This is a comprehensive introduction to the art of playing recorder sonatas, written by a teacher and player of wide experience. It is designed not only for students and teachers, but also for those self-taught recorder players who have reached the point where they feel ready to embark upon solo sonata playing. It aims to encourage players whose experience has been limited to consort music to extend their playing to sonatas by Handel, Telemann, and others, so increasing their enjoyment and skill in recorder playing in all its varied forms. Through this book they will encounter sonatas from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries, which often make challenging demands upon the recorder's expressive capabilities. Each of the sonatas considered is described in relation to its musical background (illustrated by parallels with other arts) and to the performance practices of each period.

This is the first book to offer a complete introduction to the recorder. Eight contributors from four different countries write on topics such as the recorder and its music through the centuries, the recorder as orchestral instrument, the professional recorder player through history and today, and the phenomenon of the recorder revival. The Companion also contains basic reference material previously unavailable in one volume. A special feature is the rich collection of illustrations that provide a history of the instrument. The Cambridge Companion to the Recorder will be of interest to performers and students as well as to music enthusiasts.