Modern recorders, as we have seen, are based on Baroque ones; so are their fingerings. It is in the very efficient high-register fingerings that both differ from their Renaissance predecessors. However, certain features of Baroque recorder fingering seem closer in spirit to Renaissance principles than to modern. The standard fingerings for the modern recorder (as for most modern winds) avoid the “shading” or partial covering of holes; such shadings (particularly for the ring finger of the lower hand) were still very much a part of Baroque recorder fingering. (It should be pointed out that the “double holes” commonly provided for the bottom two fingers on the modern recorder were rare on early ones, although they are mentioned as a possibility by both Étienne Loulié and Hotteterre in the early eighteenth century.) The major ramification of this shading technique is for the fourth and eleventh notes of the scale—B♭s on the alto—which are too flat on antiques when the modern fingerings are used; thus and were used instead of and . Another note that is often flat on antiques with the standard modern fingering is c'''♯; solutions to this problem (using partial coverings) are suggested by Jean-Pierre Freillon-Poncein and Loulié.126 (Hotteterre, however, gives the modern fingering.) A peculiarity of the English recorder tutors of Hudgebut, Banister, and Humphrey Salter is the differentiation between enharmonic pairs (particularly d''♯ and e''♭); following the principles of just intonation (as well as meantone temperament) the sharp is given a flatter-sounding fingering than the flat. Such differentiation is a nicety clearly of no interest to Freillon-Poncein, Loulié, and Hotteterre (although the last of these does suggest making this kind of distinction on the transverse flute, sometimes with fingering but more often with embouchure adjustment). Characteristic of the French sources (beginning with Mersenne) as well as the English is the use of so-called buttress-finger technique (the term itself is modern), according to which the ring finger of the lower hand is left down for most of the notes of the low register (where it makes little difference to pitch) in order to provide physical support. There is, however, no sign of this practice in Bismantova.
It is, however, in the fingering of trills that we find the greatest difference in principle between Baroque and modern practice. On an instrument such as the recorder that involves cross-fingerings, one often finds it virtually impossible to alternate smoothly and rapidly between adjacent notes using standard fingerings; the problem arises in particular when the upper note of the pair is cross-fingered. Players have long resorted to “trick” fingerings to avoid simultaneous closing and opening of holes; it is in the nature of the trick itself that the modern and early practices differ.
The usual modern solution is to find an alternate fingering for the lower note that produces the right pitch, so that one can trill by merely adding a finger (or fingers) to the fingering of the upper note. The Baroque solution (first documented in the English recorder tutors of Hudgebut, Banister, and Salter, but apparently a French invention) was to begin and end the trill with the standard fingerings but to make the trill itself with a finger involved in playing the lower note. A specific example will make this difference clear. In playing a trill from f'' to e'' on the alto, the modern player will usually trill with the ring finger of the upper hand: . This works because is usually in tune as an alternate fingering for e'' on the modern instrument. (It is rarely so on antiques, by the way.) The Baroque player, however, would first play the f'' ( ) and then switch to the normal fingering for e'' ( ), making the trill itself with the forefinger of the upper hand.
The success of this expedient depends upon the prolongation of the upper note as an appui or appoggiatura, as well as the suppression of the pitch during the actual trill (through abating the breath and trilling quickly and close to the hole). Modern commentators have often stressed the “out of tune” quality of the early trill fingerings, but it seems likely that early players worked hard to make the listener unaware of any intonation difficulty. Loulié’s directives to “trill quickly and diminish the breath” when performing such “irregular or defective” trills imply as much. It should also be mentioned here that trilling across the register break—avoided in modern playing by the use of alternate fingerings—seems to have been enjoyed by early players; this trill with its curious warbling effect was called a “double shake” in the English tutors.
The same principles also apply to the transverse flute and to the oboe. In charts for the flute, however, there are even more of these “irregular” trills than for the recorder—apparently because cross-fingering is inherently less efficient on the flute, making its scale less even than the recorder’s. Thus, where the recorder will use “normal” fingerings in trilling from a plain-fingered note to a cross-fingering (such as d'' to c''♯), the flute will substitute an “irregular” fingering in the analogous situation (a' to g'♯, in this case); trilling with the middle finger of the upper hand rather than the fingers of the lower hand avoids the rapid alternation of the “solid,” plainfingered a' with the “woolier”-sounding, cross-fingered g'♯. The flute’s trill fingerings, though logical, are counterintuitive for many modern players; again, there is no substitute for a careful study of the sources. One final matter of fingering concerns the reeds—oboe, bassoon, and curtal: charts from the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries show simple octave fingerings as much as possible throughout the upper register; there is little evidence for the so-called long fingerings favored later for high notes, in which the simple octaves of the upper-hand notes are stabilized through addition of lower-hand fingers. While it has been suggested that these earlier charts might reflect the ideal more than actuality, it does seem that the better the instrument, the more closely it is able to conform to their straightforward fingerings. In addition, the success of the “short” fingerings is highly dependent upon reed and staple (or bocal) design.
Modern woodwind articulation generally depends on the broad contrast between tonguing and slurring—matters that can be simply specified by musical notation. It is assumed that separate notes (and those at the beginning of a slur) begin with the tip of the tongue. When repetitions become too fast to be executed easily and cleanly with the tip of the tongue, flutists join their brass-playing colleagues in employing “double tonguing,” alternating “t” and “k”; practice is expected to make the two consonants as equal in effect as possible. (Such double tonguing is not an option for reed players, with the occasional exception of bassoonists; they must work to achieve a fast single tonguing.) Seventeenth-century players of flute, recorder, and cornett inherited a range of different double tonguings, which offer possibilities between the effects of single tonguing and slurring. The articulations given by Bismantova in 1677 for recorder and cornett are essentially the same as those given by Ganassi and Girolamo Dalla Casa in the sixteenth century (although the classification differs somewhat). Bismantova’s lingue dritte are single tonguings, serving for notes from breves to eighths: “t” for cornetto, “d” (implying a softer attack) for recorder. His lingua roversa (“reversed tonguing”) applies to eighths and smaller values and involves “r”s and “l”s: “te-re-le-re” (or “de-re-le-re,” for recorder).
He also recognizes two other possibilities, which he says, however, are not in use, at least in the cantabile style then in vogue. These are “te-che-te-che” (essentially modern double tonguing; Italian “ch” is equivalent to English “k”) and “ter-ler-ter-ler” (in which each note appears to be “clipped” with an “r”). The French Baroque sources bring in a new element: the placement of the “r” in a position of comparative rhythmic stress, at least in certain situations.130 Modern commentators have sometimes talked about the relative strength of the “t” and “r” (there are no “l”s in the French practice), but more important is the matter of connection: the “r” always represents a point of comparative elision, regardless of its rhythmic position. It is always part of a two-note tonguing group initiated by a “t”; it cannot itself initiate such a group. A relationship between the use of “r” in a position of comparative stress and the practice of notes inégales seems obvious, although it is not made explicit by Freillon-Poncein, Loulié, or Hotteterre; the last, however, does explain the practice of performing pairs of notes unequally (pointer) almost in the same breath as his explanation of the use of “t” and “r,” thus strongly implying a connection.
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