title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Yezhov married Antonina Titova (), a minor Communist Party clerk, in 1919, but he later divorced her and married (Khayutina-Yezhova), a Soviet publishing worker and Chief Editor of "USSR in Construction" magazine who was known for her friendship with many Soviet writers and actors. Yezhov and Feigenburg had an adopted daughter, Natalia, an orphan from a children's home. After Yevgenia's and Yezhov's deaths in late 1938 and 1940 respectively, Natalia was sent back to a local orphanage and was forced to relinquish the Yezhov surname. Subsequently, she was known by the name Natalia Khayutina.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Yezhov was . When Yezhov was arrested in 1939, he stated during his interrogation that he had many lovers, including Filipp Goloshchyokin, then party functionary in Kazakh ASSR, during the latter half of 1925, and that they had shared an apartment in Kzyl-Orda.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: A turning point for Yezhov came with Stalin's response to the 1934 murder of the Bolshevik chief of Leningrad, Sergei Kirov. Stalin used the murder as a pretext for further purges and he chose Yezhov to carry out the task. Yezhov oversaw falsified accusations in the Kirov murder case against opposition leaders Kamenev, Zinoviev and their supporters. Yezhov's success in this task led to his further promotion and ultimately to his appointment as head of the NKVD.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: He became People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (head of the NKVD) and a member of the Central Committee on 26 September 1936, following the dismissal of Genrikh Yagoda. This appointment did not at first seem to suggest an intensification of the purge: "Unlike Yagoda, Yezhov did not come out of the 'organs', which was considered an advantage".


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Party leadership revocation and executions of those found guilty during the Moscow Trials was not a problem for Yezhov. Seeming to be a devout admirer of Stalin and not a member of the organs of state security, Yezhov was just the man Stalin needed to lead the NKVD and rid the government of potential opponents. Yezhov's first task from Stalin was to personally investigate and conduct prosecution of his long-time Chekist mentor Yagoda, which he did with remorseless zeal. Yezhov ordered the NKVD to sprinkle mercury on the curtains of his office so that the physical evidence could be collected and used to support the charge that Yagoda was a German spy, sent to assassinate Yezhov and Stalin with poison and restore capitalism. Yezhov later admitted under a interrogation on 5 May 1939 that he had fabricated the mercury poisoning to "raise his authority in the eyes of the leadership of the country". It is also claimed that he personally tortured both Yagoda and Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky to extract their confessions.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Yagoda was but the first of many to die by Yezhov's orders. Under Yezhov, the Great Purge reached its height during 1937–1938. 50–75% of the members of the Supreme Soviet and officers of the Soviet military were stripped of their positions and imprisoned, exiled to the Gulag in Siberia or executed. In addition, a much greater number of ordinary Soviet citizens were accused (usually on flimsy or nonexistent evidence) of disloyalty or "wrecking" by local Chekist troikas and similarly punished to fill Stalin and Yezhov's arbitrary quotas for arrests and executions. Yezhov also conducted a thorough purge of the security organs, both NKVD and GRU, removing and executing not only many officials who had been appointed by his predecessors Yagoda and Menzhinsky, but even his own appointees as well. He admitted that innocents were being falsely accused, but dismissed their lives as unimportant so long as the purge was successful: In 1937 and 1938 alone, at least 1.3 million were arrested and 681,692 were shot for 'crimes against the state'. The Gulag population swelled by 685,201 under Yezhov, nearly tripling in size in just two years, with at least 140,000 of these prisoners (and likely many more) dying of malnutrition, exhaustion and the elements in the camps (or during transport to them).


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Yezhov was appointed People's Commissar for Water Transport on 6 April 1938. During the Great Purge, acting on the orders from Stalin, he had accomplished liquidation of Old Bolsheviks and other potentially "disloyal elements" or "fifth columnists" within the Soviet military and government prior to the onset of war with Germany. The defection to Japan of the Far Eastern NKVD chief, Genrikh Lyushkov, on 13 June 1938, rightly worried Yezhov, who had earlier protected Lyushkov from the purges and now feared that he would be blamed for disloyalty.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: On 22 August 1938, NKVD leader Lavrenty Beria was named as Yezhov's deputy. Beria had managed to survive the Great Purge and the "Yezhovshchina" during the years 1936–1938, even though he had almost become one of its victims. Earlier in 1938, Yezhov had even ordered the arrest of Beria, who was party chief in Georgia. However, Georgian NKVD chief Sergei Goglidze warned Beria, who immediately flew to Moscow to see Stalin personally. Beria convinced Stalin to spare his life and reminded Stalin how efficiently he had carried out party orders in Georgia and Transcaucasia. In a twist of fate, it was Yezhov who eventually fell in the struggle for power, and Beria who became the new NKVD chief.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Over the following months, Beria (with Stalin's approval) began increasingly trying to usurp Yezhov's governance of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. As early as 8 September, Mikhail Frinovsky, Yezhov's first deputy, was relocated from under his command into the Navy. Stalin's penchant for periodically executing and replacing his primary lieutenants was well known to Yezhov, as he had previously been the man most directly responsible for orchestrating such actions.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Well acquainted with typical Stalinist bureaucratic precursors to eventual dismissal and arrest, Yezhov recognized Beria's increasing influence with Stalin as a sign that his downfall was imminent, and he plunged headlong into alcoholism and despair. Already a heavy drinker, in the last weeks of his service, he reportedly was disconsolate, slovenly, and drunk nearly all of his waking hours, rarely bothering to show up to work. As anticipated, Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, in a report dated November 11, sharply criticised the work and methods of the NKVD during Yezhov's tenure as chief, thus establishing the bureaucratic pretense necessary to remove him from power.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: On 14 November, another of Yezhov’s protégés, the Ukrainian NKVD chief Alexander Uspensky, disappeared after being warned by Yezhov that he was in trouble. Stalin suspected that Yezhov was involved in the disappearance and told Beria, not Yezhov, that Uspensky must be caught (he was arrested on 14 April 1939). Yezhov had told his wife, Yevgenia, on 18 September that he wanted a divorce, and she had begun writing increasingly despairing letters to Stalin, none of which was answered. She was particularly vulnerable because of her many lovers, and for months people close to her were being arrested. On 19 November 1938, Yevgenia committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: At his own request, Yezhov was officially relieved of his post as the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs on 25 November, succeeded by Beria, who had been in complete control of the NKVD since the departure of Frinovsky on 8 September. He attended his last Politburo meeting on 29 January 1939.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Stalin was evidently content to ignore Yezhov for several months, finally ordering Beria to denounce him at the annual Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. On 3 March 1939, Yezhov was relieved of all his posts in the Central Committee, but retained his post as People's Commissar of Water Transportation. His last working day was 9 April, at which time the "People’s Commissariat was simply abolished by splitting it into two, the People’s Commissariats of the River Fleet and the Sea Fleet, with two new People’s Commissars, Z. A. Shashkov and S. S. Dukel’skii."


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: On 10 April, Yezhov was arrested and imprisoned at the Sukhanovka prison; the "arrest was painstakingly concealed, not only from the general public but also from most NKVD officers... It would not do to make a fuss about the arrest of 'the leader’s favourite,' and Stalin had no desire to arouse public interest in NKVD activity and the circumstances of the conduct of the Great Terror." A letter from Beria, Andreev and Malenkov to Stalin, dated 29 January 1939, accused the NKVD of allowing "massive, unfounded arrests of completely innocent persons", and stated that the leadership of Yezhov "did not put a stop to this kind of arbitrariness and extremism...but sometimes itself abetted it."


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: In his confession, Yezhov admitted to the standard litany of state crimes necessary to mark him as an "enemy of the people" prior to execution, including "wrecking", official incompetence, theft of government funds, and treasonous collaboration with German spies and saboteurs. Apart from these political crimes, he was also accused of and confessed to a humiliating history of sexual promiscuity, including homosexuality, rumors that were later deemed true by some post-Soviet examinations of the case.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: On 2 February 1940, Yezhov was tried by the Military Collegium, chaired by Soviet judge Vasili Ulrikh, behind closed doors. Yezhov, like his predecessor Yagoda, maintained to the end his love for Stalin. Yezhov denied being a spy, a terrorist, or a conspirator, stating that he preferred "death to telling lies". He maintained that his previous confession had been obtained under torture, admitted that he had purged 14,000 of his fellow Chekists, but said that he was surrounded by "enemies of the people". He also said that he would die with the name of Stalin on his lips.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: After the secret trial, Yezhov was allowed to return to his cell; half an hour later, he was called back and told that he had been condemned to death. On hearing the verdict, Yezhov became faint and began to collapse, but the guards caught him and removed him from the room. An immediate appeal for clemency was denied, and Yezhov became hysterical and wept. He soon had to be dragged out of the room, struggling with the guards and screaming.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: On 4 February 1940, Yezhov was shot by future KGB chairman Ivan Serov (or by Vasily Blokhin, in the presence of N. P. Afanasev, according to one book source) in the basement of a small NKVD station on Varsonofevskii Lane (Varsonofyevskiy pereulok) in Moscow. The basement had a sloping floor so that it could be hosed down after executions, and had been built according to Yezhov's own specifications near the Lubyanka. The main NKVD execution chamber in the basement of the Lubyanka was deliberately avoided to ensure total secrecy.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Yezhov's body was immediately cremated and his ashes dumped in a common grave at Moscow's Donskoi Cemetery. The execution remained secret and as late as 1948, "Time" reported "Some think he is still in an insane asylum".


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: In Russia, Yezhov remains mostly known as the person who was responsible for atrocities of the Great Purge that he conducted on Stalin's orders. Among art historians, he also has the nickname "The Vanishing Commissar" because after his execution, his likeness was retouched out of an official press photo; he is among the best-known examples of the Soviet press making someone who had fallen out of favour "disappear".


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: Due to his role in the Great Purge, Yezhov has not been officially rehabilitated by the Soviet and Russian authorities.


title: Nikolai Yezhov

text: A decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on 24 January 1941 deprived Yezhov of all state and special awards.


title: Michael Dorman

text: Michael Dorman (born 26 April 1981) is a New Zealand actor, best known for his starring roles as NASA astronaut Gordo Stevens in the Apple TV+ original science fiction space drama series "For All Mankind" and as John Tavner in the comedy-drama series "Patriot". Other roles include Tom Wilcox in the Australian television comedy-drama "Wonderland", Tom Griffin in the 2020 horror film "The Invisible Man", and supporting work on TV shows like "The Secret Life of Us" and in films including "West". In 2021 it was announced that he would star as the title character of the Joe Pickett television series, based on the books by C.J. Box. The show premiered for viewing on the Spectrum Network in December, 2021 and Paramount+ streaming service in February, 2022.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The Italian campaign of World War II, also called the Liberation of Italy following the German occupation in September 1943, consisted of Allied and Axis operations in and around Italy, from 1943 to 1945. The joint Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) was operationally responsible for all Allied land forces in the Mediterranean theatre and it planned and led the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, followed in September by the invasion of the Italian mainland and the campaign in Italy until the surrender of the German Armed Forces in Italy in May 1945.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: It is estimated that between September 1943 and April 1945, 60,000–70,000 Allied and 38,805–150,660 German soldiers died in Italy. The number of Allied casualties was about 330,000 and the German figure (excluding those involved in the final surrender) was over 330,000. Fascist Italy, prior to its collapse, suffered about 200,000 casualties, mostly POWs taken in the invasion of Sicily, including more than 40,000 killed or missing. Over 150,000 Italian civilians died, as did 35,828 anti-fascist partisans and some 35,000 troops of the Italian Social Republic. On the Western Front of World War II, Italy was the most costly campaign in terms of casualties suffered by infantry forces of both sides, during bitter small-scale fighting around strongpoints at the Winter Line, the Anzio beachhead and the Gothic Line.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The invasion of Sicily in July 1943 led to the collapse of the Fascist Italian regime and the fall of Mussolini, who was deposed and arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III on 25 July. The new government signed an armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943. However, German forces soon took control of northern and central Italy; Mussolini, who was rescued by German paratroopers, established a collaborationist puppet state, the Italian Social Republic (RSI), to administer the German-occupied territory. The Germans, sometimes with Italian fascists, also committed several atrocities against civilians and non-fascist troops. The Italian Co-Belligerent Army was created to fight against the RSI and its German allies, alongside the large Italian resistance movement, while other Italian troops continued to fight alongside the Germans in the National Republican Army; this period is known as the Italian Civil War. In April 1945, Mussolini was captured by the Italian resistance and summarily executed by firing squad. The campaign ended when Army Group C surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on May 2, 1945, one week before the formal German Instrument of Surrender. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican, both surrounded by Italian territory, also suffered damage during the conflict.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: Even before the victory in the North African campaign in May 1943, there was disagreement among the Allies on the best strategy to defeat the Axis. The British, especially the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, advocated their traditional naval-based peripheral strategy. Even with a large army, but greater naval power, the traditional British answer against a continental enemy was to fight as part of a coalition and mount small peripheral operations designed to gradually weaken the enemy. The United States, with the larger U.S. Army, favoured a more direct method of fighting the main force of the German Army in northwestern Europe. The ability to launch such a campaign depended on first winning the Battle of the Atlantic.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The strategic disagreement was fierce, with the U.S. service chiefs arguing for an invasion of France as early as possible, while their British counterparts advocated a policy centred on operations in the Mediterranean. There was even pressure from some Latin American countries to stage an invasion of Spain, which, under Francisco Franco, was friendly to the Axis nations, although not a participant in the war. The American staff believed that a full-scale invasion of France at the earliest possible time was required to end the war in Europe, and that no operations should be undertaken that might delay that effort. The British argued that the presence of large numbers of troops trained for amphibious landings in the Mediterranean made a limited-scale invasion possible and useful.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: Eventually the U.S. and British political leadership reached a compromise in which both would commit most of their forces to an invasion of France in early 1944, but also launch a relatively small-scale Italian campaign. A contributing factor was Franklin D. Roosevelt's desire to keep U.S. troops active in the European theatre during 1943 and his attraction to the idea of eliminating Italy from the war. It was hoped that an invasion might knock Italy out of the conflict, or at least increase the pressure on it and weaken it. The elimination of Italy would enable Allied naval forces, principally the Royal Navy, to dominate the Mediterranean Sea, securing the lines of communications with Egypt and thus Asia. Italian divisions on occupation and coastal defence duties in the Balkans and France would be withdrawn to defend Italy, while the Germans would have to transfer troops from the Eastern Front to defend Italy and the entire southern coast of France, thus aiding the Soviet Union.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The initial plan was for landings in the south-east, south and north-west areas of the island which would lead to the rapid capture of key Axis airfields and except for Messina, all the main ports on the island. This would allow a rapid Allied build-up, as well as denying their use to the Axis. This was altered into a reduced number of landings but with more concentration of force.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The Allied invasion of Sicily , Operation Husky, began on 9 July 1943 with both amphibious and airborne landings at the Gulf of Gela. The land forces involved were the U.S. Seventh Army, under Lieutenant General George S. Patton, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division and the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade under the command of Major-General Guy Simonds and the British Eighth Army, under General Bernard Montgomery.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The original plan required a strong advance by the British northwards along the east coast to Messina. The Canadians took the central position, with the British on their right and the Americans on the left. The Canadian War Cemetery in Agira is testament to the sacrifice made driving the Germans from the rugged terrain. The Americans had the important role of pushing Axis forces out of mainland Sicily on left flank. When the Eighth Army were held up by stubborn defences in the rugged hills south of Mount Etna, Patton amplified the American role with a wide advance northwest toward Palermo and then directly north to cut the northern coastal road. This was followed by an eastward advance north of Etna towards Messina, supported by a series of amphibious landings on the northern coast that propelled Patton's troops into Messina shortly before the first units of the Eighth Army. The defending German and Italian forces were unable to prevent the Allied capture of the island, but they succeeded in evacuating most of their troops to the mainland, with the last leaving on 17 August 1943. The Allied forces gained experience in opposed amphibious operations, coalition warfare, and large airborne drops.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: Forces of the British Eighth Army, still under Montgomery, landed in the 'toe' of Italy on 3 September 1943 in Operation Baytown, the day the Italian government agreed to an armistice with the Allies. The armistice was publicly announced on 8 September by two broadcasts, first by General Eisenhower and then by a proclamation by Marshal Badoglio. Although the German forces prepared to defend without Italian assistance, only two of their divisions opposite the Eighth Army and one at Salerno were not tied up disarming the Royal Italian Army.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: On 9 September, forces of the U.S. Fifth Army, under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, expecting little resistance, landed against heavy German resistance at Salerno in Operation Avalanche; in addition, British forces landed at Taranto in Operation Slapstick, which was almost unopposed. There had been a hope that, with the surrender of the Italian government, the Germans would withdraw to the north, since at the time Adolf Hitler had been persuaded that Southern Italy was strategically unimportant. However, this was not to be; although, for a while, the Eighth Army was able to make relatively easy progress up the eastern coast, capturing the port of Bari and the important airfields around Foggia. Despite none of the northern reserves having been made available to the German 10th Army, it nevertheless came close to repelling the Salerno landing. The main Allied effort in the west initially centred on the port of Naples: that city was selected because it was the northernmost port that could receive air cover by fighter planes flying from Sicily. In the city itself, anti-Fascist Forces began an uprising, later known as the Four days of Naples, holding out despite continuous German reprisals until the arrival of Allied forces.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: As the Allies advanced, they encountered increasingly difficult terrain: the Apennine Mountains form a spine along the Italian peninsula offset somewhat to the east. In the most mountainous areas of Abruzzo, more than half the width of the peninsula comprises crests and peaks over that are relatively easy to defend; and the spurs and re-entrants to the spine confronted the Allies with a succession of ridges and rivers across their line of advance. The rivers were subject to sudden and unexpected flooding, which had the potential to thwart the Allied commanders' plans.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: In early October 1943, Hitler was persuaded by his Army Group Commander in Southern Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, that the defence of Italy should be conducted as far away from Germany as possible. This would make the most of the natural defensive geography of Central Italy, whilst denying the Allies the easy capture of a succession of airfields, each one being ever closer to Germany. Hitler was also convinced that yielding southern Italy would provide the Allies with a springboard for an invasion of the Balkans, with its vital resources of oil, bauxite and copper.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: Kesselring was given command of the whole of Italy and immediately ordered the preparation of a series of defensive lines across Italy, south of Rome. Two lines, the Volturno and the Barbara, were used to delay the Allied advance so as to buy time to prepare the most formidable defensive positions, which formed the "Winter Line" – the collective name for the Gustav Line and two associated defensive lines on the west of the Apennine Mountains, the Bernhardt and Hitler lines (the latter had been renamed the Senger Line by 23 May 1944).


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The Winter Line proved a major obstacle to the Allies at the end of 1943, halting the Fifth Army's advance on the western side of Italy. Although the Gustav Line was penetrated on the Eighth Army's Adriatic front, and Ortona was liberated with heavy casualties to Canadian troops, the blizzards, drifting snow and zero visibility at the end of December caused the advance to grind to a halt. The Allies' focus then turned to the western front, where an attack through the Liri valley was considered to have the best chance of a breakthrough towards the Italian capital. Landings behind the line at Anzio during Operation Shingle, advocated by the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, were intended to destabilise the German Gustav line defences, but the early thrust inland to cut off the German defences did not occur because of disagreements that the American commander, Major General John P. Lucas, had with the battle plan, and his insistence that his forces were not large enough to accomplish their mission. Lucas entrenched his forces, during which time Kesselring assembled sufficient forces to form a ring around the beachhead. After a month of hard fighting, Lucas was replaced by Major General Lucian Truscott, who eventually broke out in May.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: It took four major offensives between January and May 1944 before the line was eventually broken by a combined assault of the Fifth and Eighth Armies (including British, American, French, Polish, and Canadian corps) concentrated along a front between Monte Cassino and the western seaboard. In a concurrent action, General Mark Clark was ordered to break out of the stagnant position at Anzio and cash in on the opportunity to cut off and destroy a large part of the German 10th Army retreating from the Gustav Line between them and the Canadians. But this opportunity was lost on the brink of success, when Clark disobeyed his orders and sent his U.S. forces to enter the vacant Rome instead. Rome had been declared an open city by the German Army so no resistance was encountered.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The American forces took possession of Rome on 4 June 1944. The German 10th Army were allowed to get away and, in the next few weeks, may have been responsible for doubling the Allied casualties in the next few months. Clark was hailed as a hero in the United States though postwar assessments have been critical of his command decisions.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: After the capture of Rome, and the Allied invasion of Normandy in June, the U.S. VI Corps and the French Expeditionary Corps (CEF), which together amounted to seven divisions, were pulled out of Italy during the summer of 1944 to participate in Operation Dragoon, codename for the Allied invasion of Southern France. The sudden removal of these experienced units from the Italian front was only partially compensated for by the gradual arrival of three divisions, the Brazilian 1st Infantry Division, the U.S. 92nd Infantry Division, both in the second half of 1944, and the U.S. 10th Mountain Division in January 1945.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: In the period from June to August 1944, the Allies advanced beyond Rome, taking Florence and closing up on the Gothic Line. This last major defensive line ran from the coast some north of Pisa, along the jagged Apennine Mountains chain between Florence and Bologna to the Adriatic coast, just south of Rimini. In order to shorten the Allied lines of communication for the advance into Northern Italy, the Polish II Corps advanced towards the port of Ancona and, after a month-long battle, succeeded in capturing it on 18 July.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: During "Operation Olive", which commenced on 25 August, the Gothic Line defences were penetrated on both the Fifth and Eighth Army fronts; but, there was no decisive breakthrough. Churchill, the British Prime Minister, had hoped that a major advance in late 1944 would open the way for the Allied armies to advance northeast through the "Ljubljana Gap" (the area between Venice and Vienna, which is today's Slovenia) to Vienna and Hungary to forestall the Red Army from advancing into Eastern Europe. Churchill's proposal had been strongly opposed by the U.S. Chiefs of Staff as, despite its importance to British postwar interests in the region, they did not believe that it aligned with overall Allied war priorities.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: In October, Lieutenant General Sir Richard McCreery succeeded Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese as the commander of the Eighth Army. In December, Lieutenant General Mark Clark, the Fifth Army commander, was appointed to command the 15th Army Group, thereby succeeding the British General Sir Harold Alexander as commander of all Allied ground troops in Italy; Alexander succeeded Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson as the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean Theatre. Clark was succeeded in command of the Fifth Army by Lieutenant General Lucian K. Truscott Jr. In the winter and spring of 1944–45, extensive partisan activity in Northern Italy took place. As there were two Italian governments during this period, (one on each side of the war), the struggle took on some characteristics of a civil war.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The poor winter weather, which made armoured manoeuvre and the exploitation of overwhelming air superiority impossible, coupled with the massive losses suffered to its ranks during the autumn fighting, the need to transfer some British troops to Greece (as well as the need to withdraw the British 5th Infantry Division and I Canadian Corps to northwestern Europe) made it impractical for the Allies to continue their offensive in early 1945. Instead, the Allies adopted a strategy of "offensive defence" while preparing for a final attack when better weather and ground conditions arrived in the spring.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: In late February-early March 1945, Operation "Encore" saw elements of the U.S. IV Corps (1st Brazilian Division and the newly arrived U.S. 10th Mountain Division) battling forward across minefields in the Apennines to align their front with that of the U.S. II Corps on their right. They pushed the German defenders from the commanding high point of Monte Castello and the adjacent Monte Belvedere and Castelnuovo, depriving them of artillery positions that had been commanding the approaches to Bologna since the narrowly failed Allied attempt to take the city in the autumn. Meanwhile, damage to other transport infrastructure forced Axis forces to use sea, canal and river routes for re-supply, leading to Operation Bowler against shipping in Venice harbour on 21 March 1945.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: The Allies' final offensive commenced with massive aerial and artillery bombardments on 9 April 1945. The Allies had 1,500,000 men and women deployed in Italy in April 1945. The Axis on 7 April had 599,404 troops of which 439,224 were Germans and 160,180 were Italians. By 18 April, Eighth Army forces in the east had broken through the Argenta Gap and sent armour racing forward in an encircling move to meet the U.S. IV Corps advancing from the Apennines in Central Italy and to trap the remaining defenders of Bologna. On 21 April, Bologna was entered by the 3rd Carpathian Division, the Italian Friuli Group (both from the Eighth Army) and the U.S. 34th Infantry Division (from the Fifth Army). The U.S. 10th Mountain Division, which had bypassed Bologna, reached the River Po on 22 April; the 8th Indian Infantry Division, on the Eighth Army front, reached the river on 23 April.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: By 25 April, the Italian Partisans' Committee of Liberation declared a general uprising, and on the same day, having crossed the Po on the right flank, forces of the Eighth Army advanced north-northeast towards Venice and Trieste. On the front of the U.S. Fifth Army, divisions drove north toward Austria and northwest to Milan. On the Fifth Army's left flank, the U.S. 92nd Infantry Division (the "Buffalo Soldiers Division") went along the coast to Genoa. A rapid advance towards Turin by the Brazilian division on their right took the German–Italian Army of Liguria by surprise, causing its collapse.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: Between 26 April and 1 May there were the Battles of Collecchio-Fornovo di Taro, which resulted in the surrender of the 148th German Infantry Division to Brazilian soldiers of the FEB; the Brazilian soldiers captured about 15,000 Italian and Nazi soldiers, the end of these battles marked the end of the conflicts in Italy and the end of the Italian fascist army.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: As April 1945 came to an end, the German Army Group C, retreating on all fronts and having lost most of its fighting strength, was left with little option but surrender. General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, who had taken command of Army Group C after Albert Kesselring had been transferred to become Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front (OB West) in March 1945, signed the instrument of surrender on behalf of the German armies in Italy on 29 April, formally bringing hostilities to an end on 2 May 1945.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: Research in 2016 funded by the German government found the number of victims of Nazi war crimes in Italy to be 22,000. The victims were primarily Italian civilians, sometimes in retaliation for partisan attacks, and Italian Jews.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: Approximately 14,000 Italian non-Jewish civilians, often women, children and elderly, have been documented to have died in over 5,300 individual instances of war crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The largest of those was the Marzabotto massacre, where in excess of 770 civilians were murdered. The Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre saw 560 civilians killed while the Ardeatine massacre saw 335 randomly selected people executed, among them 75 Italian Jews. In the Padule di Fucecchio massacre up to 184 civilians were executed.


title: Italian campaign (World War II)

text: Allied war crimes during the conflict were reported, including killing of civilians (such as the Canicattì massacre), execution of prisoners (such as two massacres at Biscari airfield on 14 July 1943), and rape (most notably the "marocchinate").


title: Euler angles

text: The Euler angles are three angles introduced by Leonhard Euler to describe the orientation of a rigid body with respect to a fixed coordinate system.


title: Euler angles

text: They can also represent the orientation of a mobile frame of reference in physics or the orientation of a general basis in 3-dimensional linear algebra. Alternative forms were later introduced by Peter Guthrie Tait and George H. Bryan intended for use in aeronautics and engineering.


title: Euler angles

text: Euler angles can be defined by elemental geometry or by composition of rotations. The geometrical definition demonstrates that three composed "elemental rotations" (rotations about the axes of a coordinate system) are always sufficient to reach any target frame.


title: Euler angles

text: The three elemental rotations may be extrinsic (rotations about the axes "xyz" of the original coordinate system, which is assumed to remain motionless), or intrinsic (rotations about the axes of the rotating coordinate system "XYZ", solidary with the moving body, which changes its orientation with respect to the extrinsic frame after each elemental rotation).


title: Euler angles

text: Euler angles are typically denoted as "α", "β", "γ", or "ψ", "θ", "φ". Different authors may use different sets of rotation axes to define Euler angles, or different names for the same angles. Therefore, any discussion employing Euler angles should always be preceded by their definition.


title: Euler angles

text: Without considering the possibility of using two different conventions for the definition of the rotation axes (intrinsic or extrinsic), there exist twelve possible sequences of rotation axes, divided in two groups:


title: Euler angles

text: Tait–Bryan angles are also called Cardan angles; nautical angles; heading, elevation, and bank; or yaw, pitch, and roll. Sometimes, both kinds of sequences are called "Euler angles". In that case, the sequences of the first group are called "proper" or "classic" Euler angles.


title: Euler angles

text: The axes of the original frame are denoted as "x", "y", "z" and the axes of the rotated frame as "X", "Y", "Z". The geometrical definition (sometimes referred to as static) begins by defining the line of nodes (N) as the intersection of the planes "xy" and "XY" (it can also be defined as the common perpendicular to the axes "z" and "Z" and then written as the vector product "N" = "z" formula_1 "Z"). Using it, the three Euler angles can be defined as follows:


title: Euler angles

text: Intrinsic rotations are elemental rotations that occur about the axes of a coordinate system "XYZ" attached to a moving body. Therefore, they change their orientation after each elemental rotation. The "XYZ" system rotates, while "xyz" is fixed. Starting with "XYZ" overlapping "xyz", a composition of three intrinsic rotations can be used to reach any target orientation for "XYZ".


title: Euler angles

text: Euler angles can be defined by intrinsic rotations. The rotated frame "XYZ" may be imagined to be initially aligned with "xyz", before undergoing the three elemental rotations represented by Euler angles. Its successive orientations may be denoted as follows:


title: Euler angles

text: For the above-listed sequence of rotations, the line of nodes "N" can be simply defined as the orientation of "X" after the first elemental rotation. Hence, "N" can be simply denoted "x"′. Moreover, since the third elemental rotation occurs about "Z", it does not change the orientation of "Z". Hence "Z" coincides with "z"″. This allows us to simplify the definition of the Euler angles as follows:


title: Euler angles

text: Extrinsic rotations are elemental rotations that occur about the axes of the fixed coordinate system "xyz". The "XYZ" system rotates, while "xyz" is fixed. Starting with "XYZ" overlapping "xyz", a composition of three extrinsic rotations can be used to reach any target orientation for "XYZ". The Euler or Tait–Bryan angles ("α", "β", "γ") are the amplitudes of these elemental rotations. For instance, the target orientation can be reached as follows (note the reversed order of Euler angle application):


title: Euler angles

text: In sum, the three elemental rotations occur about "z", "x" and "z". Indeed, this sequence is often denoted "z"-"x"-"z" (or 3-1-3). Sets of rotation axes associated with both proper Euler angles and Tait–Bryan angles are commonly named using this notation (see above for details).


title: Euler angles

text: Angles are commonly defined according to the right-hand rule. Namely, they have positive values when they represent a rotation that appears clockwise when looking in the positive direction of the axis, and negative values when the rotation appears counter-clockwise. The opposite convention (left hand rule) is less frequently adopted.


title: Euler angles

text: The angles "α", "β" and "γ" are uniquely determined except for the singular case that the "xy" and the "XY" planes are identical, i.e. when the "z" axis and the "Z" axis have the same or opposite directions. Indeed, if the "z" axis and the "Z" axis are the same, "β" = 0 and only ("α" + "γ") is uniquely defined (not the individual values), and, similarly, if the "z" axis and the "Z" axis are opposite, "β" =  and only ("α" − "γ") is uniquely defined (not the individual values). These ambiguities are known as gimbal lock in applications.


title: Euler angles

text: There are six possibilities of choosing the rotation axes for proper Euler angles. In all of them, the first and third rotation axes are the same. The six possible sequences are:


title: Euler angles

text: Precession, nutation, and intrinsic rotation (spin) are defined as the movements obtained by changing one of the Euler angles while leaving the other two constant. These motions are not expressed in terms of the external frame, or in terms of the co-moving rotated body frame, but in a mixture. They constitute a mixed axes of rotation system, where the first angle moves the line of nodes around the external axis "z", the second rotates around the line of nodes "N" and the third one is an intrinsic rotation around "Z", an axis fixed in the body that moves.


title: Euler angles

text: If "β" is zero, there is no rotation about "N". As a consequence, "Z" coincides with "z", "α" and "γ" represent rotations about the same axis ("z"), and the final orientation can be obtained with a single rotation about "z", by an angle equal to .


title: Euler angles

text: As an example, consider a top. The top spins around its own axis of symmetry; this corresponds to its intrinsic rotation. It also rotates around its pivotal axis, with its center of mass orbiting the pivotal axis; this rotation is a precession. Finally, the top can wobble up and down; the inclination angle is the nutation angle. The same example can be seen with the movements of the earth.


title: Euler angles

text: Though all three movements can be represented by a rotation operator with constant coefficients in some frame, they cannot be represented by these operators all at the same time. Given a reference frame, at most one of them will be coefficient-free. Only precession can be expressed in general as a matrix in the basis of the space without dependencies of the other angles.


title: Euler angles

text: These movements also behave as a gimbal set. If we suppose a set of frames, able to move each with respect to the former according to just one angle, like a gimbal, there will exist an external fixed frame, one final frame and two frames in the middle, which are called "intermediate frames". The two in the middle work as two gimbal rings that allow the last frame to reach any orientation in space.


title: Euler angles

text: The second type of formalism is called Tait–Bryan angles, after Peter Guthrie Tait and George H. Bryan. It is the convention normally used for aerospace applications, so that zero degrees elevation represents the horizontal attitude. Tait–Bryan angles represent the orientation of the aircraft with respect to the world frame. When dealing with other vehicles, different axes conventions are possible.


title: Euler angles

text: The definitions and notations used for Tait–Bryan angles are similar to those described above for proper Euler angles (geometrical definition, intrinsic rotation definition, extrinsic rotation definition). The only difference is that Tait–Bryan angles represent rotations about three distinct axes (e.g. "x"-"y"-"z", or "x"-"y"′-"z"″), while proper Euler angles use the same axis for both the first and third elemental rotations (e.g., "z"-"x"-"z", or "z"-"x"′-"z"″).


title: Euler angles

text: This implies a different definition for the line of nodes in the geometrical construction. In the proper Euler angles case it was defined as the intersection between two homologous Cartesian planes (parallel when Euler angles are zero; e.g. "xy" and "XY"). In the Tait–Bryan angles case, it is defined as the intersection of two non-homologous planes (perpendicular when Euler angles are zero; e.g. "xy" and "YZ").


title: Euler angles

text: The three elemental rotations may occur either about the axes of the original coordinate system, which remains motionless (extrinsic rotations), or about the axes of the rotating coordinate system, which changes its orientation after each elemental rotation (intrinsic rotations).


title: Euler angles

text: There are six possibilities of choosing the rotation axes for Tait–Bryan angles. The six possible sequences are:


title: Euler angles

text: Tait–Bryan convention is widely used in engineering with different purposes. There are several axes conventions in practice for choosing the mobile and fixed axes, and these conventions determine the signs of the angles. Therefore, signs must be studied in each case carefully.


title: Euler angles

text: These angles are normally taken as one in the external reference frame (heading, bearing), one in the intrinsic moving frame (bank) and one in a middle frame, representing an elevation or inclination with respect to the horizontal plane, which is equivalent to the line of nodes for this purpose.


title: Euler angles

text: For an aircraft, they can be obtained with three rotations around its principal axes if done in the proper order. A yaw will obtain the bearing, a pitch will yield the elevation and a roll gives the bank angle. Therefore, in aerospace they are sometimes called yaw, pitch and roll. Notice that this will not work if the rotations are applied in any other order or if the airplane axes start in any position non-equivalent to the reference frame.


title: Euler angles

text: Tait–Bryan angles, following "z"-"y"′-"x"″ (intrinsic rotations) convention, are also known as nautical angles, because they can be used to describe the orientation of a ship or aircraft, or Cardan angles, after the Italian mathematician and physicist Gerolamo Cardano, who first described in detail the Cardan suspension and the Cardan joint.


title: Euler angles

text: A common problem is to find the Euler angles of a given frame. The fastest way to get them is to write the three given vectors as columns of a matrix and compare it with the expression of the theoretical matrix (see later table of matrices). Hence the three Euler Angles can be calculated. Nevertheless, the same result can be reached avoiding matrix algebra and using only elemental geometry. Here we present the results for the two most commonly used conventions: "ZXZ" for proper Euler angles and "ZYX" for Tait–Bryan. Notice that any other convention can be obtained just changing the name of the axes.


title: Euler angles

text: Assuming a frame with unit vectors ("X", "Y", "Z") given by their coordinates as in the main diagram, it can be seen that:


title: Euler angles

text: There is a similar construction for formula_18, projecting it first over the plane defined by the axis "z" and the line of nodes. As the angle between the planes is formula_19 and formula_20, this leads to:


title: Euler angles

text: Assuming a frame with unit vectors ("X", "Y", "Z") given by their coordinates as in this new diagram (notice that the angle theta is negative), it can be seen that:


title: Euler angles

text: Note that the inverse sine and cosine functions yield two possible values for the argument. In this geometrical description, only one of the solutions is valid. When Euler angles are defined as a sequence of rotations, all the solutions can be valid, but there will be only one inside the angle ranges. This is because the sequence of rotations to reach the target frame is not unique if the ranges are not previously defined.


title: Euler angles

text: For computational purposes, it may be useful to represent the angles using . For example, in the case of proper Euler angles:


title: Euler angles

text: Euler angles are one way to represent orientations. There are others, and it is possible to change to and from other conventions. Three parameters are always required to describe orientations in a 3-dimensional Euclidean space. They can be given in several ways, Euler angles being one of them; see charts on SO(3) for others.


title: Euler angles

text: The most used orientation representation are the rotation matrices, the axis-angle and the quaternions, also known as Euler–Rodrigues parameters, which provide another mechanism for representing 3D rotations. This is equivalent to the special unitary group description.


title: Euler angles

text: Regardless, the rotation matrix calculation is the first step for obtaining the other two representations.


title: Euler angles

text: Any orientation can be achieved by composing three elemental rotations, starting from a known standard orientation. Equivalently, any rotation matrix "R" can be decomposed as a product of three elemental rotation matrices. For instance:


title: Euler angles

text: is a rotation matrix that may be used to represent a composition of extrinsic rotations about axes "z", "y", "x", (in that order), or a composition of intrinsic rotations about axes "x"-"y"′-"z"″ (in that order). However, both the definition of the elemental rotation matrices "X", "Y", "Z", and their multiplication order depend on the choices taken by the user about the definition of both rotation matrices and Euler angles (see, for instance, Ambiguities in the definition of rotation matrices). Unfortunately, different sets of conventions are adopted by users in different contexts. The following table was built according to this set of conventions:


title: Euler angles

text: These tabular results are available in numerous textbooks. For each column the last row constitutes the most commonly used convention.


title: Euler angles

text: To change the formulas for passive rotations (or find reverse active rotation), transpose the matrices (then each matrix transforms the initial coordinates of a vector remaining fixed to the coordinates of the same vector measured in the rotated reference system; same rotation axis, same angles, but now the coordinate system rotates, rather than the vector).


title: Euler angles

text: The following table contains formulas for angles "α", "β" and "γ" from elements of a rotation matrix formula_39.


title: Euler angles

text: The Euler angles form a chart on all of SO(3), the special orthogonal group of rotations in 3D space. The chart is smooth except for a polar coordinate style singularity along . See charts on SO(3) for a more complete treatment.


title: Euler angles

text: The space of rotations is called in general "The Hypersphere of rotations", though this is a misnomer: the group Spin(3) is isometric to the hypersphere "S", but the rotation space SO(3) is instead isometric to the real projective space RP which is a 2-fold quotient space of the hypersphere. This 2-to-1 ambiguity is the mathematical origin of spin in physics.


title: Euler angles

text: A similar three angle decomposition applies to SU(2), the special unitary group of rotations in complex 2D space, with the difference that "β" ranges from 0 to 2. These are also called Euler angles.


title: Euler angles

text: The Haar measure for SO(3) in Euler angles is given by the Hopf angle parametrisation of SO(3), formula_40, where formula_41 parametrise formula_42, the space of rotation axes.


title: Euler angles

text: For example, to generate uniformly randomized orientations, let "α" and "γ" be uniform from 0 to 2, let "z" be uniform from −1 to 1, and let .


title: Euler angles

text: Other properties of Euler angles and rotations in general can be found from the geometric algebra, a higher level abstraction, in which the quaternions are an even subalgebra. The principal tool in geometric algebra is the rotor formula_43 where formula_44angle of rotation, formula_45 is the rotation axis (unitary vector) and formula_46 is the pseudoscalar (trivector in formula_47)


title: Euler angles

text: It is possible to define parameters analogous to the Euler angles in dimensions higher than three. In four dimensions and above, the concept of "rotation about an axis" loses meaning and instead becomes "rotation in a plane." The number of Euler angles needed to represent the group is , equal to the number of planes containing two distinct coordinate axes in "n"-dimensional Euclidean space.


title: Euler angles

text: In SO(4) a rotation matrix is defined by two unit quaternions, and therefore has six degrees of freedom, three from each quaternion.


title: Euler angles

text: Their main advantage over other orientation descriptions is that they are directly measurable from a gimbal mounted in a vehicle. As gyroscopes keep their rotation axis constant, angles measured in a gyro frame are equivalent to angles measured in the lab frame. Therefore, gyros are used to know the actual orientation of moving spacecraft, and Euler angles are directly measurable. Intrinsic rotation angle cannot be read from a single gimbal, so there has to be more than one gimbal in a spacecraft. Normally there are at least three for redundancy. There is also a relation to the well-known gimbal lock problem of mechanical engineering .


title: Euler angles

text: When studying rigid bodies in general, one calls the "xyz" system "space coordinates", and the "XYZ" system "body coordinates". The space coordinates are treated as unmoving, while the body coordinates are considered embedded in the moving body. Calculations involving acceleration, angular acceleration, angular velocity, angular momentum, and kinetic energy are often easiest in body coordinates, because then the moment of inertia tensor does not change in time. If one also diagonalizes the rigid body's moment of inertia tensor (with nine components, six of which are independent), then one has a set of coordinates (called the principal axes) in which the moment of inertia tensor has only three components.


title: Euler angles

text: The angular velocity of a rigid body takes a simple form using Euler angles in the moving frame. Also the Euler's rigid body equations are simpler because the inertia tensor is constant in that frame.


title: Euler angles

text: In materials science, crystallographic texture (or preferred orientation) can be described using Euler angles. In texture analysis, the Euler angles provide a mathematical depiction of the orientation of individual crystallites within a polycrystalline material, allowing for the quantitative description of the macroscopic material.


title: Euler angles

text: The most common definition of the angles is due to Bunge and corresponds to the "ZXZ" convention. It is important to note, however, that the application generally involves axis transformations of tensor quantities, i.e. passive rotations. Thus the matrix that corresponds to the Bunge Euler angles is the transpose of that shown in the table above.


title: Euler angles

text: Euler angles, normally in the Tait–Bryan convention, are also used in robotics for speaking about the degrees of freedom of a wrist. They are also used in electronic stability control in a similar way.


title: Euler angles

text: Gun fire control systems require corrections to gun-order angles (bearing and elevation) to compensate for deck tilt (pitch and roll). In traditional systems, a stabilizing gyroscope with a vertical spin axis corrects for deck tilt, and stabilizes the optical sights and radar antenna. However, gun barrels point in a direction different from the line of sight to the target, to anticipate target movement and fall of the projectile due to gravity, among other factors. Gun mounts roll and pitch with the deck plane, but also require stabilization. Gun orders include angles computed from the vertical gyro data, and those computations involve Euler angles.


title: Euler angles

text: Euler angles are also used extensively in the quantum mechanics of angular momentum. In quantum mechanics, explicit descriptions of the representations of SO(3) are very important for calculations, and almost all the work has been done using Euler angles. In the early history of quantum mechanics, when physicists and chemists had a sharply negative reaction towards abstract group theoretic methods (called the "Gruppenpest"), reliance on Euler angles was also essential for basic theoretical work.


title: Euler angles

text: Many mobile computing devices contain accelerometers which can determine these devices' Euler angles with respect to the earth's gravitational attraction. These are used in applications such as games, bubble level simulations, and kaleidoscopes.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The recorder is a family of woodwind musical instruments in the group known as "internal duct flutes": flutes with a whistle mouthpiece, also known as fipple flutes. A recorder can be distinguished from other duct flutes by the presence of a thumb-hole for the upper hand and seven finger-holes: three for the upper hand and four for the lower. It is the most prominent duct flute in the western classical tradition.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Recorders are made in various sizes with names and compasses roughly corresponding to various vocal ranges. The sizes most commonly in use today are the soprano (also known as descant, lowest note C), alto (also known as treble, lowest note F), tenor (lowest note C), and bass (lowest note F). Recorders were traditionally constructed from wood or ivory. Modern professional instruments are almost invariably of wood, often boxwood; student and scholastic recorders are commonly of molded plastic. The recorders' internal and external proportions vary, but the bore is generally reverse conical (i.e. tapering towards the foot) to cylindrical, and all recorder fingering systems make extensive use of forked fingerings.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The recorder is first documented in Europe in the Middle Ages, and continued to enjoy wide popularity in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, but was little used in the Classical and Romantic periods. It was revived in the 20th century as part of the historically informed performance movement, and became a popular amateur and educational instrument. Composers who have written for the recorder include Monteverdi, Lully, Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Bach, Hindemith, and Berio. There are many professional recorder players who demonstrate the full solo range of the instrument, and a large community of amateurs.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The sound of the recorder is often described as clear and sweet, and has historically been associated with birds and shepherds. It is notable for its quick response and its corresponding ability to produce a wide variety of articulations. This ability, coupled with its open finger holes, allow it to produce a wide variety of tone colors and special effects. Acoustically, its tone is relatively pure and, when the edge is positioned in the center of the airjet, odd harmonics predominate in its sound (when the edge is decidedly off-center, an even distribution of harmonics occurs).


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The instrument has been known by its modern English name at least since the 14th century. David Lasocki reports the earliest use of "recorder" in the household accounts of the Earl of Derby (later King Henry IV) in 1388, which register (one pipe called 'Recordour').


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: By the 15th century, the name had appeared in English literature. The earliest references are in John Lydgate's Temple of Glas ( 1430): "." ('These little shepherds fluting all day long ... on these small recorders, on flutes.') and in Lydgate's Fall of Princes ( 1431–1438): ", / ." ('Pan, god of Nature, with his pipes seven, / of recorders found first the melodies.')


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The instrument name "recorder" derives from the Latin (to call to mind, remember, recollect), by way of Middle French (before 1349; to remember, to learn by heart, repeat, relate, recite, play music) and its derivative MFr ( 1395; one who retells, a minstrel). The association between the various, seemingly disparate, meanings of "recorder" can be attributed to the role of the medieval "jongleur" in learning poems by heart and later reciting them, sometimes with musical accompaniment.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The English verb "record" (from Middle French , early 13th century) meant "to learn by heart, to commit to memory, to go over in one's mind, to recite", but it was not used in English to refer to playing music until the 16th century, when it gained the meaning "silently practicing a tune" or "sing or render in song" (both almost exclusively referring to songbirds), long after the recorder had been named. Thus, the recorder cannot have been named after the sound of birds. The name of the instrument is also uniquely English: in Middle French there is no equivalent noun sense of referring to a musical instrument.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Partridge indicates that the use of the instrument by led to its association with the verb: the minstrel's action, a recorder the minstrel's tool. The reason this instrument is known as the recorder, but not one of the other instruments played by the , is uncertain.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The introduction of the Baroque recorder to England by a group of French professionals in 1673 popularized the French name for the instrument, , or simply , a name previously (and subsequently) reserved for the transverse instrument. Until about 1695, the names "recorder" and "flute" overlapped, but from 1673 to the late 1720s in England, the word "flute" always meant recorder. In the 1720s, as the transverse flute overtook the recorder in popularity, English adopted the convention already present in other European languages of qualifying the word "flute", calling the recorder variously the "common flute", "common English-flute", or simply "English flute" while the transverse instrument was distinguished as the "German flute" or simply "flute". Until at least 1765, some writers still used "flute" to mean recorder.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Until the mid 18th century, musical scores written in Italian refer to the instrument as , whereas the transverse instrument was called . This distinction, like the English switch from "recorder" to "flute", has caused confusion among modern editors, writers and performers.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Indeed, in most European languages, the first term for the recorder was the word for flute alone. In the present day, cognates of the word "flute", when used without qualifiers, remain ambiguous and may refer to either the recorder, the modern concert flute, or other non-western flutes. Starting in the 1530s, these languages began to add qualifiers to specify this particular flute.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Since the 15th century, a variety of sizes of recorder have been documented, but a consistent terminology and notation for the different sizes was not formulated until the 20th century.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Today, recorder sizes are named after the different vocal ranges. This is not, however, a reflection of sounding pitch, and serves primarily to denote the pitch relationships between the different instruments. Groups of recorders played together are referred to as "consorts". Recorders are also often referred to by their lowest sounding note: "recorder in F" refers to a recorder with lowest note F, in any octave.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The table in this section shows the standard names of modern recorders in F and C and their respective ranges. Music composed after the modern revival of the recorder most frequently uses soprano, alto, tenor, and bass recorders, although sopranino and great bass are also fairly common. Consorts of recorders are often referred to using the terminology of organ registers: 8′ (8 foot) pitch referring to a consort sounding as written, 4′ pitch a consort sounding an octave above written, and 16′ a consort sounding an octave below written. The combination of these consorts is also possible.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: As a rule of thumb, the tessitura of a baroque recorder lies approximately one octave above the tessitura of the human voice type after which it is named. For example, the tessitura of a soprano voice is roughly C–C, while the tessitura of a soprano recorder is C–C.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Modern variations include standard British terminology, due to Arnold Dolmetsch, which refers to the recorder in C (soprano) as the descant and the recorder in F (alto) as the treble. As conventions and instruments vary, especially for larger and more uncommon instruments, it is often practical to state the recorder's lowest note along with its name to avoid confusion.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Modern recorder parts are notated in the key they sound in. Parts for alto, tenor and contrabass recorders are notated at pitch, while parts for sopranino, soprano, bass, and great bass are typically notated an octave below their sounding pitch. As a result, soprano and tenor recorders are notated identically; alto and sopranino are notated identically; and bass and contrabass recorders are notated identically. Octave clefs may be used to indicate the sounding pitch, but usage is inconsistent.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Rare sizes and notations include the garklein, which may be notated two octaves below its sounding pitch, and the sub-contrabass, which may be notated an octave above its sounding pitch.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Historically, recorders were used to play vocal music and parts written for other instruments, or for a general instrument. As a result, it was frequently the performers' responsibility to read parts not specifically intended for the instrument and to choose appropriate instruments. When such consorts consisted only of recorders, the pitch relationships between the parts were typically preserved, but when recorders were combined with other instruments, octave discrepancies were often ignored.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Recorder consorts in the 16th century were tuned in fifths and only occasionally employed tuning by octaves as seen in the modern C, F recorder consort. This means that consorts could be composed of instruments nominally in B, F, C, G, D, A and even E, although typically only three or four distinct sizes were used simultaneously. To use modern terminology, these recorders were treated as transposing instruments: consorts would be read identically to a consort made up of F, C, and G instruments. This is made possible by the fact that adjacent sizes are separated by fifths, with few exceptions. These parts would be written using "chiavi naturali", allowing the parts to roughly fit in the range of a single staff, and also in the range of the recorders of the period. (see Renaissance structure)


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Transpositions ("registers"), such as C–G–D, G–D–A, or B–F–C, all read as F–C–G instruments, were possible as described by Praetorius in his "Syntagma Musicum". Three sizes of instruments could be used to play four-part music by doubling the middle size, e.g. F–C–C–G, or play six-part music by doubling the upper size and tripling the middle size, e.g. F–C–C–C–G–G. Modern nomenclature for such recorders refers to the instruments' relationship to the other members of consort, rather than their absolute pitch, which may vary. The instruments from lowest to highest are called "great bass", "bass", "basset", "tenor", "alto", and "soprano". Potential sizes include: great bass in F; bass in B or C; basset in F or G; tenor in C or D; alto in F, G or A; and soprano in C or D.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The alto in F is the standard recorder of the Baroque, although there is a small repertoire written for other sizes. In 17th-century England, smaller recorders were named for their relationship to the alto and notated as transposing instruments with respect to it: third flute (A), fifth flute (soprano; C), sixth flute (D), and octave flute (sopranino; F). The term "flute du quart", or fourth flute (B), was used by Charles Dieupart, although curiously he treated it as a transposing instrument in relation to the soprano rather than the alto. In Germanic countries, the equivalent of the same term, "Quartflöte", was applied both to the tenor in C, the interval being measured down from the alto in F, and to a recorder in C (soprano), the interval of a fourth apparently being measured up from an alto in G. Recorder parts in the Baroque were typically notated using the treble clef, although they may also be notated in French violin clef (G clef on the bottom line of the staff).


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: In modern usage, recorders not in C or F are alternatively referred to using the name of the closest instrument in C or F, followed by the lowest note. For example, a recorder with lowest note G may be known as a G-alto or alto in G, a recorder with lowest note D (also "sixth flute") as a D-soprano or soprano in D, and a recorder in G as a G-bass or G-basset. This usage is not totally consistent. Notably, the baroque recorder in D is not commonly referred to as a D-tenor nor a D-alto; it is most commonly referred to using the historical name "voice flute".


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Recorders have historically been constructed from hardwoods and ivory, sometimes with metal keys. Since the modern revival of the recorder, plastics have been used in the mass manufacture of recorders, as well as by a few individual makers.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Today, a wide variety of hardwoods are used to make recorder bodies. Relatively fewer varieties of wood are used to make recorder blocks, which are often made of red cedar, chosen because of its rot resistance, ability to absorb water, and low expansion when wet. A recent innovation is the use of synthetic ceramics in the manufacture of recorder blocks.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Some recorders have tone holes too far apart for a player's hands to reach, or too large to cover with the pads of the fingers. In either case, more ergonomically placed keys can be used to cover the tone holes. Keys also allow the design of longer instruments with larger tone holes. Keys are most common in recorders larger than the alto. Instruments larger than the tenor need at least one key so the player can cover all eight holes. Keys are sometimes also used on smaller recorders to allow for comfortable hand stretch, and acoustically improved hole placement and size.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: When playing a larger recorder, a player may not be able to simultaneously reach the keys or tone holes with the fingers and reach the windway with the mouth. In this case, a bocal may be used to allow the player to blow into the recorder while maintaining a comfortable hand position. Alternatively, some recorders have a bent bore that positions the windway closer to the keys or finger holes so the player can comfortably reach both. Instruments with a single bend are known as "knick" or bent-neck recorders.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Some newer designs of recorder are now being produced. Recorders with a square cross-section may be produced more cheaply and in larger sizes than comparable recorders manufactured by turning. Another area is the development of instruments with a greater dynamic range and more powerful bottom notes. These modern designs make it easier to be heard in concertos. Finally, recorders with a downward extension of a semitone are becoming available; such instruments can play a full three octaves in tune.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: In the early 20th century, Peter Harlan developed a recorder with apparently simpler fingering, called German fingering. A recorder designed for German fingering has a hole five that is smaller than hole four, whereas baroque and neo-baroque recorders have a hole four that is smaller than hole five. The immediate difference in fingering is for F (soprano) or B (alto), which on a neo-baroque instrument must be fingered 0 123 4–67. With German fingering, this becomes a simpler 0 123 4 – – –. Unfortunately, however, this makes many other chromatic notes too out of tune to be usable. German fingering became popular in Europe, especially Germany, in the 1930s, but rapidly became obsolete in the 1950s as people began to treat the recorder more seriously, and the limitations of German fingering became more widely appreciated. Recorders with German fingering are today manufactured exclusively for educational purposes.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Modern recorders are most commonly pitched at A=440 Hz, but among serious amateurs and professionals, other pitch standards are often found. For the performance of baroque music, A=415 Hz is the "de facto" standard, while pre-Baroque music is often performed at A=440 Hz or A=466 Hz. These pitch standards are intended to reflect the broad variation in pitch standards throughout the history of the recorder. In various regions, contexts, and time periods, pitch standards have varied from A=~392 Hz to A=~520 Hz. The pitches A=415 Hz and A=466 Hz, a semitone lower and a semitone higher than A=440 Hz respectively, were chosen because they may be used with harpsichords or chamber organs that transpose up or down a semitone from A=440. These pitch standards allow recorder players to collaborate with other instrumentalists at a pitch other than A=440 Hz.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Some recorder makers produce instruments at pitches other than the three standard pitches above, and recorders with interchangeable bodies at different pitches.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The recorder produces sound in the manner of a whistle or an organ flue pipe. In normal play, the player blows into the "windway" (B), a narrow channel in the "head joint", which directs a stream of air across a gap called the "window", at a sharp edge called the "labium" (C). The air stream alternately travels above and below the labium, exciting standing waves in the bore of the recorder, and producing sound waves that emanate away from the window. Feedback from the resonance of the tube regulates the pitch of the sound.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: In recorders, as in all woodwind instruments, the air column inside the instrument behaves like a vibrating string, to use a musical analogy, and has multiple modes of vibration. These waves produced inside the instrument are not travelling waves, like those the ear perceives as sound, but rather stationary standing waves consisting of areas of high pressure and low pressure inside the tube, called nodes. The perceived pitch is the lowest, and typically loudest, mode of vibration in the air column. The other pitches are "harmonics", or "overtones". Players typically describe recorder pitches by the number of nodes in the air column. Notes with a single node are in the "first register," notes with two nodes in the "second register," etc. As the number of nodes in the tube increases, the number of notes a player can produce in a given register decreases because of the physical constraint of the spacing of the nodes in the bore. On a Baroque recorder, the first, second, and third registers span about a major ninth, a major sixth, and a minor third respectively.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The recorder sound, for the most part, lacks high harmonics and odd harmonics predominate in its sound with the even harmonics being almost entirely absent, although the harmonic profile of the recorder sound varies from recorder to recorder, and from fingering to fingering. As a result of the lack of high harmonics, writers since Praetorius have remarked that it is difficult for the human ear to perceive correctly the sounding octave of the recorder.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: As in organ flue pipes, the sounding pitch of duct type whistles is affected by the velocity of the air stream as it impinges upon the labium. The pitch generally increases with velocity of the airstream, up to a point.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Air speed can also be used to influence the number of pressure nodes in a process called over blowing. At higher airstream velocities, lower modes of vibration of the air column become unstable, resulting in a change of register.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The air stream is affected by the shaping of the surfaces in the head of the recorder (the "voicing"), and the way the player blows air into the windway. Recorder voicing is determined by physical parameters such as the proportions and curvature of the windway along both the longitudinal and latitudinal axes, the beveled edges ("chamfers") of the windway facing towards the labium, the length of the window, the sharpness of the labium (i.e. the steepness of the ramp) among other parameters. The player is able to control the speed and turbulence of the airstream using the diaphragm and vocal tract.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The finger holes, used in combination or partially covered, affect the sounding pitch of the instrument.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: At the most basic level, the sequential uncovering of finger holes increases the sounding pitch of the instrument by decreasing the effective sounding length of the instrument, and vice versa for the sequential covering of holes. In the fingering 01234567, only the bell of the instrument is open, resulting in a low pressure node at the bell end of the instrument. The fingering 0123456 sounds at a higher pitch because the seventh hole and the bell both release air, creating a low pressure node at the seventh hole.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Besides sequential uncovering, recorders can use forked fingering to produce tones other than those produced by simple sequential lifting of fingers. In the fingering 0123, air leaks from the open holes 4,5,6, and 7. The pressure inside the bore is higher at the fourth hole than at the fifth, and decreases further at the 6th and 7th holes. Consequently, the most air leaks from the fourth hole and the least air leaks from the seventh hole. As a result, covering the fourth hole affects the pitch more than covering any of the holes below it. Thus, at the same air pressure, the fingering 01235 produces a pitch between 0123 and 01234. Forked fingerings allow recorder players to obtain fine gradations in pitch and timbre.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: A recorder's pitch is also affected by the partial covering of holes. This technique is an important tool for intonation, and is related to the fixed process of tuning a recorder, which involves the adjustment of the size and shape of the finger holes through carving and the application of wax.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: One essential use of partial covering is in "leaking," or partially covering, the thumb hole to destabilize low harmonics. This allows higher harmonics to sound at lower air pressures than by over-blowing alone, as on simple whistles. The player may also leak other holes to destabilize lower harmonics in place of the thumb hole (hole 0). This technique is demonstrated in the fingering tables of Ganassi's "Fontegara" (1535), which illustrate the simultaneous leaking of holes 0, 2, and 5 to produce some high notes. For example, Ganassi's table produces the 15th (third octave tonic) as the fourth harmonic of the tonic, leaking holes 0, 2 and 5 and produces the 16th as the third harmonic of the fifth, leaking holes 0 and 2. On some Baroque recorders, the 17th can be produced as the third harmonic of the sixth, leaking hole 0 as well as hole 1, 2 or both.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Although the design of the recorder has changed over its 700-year history, notably in fingering and bore profile (see History), the technique of playing recorders of different sizes and periods is much the same. Indeed, much of what is known about the technique of playing the recorder is derived from historical treatises and manuals dating to the 16th–18th century. The following describes the commonalities of recorder technique across all time periods.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: In normal playing position, the recorder is held with both hands, covering the fingerholes or depressing the keys with the pads of the fingers: four fingers on the lower hand, and the index, middle and ring fingers and thumb on the upper hand. In standard modern practice, the right hand is the lower hand, while the left hand is the upper hand, although this was not standardized before the modern revival of the recorder.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The recorder is supported by the lips, which loosely seal around the beak of the instrument, the thumb of the lower hand, and, depending on the note fingered, by the other fingers and the upper thumb. A practice documented in many historical fingering charts is the use of finger seven or eight to support the recorder when playing notes for which the coverage of this hole negligibly affects the sounding pitch (e.g. notes with many holes uncovered). Larger recorders may have a thumb rest, or a neck strap for extra support, and may use a bocal to direct air from the player's mouth to the windway.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Recorders are typically held at an angle between vertical and horizontal, the attitude depending on the size and weight of the recorder, and personal preference.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Pitches are produced on the recorder by covering the holes while blowing into the instrument. Modern terminology refers to the holes on the front of the instrument using the numbers 1 through 7, starting with the hole closest to the beak, with the thumbhole numbered hole 0. At the most basic level, the fingering technique of the recorder involves the sequential uncovering of the holes from lowest to highest (i.e., uncovering 7, then uncovering 7 and 6, then uncovering 7, 6 and 5, etc.) producing even higher pitches. In practice, however, the uncovering of the holes is not strictly sequential, and the half covering or uncovering of holes is an essential part of recorder technique.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: A forked fingering is a fingering in which an open hole has covered holes below it: fingerings for which the uncovering of the holes is not sequential. For example, the fingering 0123 (G) is not a forked fingering, while 0123 56 (F) is a forked fingering because the open hole 4 has holes covered below it holes 5 and 6. Forked fingerings allow for smaller adjustments in pitch than the sequential uncovering of holes alone would allow. For example, at the same air speed the fingering 0123 5 sounds higher than 01234 but lower than 0123. Many standard recorder fingerings are forked fingerings. Forked fingerings may also be used to produce microtonal variations in pitch.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Forked fingerings have a different harmonic profile from non-forked fingerings, and are generally regarded as having a weaker sound. Forked fingerings that have a different tone color or are slightly sharp or flat can provide so-called "alternate fingerings". For example, the fingering 0123 has a slightly sharper forked variant 012 4567.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Partial covering of the holes is an essential part of the playing technique of all recorders. This is variously known as "leaking," "shading," "half-holing," and in the context of the thumb hole, "pinching".


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The primary function of the thumbhole is to serve as an octaving vent. When it is leaked, the first mode of vibration of the air column becomes unstable: i.e., the register changes. In most recorders, this is required for the playing of every note higher than a ninth above the lowest note. The player must adjust the position of the thumb for these notes to sound stable and in tune.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The partial opening of the thumbhole may be achieved by sliding or rolling the thumb off the hole, or by bending the thumb at the first knuckle. To partially uncover a covered hole, the player may slide the finger off the hole, bend or roll the finger away from the hole, gently lift the finger from the hole, or a combination of these. To partially cover an open hole, the reverse is possible.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Generally speaking, the partial opening of covered fingerholes raises the pitch of the sounding note while the partial closure of open fingerholes lowers the pitch.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: On most "baroque" modeled modern recorders, the lower two fingers of the lower hand actually cover two holes each (called "double holes"). Whereas on the vast majority of baroque recorders and all earlier recorders these two fingers covered a single hole ("single holes"), double holes have become standard for baroque modeled modern recorders. By covering one or both of these two, smaller holes, a recorder player can play the notes a semitone above the lowest note and a minor third above the lowest note, notes that are possible on single holed recorders only through the partial covering of those holes, or the covering of the bell.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The open end of the bore facing away from the player (the "bell") may be covered to produce extra notes or effects. Because both hands are typically engaged in holding the recorder or covering the finger holes, the covering of the bell is normally achieved by bringing the end of the recorder in contact with the leg or knee, typically achieved through a combination of bending of the torso and/or raising of the knee. Alternatively, in rare cases instruments may be equipped with a key designed to cover the bell ("bell key"), operated by one of the fingers, typically the pinky finger of the upper hand, which is not normally used to cover a hole. Fingerings with a covered bell extend the recorder's chromatic playable range above and below the nominal fingered range.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The pitch and volume of the recorder sound are influenced by the speed of the air travelling through the windway, which may be controlled by varying the breath pressure and the shape of the vocal tract. The sound is also affected by the turbulence of the air entering the recorder. Generally speaking, faster air in the windway produces a higher pitch. Thus blowing harder causes a note to sound sharp whereas blowing the note gently causes it to sound flat. Knowledge of this fact and the recorder's individual tonal differences over its full range will help recorders play in tune with other instruments by knowing which notes will need slightly more or less air to stay in tune. As mentioned above at "Harmonic profile", blowing much harder can result in overblowing.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The technique of inhalation and exhalation for the recorder differs from that of many other wind instruments in that the recorder requires very little air pressure to produce a sound, unlike reed or brasswind instruments. Thus, it is often necessary for a recorder player to produce long, controlled streams of air at a very low pressure. Recorder breathing technique focuses on the controlled release of air rather than on maintaining diaphragmatic pressure.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The use of the tongue to stop and start the air is called "articulation". In this capacity, the tongue has two basic functions: to control the start of the note (the attack) and the end, or the length of the note (legato, staccato). Articulations are roughly analogous to consonants. Practically any consonant that may be produced with the tongue, mouth, and throat may be used to articulate on the recorder. Transliterations of common articulation patterns include "du du du du" (using the tip of the tongue, "single tonguing") "du gu du gu," (alternating between the tip and the back of the tongue, "double tonguing") and "du g'll du g'll" (articulation with the tip and the sides of the tongue, "triple tonguing"). The attack of the note is governed by such factors as the pressure buildup behind the tongue and shape of the articulant, while the length of the note governed by the stoppage of the air by the tongue. Each articulation pattern has a different natural pattern of attack and length, and recorder technique seeks to produce a wide variety of lengths and attacks using these articulation patterns. Patterns such as these have been used since at least the time of Ganassi (1535).


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Mouth and throat shapes are roughly analogous to vowels. The shape of the vocal tract affects the velocity and turbulence of the air entering the recorder. The shape of the mouth and vocal tract is closely related to the consonant used to articulate.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The player must coordinate fingers and tongue to align articulations with finger movements. In normal play, articulated attacks should align with the proper fingering, even in legato passages or in difficult finger transitions and the fingers move in the brief silence between the notes (silence d'articulation) created by the stoppage of the air by the tongue.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Both fingers and the breath can be used to control the pitch of the recorder. Coordinating the two is essential to playing the recorder in tune and with a variety of dynamics and timbres. On an elementary level, breath pressure and fingerings must accord with each other to provide an in-tune pitch. As an example of a more advanced form of coordination, a gradual increase in breath pressure combined with the shading of holes, when properly coordinated, results in an increase in volume and change in tone color without a change in pitch. The reverse is possible, decreasing breath pressure and gradually lifting fingers.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The range of a modern "baroque" model recorder is usually considered two octaves and a tone. See the table above for "English" fingerings for the standard range. The numbers at the top correspond to the fingers and the holes on the recorder. The vast majority of recorders manufactured today are designed to play using these fingerings, with slight variations. Nonetheless, recorder fingerings vary widely between models and are mutable even for a single recorder: recorder players may use three or more fingerings for the same note along with partial covering of the holes to achieve proper intonation, in coordination with the breath or in faster passages where some fingerings are unavailable. This chart is a general guide, but by no means a definitive or complete fingering chart for the recorder, an impossible task. Rather, it is the basis for a much more complex fingering system, which is still being added to today.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Some fonts show miniature glyphs of complete recorder fingering charts in TrueType format. Because there are no Unicode values for complete recorder fingering charts, these fonts are custom encoded.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The earliest extant duct flutes date to the neolithic. They are found in almost every musical tradition around the world. Recorders are distinguished from other duct flutes primarily by the thumb hole, which is used as an octaving vent, and the presence of seven finger holes, although classification of early instruments has proved controversial. The performing practice of the recorder in its earliest history is not well documented, owing to the lack of surviving records from the time.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Our present knowledge of the structure of recorders in the Middle Ages is based on a small number of instruments preserved and artworks, or iconography, from the period.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Surviving instruments from the Middle Ages are heterogeneous. The first medieval recorder discovered was a fruitwood instrument ("Dordrecht recorder") excavated in 1940 from a well (not a moat) in the ruin of the "Huis te Merwede" ("House on the Merwede") near the town of Dordrecht in the Netherlands. The house was only inhabited from 1335 to 1418. As the area was not disturbed until the modern excavation, the recorder has been dated to the period of occupation. The instrument has a cylindrical bore about in diameter and is about long with a vibrating air column of about . The block has survived, but the labium is damaged, making the instrument unplayable. The instrument has tenons on both ends of the instrument, suggesting the presence of now lost ferrules or turnings. Uncertainty regarding the nature of these fittings has hindered reconstruction of the instrument's original state.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: A second, structurally different instrument ("Göttingen recorder") was discovered in 1987 in an archaeological excavation of the latrine of a medieval house in Göttingen, Germany. It has been dated to between 1246 and 1322. It is fruitwood in one piece with turnings, measuring about long. It has a cylindrical bore about at the highest measurable point, narrowing to between the first and second finger holes, to between the second and third finger holes, and contracting to at the seventh hole. The bore expands to at the bottom of the instrument, which has a bulbous foot. Unusually, the finger holes taper conically outwards, the opposite of the undercutting found in Baroque recorders. The top of the instrument is damaged: only a cut side of the windway survives, and the block has been lost. A reconstruction by Hans Reiners has a strident, penetrating sound rich in overtones and has a range of two octaves. With the thumb hole and the first three finger holes covered, the reconstruction produces a pitch ca. 450 Hz.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: In the 21st century, a number of other instruments and fragments dated to the medieval period have come to light. These include a 14th-century fragment of a headjoint excavated in Esslingen, Germany ("Esslingen fragment"); a birch instrument dated to the second half of the 14th century unearthed in Tartu, Estonia ("Tartu recorder"); and a fruitwood instrument dated to the 15th century, found in Elbląg, Poland ("Elbląg recorder").


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Common features of the surviving instruments include: a narrow cylindrical bore (except the Göttingen recorder); a doubled seventh hole for the little finger of the lower hand to allow for right- or left- handed playing (except the Tartu recorder); a seventh hole that produces a semitone instead of a tone; and a flat or truncated head, instead of the narrow beak found on later instruments. Additionally, the Esslingen fragment has turnings similar to the Göttingen recorder. No complete instruments larger than have survived, although the Esslingen fragment may represent a larger recorder.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The widely spaced doubled seventh hole persisted in later instruments. According to Virdung (1511), the hole that was not used was plugged with wax. It was not until the Baroque period, when instruments with adjustable footjoints were developed, that widely spaced double holes became obsolete.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: The classification of these instruments is primarily complicated by the fact that the seventh hole produces a semitone instead of a tone. As a result, chromatic fingerings are difficult, and require extensive half-holing. These instruments share similarities with the six holed flageolet, which used three fingers on each hand and had no thumb hole. Anthony Rowland-Jones has suggested that the thumb hole on these early flutes was an improvement upon the flageolet to provide a stronger fingering for the note an octave above the tonic, while the seventh finger hole provided a leading tone to the tonic. As a result, he has suggested that these flutes should be described as improved flageolets, and has proposed the condition that true recorders produce a tone (rather than a semitone) when the seventh finger is lifted.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Controversy aside, there is little question that these instruments are at least precursors to later instruments that are indisputably recorders. Because there is sparse documentary evidence from the earliest history of the instrument, such questions may never be resolved. Indeed, historically there was no need for an all-inclusive definition that encompassed every form of the instrument past and present.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Recorders with a cylindrical profile are depicted in many medieval paintings, however, their appearance does not easily correspond to the surviving instruments, and may be stylized. The earliest depictions of the recorder are probably in "The Mocking of Christ" from the monastery church of St George in Staro Nagoričano near Kumanovo, Macedonia (the painting of the church began in 1315) in which a man plays a cylindrical recorder; and the center panel of the "Virgin and Child" attributed to Pedro (Pere) Serra (c. 1390), painted for the church of S. Clara, Tortosa, now in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, in which a group of angels play musical instruments around the Virgin Mary, one of them playing a cylindrical recorder.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Starting in the Middle Ages, angels have frequently been depicted playing one or more recorders, often grouped around the Virgin, and in several notable paintings, trios of angels play recorders. This is perhaps a sign of the trinity, although the music must have often been in three parts.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: No music marked for the recorder survives from prior to 1500. Groups of recorder players or recorder playing angels, particularly trios, are depicted in paintings from the 15th century, indicating the recorder was used in these configurations, as well as with other instruments. Some of the earliest music must have been vocal repertory.


title: Recorder (musical instrument)

text: Modern recorder players have taken up the practice of playing instrumental music from the period, perhaps anachronistically, such as the monophonic estampies from the Chansonnier du Roi (13th), Add MS 29987 (14th or 15th), or the Codex Faenza (15th), and have arranged keyboard music, such as the estampies from the Robertsbridge codex (14th), or the vocal works of composers such as Guillaume de Machaut and Johannes Ciconia for recorder ensembles.