For some months before we moved to Florida, I played weekly with a recorder consort. For the uninitiated, recorders, called block flutes in some countries, are ancient instruments that are newly inexpensive and true tuned on account of new techniques of plastic manufacture. We played at a community center that hosted us ideally so long as we were out by noon when our room became the lunchroom for the center staff.

We numbered twelve or fifteen, including several male bass and tenor players who always seem to be somewhat scarce. Women can play bass and tenor, of course, but not very easily if they have short fingers like mine. And Otto, who played alto and was always complaining that our group didn't perform publicly as often as we should, but who never showed up for rehearsals. Our leader, a retired home economics teacher and a good amateur musician, provided interesting musical arrangements for us.

I found fun in the group and missed it greatly after we moved. In Florida I couldn't find recorder players within range, but I missed my kind of music fix, which is at least half sociality. Well, I could play a little piano, and I would try that. I actually ran an ad in the local paper, looking for someone to play piano duets with and was invited into a group of pianists who met regularly and performed for each other. I am not a performer. I wanted more play--play in the sense of trying new things, laughing over mistakes, sometimes getting beyond our depth, having minor triumphs and always having fun, rather than spending most of our time sitting and politely clapping.

Our minister suggested that I ask the church organist to play duets with me. Her husband had died recently enough that she had not adjusted to a new tenor of life, and I suppose he thought we might be good for each other. It turned out that she did not read music well, did not enjoy trying new pieces, played everything at the same speed, no matter what tempo we had decided on or begun on. In short, we bored each other stiff, but she heard me talking about recorders, and she thought she'd like to learn to play one of those. It seemed like a good idea to me. You can't play German hiking songs, old dances, marches, tattoos, fanfares--all the variety in my recorder

books--at the same speed, and maybe I could jolt Lucinda out of her single hymn speed. And besides, I was still hoping for a larger group. I taught my neighbor Evie on a soprano too, and that turned out well since she still plays almost daily for her own amusement and thanks me profusely for getting her started. I think it was Evie who invited Henry, who had some exper-

ience in playing alto recorder, but not in a group.

I should explain that alto is the standard. Everyone is advised to learn alto first, and I started Lucinda on alto. An alto has approximately the same fingering as a bass, and soprano has the same fingering as a tenor, so we had the makings of a full consort in which many of the players can play any of the voices. And speaking of voice, in the really good consorts, when they are having trouble learning a new piece, they lay down their instruments--snooty pros never say horn

with regard to a recorder--and sight read and sing the piece. I had no such lofty ambitions or skills.

Gradually, I realized that our two altos, Lucinda and Henry, were at opposite poles. She had no play, and Henry had nothing else. He thought it a good joke that he couldn't remember the key signature or how many beats should be in a measure. Like most people who play an instrument for their own pleasure and have never taken part in ensemble playing, he couldn't or didn't count and seemed to have forgotten his fractions.

About this time, one of Art's racquetball buddies told me about his neighbor who was a graduate of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. I contacted Bob who had never played recorder, but was a symphony-level clarinetist. He began coming to our rehearsals, and in a couple of weeks he played recorder better than any of us. I had the good sense to turn the musical direction over to

him. I continued to try to recruit Carl who lived right across the big canal from Henry, and who also played recorder for his own pleasure. He insisted he could not play with a group and never joined us. Dan, who lived almost next door to Carl, began coming though. I believe he had played before, but not recently. He insisted on staying with soprano even though his hands were big enough to play tenor easily and we were getting top-heavy, or perhaps top-light with sopranos. We acquired some players who were in Florida only temporarily or who lived too far away to come regularly so that we sometimes had as many as ten players.

Bob began keeping both a tenor and bass close at hand and played whichever he thought would help a given number most. If our instrumentation was going to be shored up, it seemed to be up to me. If I learned alto fingering--actually the fingering is the same, it's a matter of re-learning which notes go with a particular fingering. I practiced alto, joined that section, and basked in Bob's compliments. "The altos are really coming through." When my brain played tricks on me, and I played half a piece or more with soprano fingering, thus playing disharmony, Bob didn't complain.

He never complained about the instrumentation or wrong notes either unless one kept repeating the same mistake. He could set temp and keep it, and rhythm was his first concern. After all, if you're playing together and are not together, where are you? As Bob used to remark occasionally, "He who is not with us is against us." Lucinda tapped her foot at the same speed no matter what Bob had just indicated the temp should be, and in spite of all Bob's experience teaching school music and playing in and leading orchestras, he could not get Lucinda to cooperate in any tempo but her own.

We all learned from Bob, though, and perhaps my greatest revelation came one day when we were just lifting our instruments to our lips to play, and I said, "It's surprising how many of

these pieces are in a minor key." He laid down his instrument and said, "Oh, no. Don't you realize we live in a minor world? The newsboy, "Extra, extra, read all about it," your appliances, almost every noise we hear in daily life is in a minor key, and you can identify the key and scale if you think about it."I can clearly hear the minor key of the newsboy, even though I have only heard the newsboy in movies, but that's about my limit. Still, it intrigues me to think that we live in a minor world, and I wonder how far the idea of minor keys can be extended beyond music.