Hi All,

I read yesterday somewhere that the Sonate in a minor (HWV 362) by Händel is a Grade 7 piece for recorder. Since then, I am wondering why. Maybe you can help me there. I am a flute player myself. So the first question is, is this piece Grade 7 for Flute as well?

You see, my difficulty believing that comes from my understanding of the instrument related playing issues. But I wonder if it is related to the music theory which is required in the piece as well.

Especially the Larghetto, which I find quite challenging and interesting. It's all dotted notes, notes cut short by rests, triplets concerning notes from minim to semiquaver. In my opinion, when you know your note values in the Larghetto one will never have difficulties in any other piece with note values which have been "tampered with". And there is even one or the other trill thrown in as well. So more notes which are tampered with in their length. Is this the reason, why it is considered Grade 7 for recorder? Would it be a lower Grade for Flute because of the Embrouchure and the techniques not available for recorder?

It is a Grade 7 Recorder piece, it's on list A and is the one my daughter is playing. I happen to know from one of her teachers that this was also a Flute piece but I'm not sure which grade it was on.

I take it that you think it's too easy for this level? I'm not musical so I daresay one of the teachers or more experienced players will be able to answer that question. I think the ease or difficulty of it might have something to do with how familiar you are with playing Handels music. One thiing I can say from daughter's experience is that it requires very good breath control in the first movement. I suspect the second might be about articulation but will stand to be wrong.

If you look at Grade 7 Oboe list one of the pieces on there Midnight Blue looks superficially much easier than say the Schumann Romance but I expect it's all down to technique in the end.

A flautist has to produce an embouchure, certainly, and the recorder player has very much less work to do in that regard: recorder players however have no keys to help with accidentals, so need to have rather nifty fingers and also a fair repertoire of alternative fingerings - often pieces graded at a given level for flute will be set a grade or two higher in the recorder lists. I know of at least one flautist who would disagree with this policy!

I suspect that the difficulty level has as much as anything to do with proper historical realisation though - baroque music was rarely simply played as written, and at grade 7, a recorder player would be expected to know a little about ornamentation - more than just the odd twiddle marked in their score. Rhythmically there are challenges, certainly, musically also - the other factor which a recorder player has to work round is the more limited dynamic range, so clever articulation and other ruses are also needed to provide colour.

For flute, the 1st and 2nd movement are on TG grade 6.

I had a look at the sonata yesterday and while it doesn't look too difficult to get the notes right and play what is written on the page I think it'll be a lot harder to actually perform the piece well and turn it into an interesting piece of music

Thanks for the hint. I just found it. It is Grade 6 with Flute. That's probably why I was so surprised to find it easy. I think I am a Grade 5 although I am taking Grade 1 exams this month. But since I closed some of my gaps with the Grade 1 exam and had several sessions with a teacher, I might be going slowly into Grade 6 now. And I closed especially the gaps with triplets and dotted notes and stuff.



Your post crossed with mine. Well, it isn't that easy, but it appeared easy to me when I started playing it. That's why I couldn't believe it's Grade 7 with flute, since I consider myself Grade 5. I actually love that Larghetto. It really is beautiful.

I think I'll work on it after my G4

It's the 1st and 4th on the Recorder Grade 7 (I only know because i asked her last night for someone else ).

The Handel on the AB Grade 6 list is quite tricky.

Just been syllabus nosing…Handel’s Sonata in A minor is currently on:

Treble recorder
Movements 1 & 4 – AB Grade 7
Movements 3 & 4 – TG Grade 7

Flute
Movements 1 & 2 – TG Grade 6 & LCM Grade 6

Now I don’t know anything about flute playing, so I can’t compare flute playing to recorder playing. I don’t know this music in detail either – if the third or fourth movement is difficult in comparison to the first or second, that might account for it being a grade higher (i.e. they have put the ‘easier’ movements in the flute exams, and the ‘harder’ movements in the recorder exams)

But in any case it’s worth noting that it is only one grade of difference – you quite often see identical pieces set a different grades in the different QCA-accredited boards (for the same instrument). The QCA accreditation means the exams will be of broadly similar difficulty at the same grade – yet one board sets piece X for G7 and another board sets the same piece for G8.

Plus it makes me think of the singing syllabus, and the ‘traditional song’. In theory, the same song could be sung for any of G1-G8, but the way you would be singing it - and marked for it - at G8 would be somewhat different to at G1! So having the same music at different grades really isn’t an issue, if there is scope to demonstrate the skills difference at the different grades.

Maybe I can step in here?

Movements 1 and 4 were on the old AB flute Grade 6 syllabus (I think this is in addition to Maizie's comprehensive list!). I've played the whole sonata on both instruments, and taught it on flute (both 1 and 4 for AB6 and 1 and 2 for TG6) and recorder (3 and 4 for TG7). In my opinion it is set at the correct grade for each instrument. It is marginally harder on recorder because it covers more of the range of the instrument. There is also the difference between F and C fingerings, which place passages differently under the fingers.

There is not a lot of difference in the difficulty of the different movements, by the way, except for the accompaniment to movement 2.