Downloadable sheet music of duets for two soprano recorders

January 25, 2006 7:37 PM

I'm looking for something pretty specific, but not all that bizarre: Downloadable sheet music (say, PDFs or GIFs) of duets (public-domain music) for two soprano recorders. Where?

I've searched AskMefi and Google, and unfortunately the homonym on "recorder" which is used with "music" a lot gets in the way of a completely clean search. My wife and I spent an hour or so trolling through "free sheet music" sites and found one paltry example of this particular instrumentation. There must be more. Anybody?

posted by soyjoy to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

That sounds like a toughie. Are you skilled enough to write your own sheet music based on other duets for two of the same instrument? I'm thinking you could find some flute duets (or trombones for that matter) and transpose the parts so they fit in your range. I assume you're both playing soprano recorders.
posted by nonmyopicdave at 8:24 PM on January 25, 2006

If it's not on 8notes, I don't know where else you can find it. That's where I get free violin sheet music from. I saw a lot of things for 4 recorders on there, but maybe you can arrange those for 2?
posted by easternblot at 10:50 PM on January 25, 2006

Well, if you have any software that shows midis as music notation, you have a good chance for some baseline scores.

Most baroque duets for treble intruments will be within your range. So, look for violin, flute, and oboe duets.

To help you in your search, I'd suggest looking for specific composers. For baroque stuff, I'd suggest Telemann, Boismortier, and Quantz.
posted by Sangre Azul at 6:59 AM on January 26, 2006

Well, the thing is that soprano recorders are "c instruments," so even though you may have a hard time finding things specifically labeled "Soprano Recorder Duet," there's a lot of adaptable music. Offhand -- keeping in mind that middle c is the absolute bottom of the range -- anything labeled as a flute duet and many things labeled for two part youth choir should do nicely. Violin range goes down to the lower g, many of the treble winds go below middle c. If you don't mind that it won't sound in the same key, a duet for two matching saxophones might even do (all saxes use the same written range, but Soprano, Tenor, and Bass are all b-flat instruments, Alto and Bari are e-flat) Worst case, pull out an old hymnal and play the soprano and alto parts together.

Now you have me wondering where the local school comes up with their recorder music. I suppose it's possible the band director arranges it.
posted by ilsa at 7:56 AM on January 26, 2006

Try this site. It's in French, so click on "flute á bec" (French for recorder). YMMV, but I've found some good stuff in the past.
posted by al_fresco at 8:21 AM on January 26, 2006

Sally Deford has some decent christian/mormon sheet music that you might be able to play on a recorder, if you're into that kind of thing.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:13 AM on January 26, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks, all. Haven't found the best answer yet, but there do seem to be a couple good leads. In case anyone's still reading, I understand there's plenty of workarounds where we could approximate the effect. Hell, I could sit down and write recorder duets faster than this has taken. But it seemed like it shouldn't be so much to ask to find a score with two parts in the soprano recorder range. (Violin duets are common, yes, but it's also very common to use the first four notes of the G string somewhere, which take the piece out of range; and trombones? Are there even soprano trombones?) Anyway, thanks.
posted by soyjoy at 2:54 PM on January 26, 2006

Since you're the same instruments, you should be able to play anything once you move it into your range. Hell, just read the trombone parts as if they're treble clef. As long as you both do it, you'll be fine (except for the odd b-sharp and a few others.)
posted by nonmyopicdave at 1:33 AM on January 27, 2006