RECORDERS, yeah. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing.
At least that's what ran through the minds of almost every nine or ten-year-old student – including myself back in the day – being forced to awkwardly blow and finger a cheap plastic musical instrument in school. The recorder was ubiquitous in school music classes, not only in Malaysia but in countries all over the world.
Many factors may have attributed to the recorder's widespread use. However, one key factor brought the recorder from medieval music obscurity to most primary school classrooms in the world.
So, were Nazis behind the reason why you played the recorder in school?
VERDICT:
TRUE
The humble recorder is an antique instrument, likely the precursor to the flute, with its origins tracing back to the 14th century. It enjoyed considerable popularity in classical music throughout the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
However, over time, the recorder slowly fell out of favour, with musicians and composers preferring the sound of the transverse flute (the one you play sideways).
At the time, there was also a consensus that it was considered ungentlemanly to play an instrument that occupied the mouth. Something about how the instrument was splayed offended the sensibilities at the time.
Regardless, by the end of the 1800s, the recorder had largely been relegated to the historical margins of music sheets.
Then, a series of events took place to push the recorder into the mouths of almost every school kid. It started with a London violin teacher, Arnold Dolmetsch, in the 19th century. He formed an ensemble with his family to play music for fun using old historic instruments he had collected.
One day, his son Carl forgot the historic recorder at a train station – I suspect Carl and I may share similar sentiments about the recorder.
Anyway, despite losing the instrument, Arnold had created detailed schematics of the old recorder and began mass-producing the instrument.
A German, Peter Harlan, then modified the recorder further, making it easier to perform in C major, which later became known as German-style fingering, the version of the recorder that we know today.
The recorder's sound and ease of mass production meant that by the time the Third Reich came into power, the recorder was very popular in Germany.
The Nazis recognised the instrument's popularity and incorporated the recorder into formal education in schools to assert their dominance over music and education, aided by the German composer Carl Orff. Orff is best known for his musical score, Carmina Burana, which has been used in nearly every movie trailer.
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All this culminated at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where the Nazis showed off by having young children perform with recorders during the celebrations as the world looked on. One of those in the crowd was a Japanese foreign student, Yoshitaka Sakamoto, who liked the idea of the recorder so much that he bought several recorders and brought them back to Japan.
Back home, he petitioned the manufacturing of the recorders by Nihon Kangakki Kabushikigaisha - later known as the Yamaha Corporation, yes, that one.
The rest, as they say, is history. The recorder continued to gain popularity as the stepping stone for formal musical education in the West and East due to it being cheap and easy to mass produce, as well as being (sorta) easy to learn.
References:
https://www.wqxr.org/story/why-did-we-learn-play-recorder-school/
https://www.yamaha.com/en/musical_instrument_guide/recorder/structure/structure003.html
https://www.moorepiano.com/posts/history-of-recorder-instrument-in-music-education
