as transposing instruments. The descant (or soprano) on C was called a "fifth flute", the instrument a whole tone higher still was the "sixth flute" (on D), and what is known today as sopranino was the "octave flute".

Sopranino recorder is a recorder or type of musical instrument.