Lower Saxony, Germany
Moeck 

Rosewood, brass
ca. 1960’s
Length: 36 in; top diameter: 2.5 in; Bell diameter: 3 in
Wind Instruments – Woodwind Instruments – Flutes – Recorders

Engraved on top section: “Moeck”    

This is a renaissance tenor recorder carved from a dark wood (possibly rosewood) with yellow brass rings around the segments which come apart for storage as well as around the top and bottom of the fontanelle.  It has four finger holes and a thumb hole, as well as two square keys and a fontanelle with a butterfly key. The famous collection of instruments in the Hofburg Museum in Vienna comprises several well-kept renaissance recorders that were built in one piece. Moeck have based their renaissance consort series on this collection, but with all the recorders having tenons in the head and lower joint linked with a short brass tube.  The instrument has a range of an octave and a sixth. The top has a duct type blow hole. Near the middle of the instrument on the backside there is a loop for a neck strap, and on the front near the top, the maker “Moeck” is visible.

In the 1930’s, the Moeck company was started in Celle, in Lower Saxony, Germany, by Hermann Moeck, Sr. His focus was on the production of recorders. As a result of increasing interest during the 20th century, in historical performance on reconstructed wind instruments from the Baroque and Renaissance eras (initiated by Otto Steinkopf), they began to research historical wind instruments including crumhorns, cornamuses, (Kortholte), shawns and pommers, dulcians, racketts, historical cornets, Renaissance and Baroque flutes, oboes, bassoons and early clarinets. By the 1960’s, the production of high-quality copies of selected museum instruments began. Nevertheless, few were made based upon demand. The development of the simple recorder and the Consort of recorders to a more sophisticated instrument was and continues to be their focus today.