Schott Renaissance Recorder 1

This is a good book with a variety of historical Renaissance pieces for the recorder and piano. As an intermediate recorder player who plays on his own, I found the music in this book quite easy to play after a few practices. The music selections are rather short only lasting around 1 minute in playing time.

The font size for recorder notes in the book are quite small and difficult to see, but the book comes with separate pull out booklet which has a larger font.

The CD that comes with the book features harpsichord accompaniment tracks, in addition to tracks with both recorder and harpsichord playing. Occasionally the recorder musician on the CD adds a few notes that are not in the sheet music, which I personally find is a flaw. However, flaws aside this is overall a good book and it is good it comes with a CD.

I bought this to go with my Thomann tenor recorder. I'm a beginning recorder player and basically wanted the instrument as a cheap oboe to play the theme tune from the Mission. The tenor recorder doesn't exactly map onto an oboe and neither does the music for this book exactly suit a tenor recorder! Nevertheless I am glad I bought this book.

I've only dipped into the book but have found it to be full of surprises, with new twists on old melodies, none of which I knew. My knowledge of early modern music is not great and doesn't stretch much beyond Palestrina. But these arrangements are suitable for an ambitious beginner, even on the wrong kind of recorder.