There is a company named Moeck, which produces a wide variety of recorders, everything from “school” (= “drek”) models, all the way up to fine historical replicas in various tonewoods.
I used to love to flip through their catalog and drool over their instruments. Sure, their recorders were lovely, but they also made all sorts of cool things, rankets and crumhorns and Baroque flutes and oboes and various other odd, fascinating instruments from antiquity. As a younger man, I used to dream about what they might sound like, what it might be like to play them.
Now Moeck has stopped making anything except recorders. They still make lovely recorders, but, nonetheless, they are lessened from what they once were.
When I saw that, I felt almost as though I had lost an old friend.
Oh, that’s really too bad. I played some of their old music instruments and they were pretty cool (krummhorns, cornamuses, etc), but not something I’d really like to invest a lot of money in. I guess that was the problem-- those things are too specialized for any but real enthusiasts to want to spend the bucks. My wife has Soprano and Alto Moeck Rottenburgs and we like them a lot.
I’ve tried some Aulos recorders that were pretty decent…their plastic ones. I’ve not tried any wooden ones from them. For plastic recorders, I like the Zen-On models better, but it’s just personal preference.
They also make two different plastic Baroque traversos (one at A=440, one at A=415), which have a pretty good reputation.
Update: on checking Moeck’s website, apparently they had two craftsmen who made the historical woodwinds, who have both retired. Rather than try to replace them for instruments which were expensive and sold only infrequently, they have stopped offering them.
Understandable as a business decision, but still sad.
Hmm … Didn’t know that. It looks like they ceased production at the end of 2008. Yes, it’s too bad.
Back when I played with the IU Renaissance Consort, we had a lot of these Moeck instruments at our disposal. I played their Renaissance reproduction recorders, but got to tootle the krummhorns, shawm and rackett, too. Great fun.
I became interested in playing the recorder when I was in college. I’m not sure why, because I wasn’t a music student, and I didn’t know anyone who played the recorder. I think that I may have answered an ad advertising Moeck recorders on a bulletin board at the IU music school. I remember the salesperson letting me play the Moeck soprano recorder to see if I would want to purchase it. I was so ignorant at the time (circa 1963) about what a recorder was supposed to sound like. No doubt that I was subconsciously looking for a flute tone, and the Moeck recorder didn’t sound that way at all. I didn’t buy it, not so much because of the high price but because I thought that it sounded strange. I preferred the more flute-like tone of the inexpensive recorder that I was playing. The sales person was a little ticked with me. Dealing with ignorant people is part of the job when you work in sales and customer service.
I was manager of a music store and we were an authorized dealer of Moecks. I think they were very very good, but I reckon that the rise of individual builders (if whistle-builders are any indication) might be a factor in this change. I still have a Moeck student model soprano from those days and it was really good quality over the plastic ones available at the time…
