Your Recorder Community

In 1975 I wrote a recorder quartet for my father, Heber Robinson, who was an enthusiastic recorder player with a group at the local Unitarian-Universalist Church in Peabody, Massachusetts. However, the work was too contemporary for the other performers, and the piece was never played.

In hopes of finding other performance opportunities, I wrote a large number of arrangements for other instruments; Art of the Violin, Art of the Flute, Art of the Double Reed, and Art of the Saxophone. However, none found a happy home. (Part of the gag—forgive me for explaining a joke—was that this was an experiment in music that could be played by any instruments that fit the range, after suitable transposition and modification of phrasing or bowing. So it really isn’t the Art of any specific Instrument.)

In 2004 I decided that the piece must be at fault, and I rewrote the first and last movements from scratch, keeping nothing from the originals. I made new arrangements for four flutes and four violins as before. On February 4, 2013, a fine local violinist, Izabela Spiewak, who had played on the memorial concert for my sister in 2010, died of leukemia. I wrote this new middle movement as an elegy in her memory. Now the whole piece is tuneful, gentle, and easily appreciated by many ears. Someday its day may come.

I made other arrangements for four bassoons, and for viola and three cellos. Only the recorder, violin, and flute versions survive. The video linked below is of the violin version, the only one yet performed.

Click HERE for a link to the composer's "Art of the Recorder" webpage.