The sopranino recorder is the second smallest recorder of the modern

recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...

family, and was the smallest before the 17th century. This modern instrument has F₅ as its lowest note, and its length is 20 cm. It is almost always made from soft European or tropical hardwoods, though sometimes it is also made of plastic. Yamaha Recorder YRN-814

Historically there were several sizes of recorder in this

register Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...

, named differently in different periods and in different languages. In his ''

Syntagma Musicum ''Syntagma Musicum (1614-1620)'' is a musical treatise in three volumes by the German composer, organist, and music theorist Michael Praetorius. It was published in Wittenberg and Wolfenbüttel. It is one of the most commonly used research source ...

'' (1619),

Michael Praetorius Michael Praetorius (probably 28 September 1571 – 15 February 1621) was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms ba ...

describes this size of recorder, only a

whole tone In Western music theory, a major second (sometimes also called whole tone or a whole step) is a second spanning two semitones (). A second is a musical interval encompassing two adjacent staff positions (see Interval number for more det ...

higher, with G₅ as its lowest pitch. He calls it ''exilent'' (highest) in Latin, and ''kleine Flöte'' (small flute), ''klein Flötlein'' (small little flute), or ''gar klein'' (really small) in German. According to Praetorius, it is the smallest of eight sizes of recorder in a complete "''Accort'' oder Stimmwerk" (set of all voices), and sounds a ''quintadecima'' (a fifteenth—that is, two octaves) higher than a

cornett The cornett, cornetto, or zink is an early wind instrument that dates from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, popular from 1500 to 1650. It was used in what are now called alta capellas or wind ensembles. It is not to be confused wi ...

. Such a complete set includes a total of twenty-one instruments, including a pair of exilents, and two each of the two next larger sizes, ''Discantflöten'' in D₅ and C₅. However, Praetorius recommends restricting recorder ensembles to the five deepest sizes, because "die kleinen gar zu starck und laut schreien"—"the small ones scream so". The sopranino in G is most probably the instrument Claudio Monteverdi calls for in ''

L'Orfeo ''L'Orfeo'' ( SV 318) (), sometimes called ''La favola d'Orfeo'' , is a late Renaissance/early Baroque ''favola in musica'', or opera, by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and ...

'' (1607), by the name ''flautino alla vigesima seconda'' (little flute at the third octave). In 18th-century England, the sizes of recorder smaller than the treble in F (which was called simply "flute") were named according to their interval above it, and often were notated as transposing instruments. The descant (or soprano) on C was called a "fifth flute", the instrument a whole tone higher still was the "sixth flute" (on D), and what is known today as sopranino was the "octave flute".

References

Further reading