Recorder sheet music

Sizes, and C or F

Recorders alternate between two fingering families. Descant (soprano) and tenor are in C; treble (alto) and bass are in F. A part written for treble played on a descant will be in the wrong key, and the fingerings a player has learned for one family do not transfer to the other.

British and American names differ for the same instruments — descant is soprano, treble is alto — and editions use whichever convention their publisher favours. This causes more confusion than the transposition itself.

Baroque repertoire and continuo

The serious literature — Handel, Telemann, Van Eyck, Sammartini — is entirely out of copyright and widely available free. As with all Baroque music, check whether an accompanied edition includes a written-out keyboard realisation of the figured bass, or leaves it for a continuo player to improvise.