In spring 1996 recorder workshop Mollenhauer took over the production of the Helder Tenor and was able to develop the instrument further, especially regarding its voicing and key mechanism. The production of the Helder Tenor was quite expensive, so it was clear that Maarten had to find a collaborator soon. In 1995 he sold his first tenor recorder and first pieces were especially written for it and premiered by recorder players, like Johannes Fischer, Jospeh Grau and Walter van Hauwe. After a few years of physical calculations and empirically experiments, Maarten developed the first prototype of the Helder Tenor, which he presented for example at the “Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln” in December 1993.

Maarten asked himself if there could be a possibility to make an instrument with a well-balanced, strong sound through three entire octaves, still being able to use baroque fingerings through the first two octaves.ĭuring his research of the instruments from the 1930s, Maarten realized that next to their strong sound they include an interesting feature, which is anyway the principle of every modern woodwind making: the two bottom notes could be overblown into pure tuned harmonics. too soft low register and too unstable third octave, even increased. This implied compromises for the whole instrument and its disadvantages, like e.g. Copies of mainly 18 th century recorders had to be (and still have to be) tuned in 440 Hz and higher in order to be combinable with contemporary instruments. Like a few other musicians and makers, Maarten felt too restricted with the recorders built in these days, especially when it came to dynamics, expression and range. This instrument got into the focus of keen recorder players right away, was even praised as “first true revolution since Hotteterre” by Dutch recorder virtuoso Walter van Hauwe and is now known as the “Helder Tenor”. Inspired by German recorder models from the 1930s and especially by the intense research on these instruments by Nik Tarasov, Dutch recorder maker Maarten Helder developed a new Tenor recorder in the early 1990s.

Simple recorder mouthpiece design