The small recorders, the flageolet, the fife, and the piccolo are octave flutes, sounding at four-foot pitch. The bulk of the literature relating to the recorder in the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England focuses on the alto (treble), for this was the most commonly used member of the family, but octave recorders have never been the subject of detailed scrutiny. There is no comprehensive study of the flageolet or of the fife in England during this period, and virtually nothing ...