Carolyn’s Music

Narcisse Bousquet was a virtuoso performer, teacher, and composer for the flageolet, the 19th century version of the recorder. This piece is from his first published work, a set of 36 etudes, published in 1851.

Allegro moderato by Narcisse Bousquet

Jean Baptiste Loeillet de Gant. As distinguished from his cousin, Jean Baptiste Loeillet, who published under the name John Loeillet. At any rate, he was a baroque composer, known to have been christened in Ghent in 1688 and is thought to have lived mostly in France and the court of the Archbishop of Lyons. He published primarily music for flute and recorder.

This was my first attempt at recording multiple tracks at once. It turned out very interesting and educational. It’s very nice to be able to play the two lines on the same exact instrument–I think the blend came out wonderful. But timing was more of a problem. I found it necessary to record with a click track in the background, as there are long held notes and other counting issues in both lines. However, this made the question of relaxing tempo at cadences a problem. I ended up putting more time between sections in order to allow getting off the beat at the end of sections but starting the next section with the click track, thus having to do some splicing to cut out that time. I’m not really entirely happy with the result, I think the sections are still too disjoint.

Gavotte by Jean Baptiste Loeillet de Gant

Ernest (or Ernst) Krahmer (1795-1837)

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the recorder faded in popularity. However, during the early 19th century a folk wind instrument similar to the recorder, known as the csakan (or czakan), became popular, especially in Vienna. Krahmer was an oboist in the Viennese court orchestra from 1828 until his death and wrote a method book, several compilations of exercises, and much more repertory for this instrument. The Adagio quasi Andante here is from a collection of etudes published first in the early 1820s.

III. Andante quasi Adagio by Ernest Krahmer

Jacob van Eyck (1589-1657) was a blind carillonnist and recorder player who worked in Utrecht. He is said to have sat in the garden next to the church where he worked and played variations on many popular tunes and psalms. These themes and variations were transcribed and published in Der Fluyten Lust-hof and are a valuable source for 17th century ornamentation. The Echo Fantasia is not a theme and variation, like most of van Eyck’s works, but rather an example of another popular genre, starting with a slow theme which converts to echo motifs once the piece is established.

Echo Fantasia by van Eyck

Quantz Triosonata 2. Alla breve

Johann Joachim Quantz, 1697-1773.

This trio is one of the few pieces out there for recorder, flute, and continuo. The recording is from the March concert with Emily and Miyuki. We originally planned on only doing two triosonatas in the concert, and since we’d all done this piece before we were going to do two other ones in order to do new repertory. At the end of the session where we chose the other two trios, we decided we loved this one enough that we were going to add it in as well. So we ended up with a longer program than intended but I think it worked out very well.