Lesson 44: Introduction to the Alto Recorder

• Play the alto’s F major scale with relaxed hands.
• Play Handel’s opening with clear notes and timed rests.

Let relaxed hands make room for the larger instrument.

Moving to alto? Its lowest note is F; select Alto and use your familiar finger shapes to read their new note names.

Already playing alto? Review your F major scale, then read Handel’s A-minor opening.

The home-key scale

This staff reads C major; the Alto view restores F major for an alto in F.

Your F-major staff has one flat: B-flat.

Play: Handel, HWV 362 — II. Allegro

First practise the upbeat and first bar; join the next three bars while counting each rest.

This setting reads E minor, a fourth below Handel’s original A minor.

Your alto staff restores Handel’s original A minor and register.

Franz-Rudolf Kuhnen’s autograph-based edition; CC BY-SA 4.0. Source slurs omitted; playback reads written bars once.

Now play these

Handel, HWV 362 — complete recorder part

Return to the complete sonata in Lessons 76–78.

Handel, HWV 369 — complete Larghetto

Later repertoire in the alto’s home key.

When the scale sounds even and the Handel excerpt keeps its rests in pulse, continue to Lesson 45.