Editing Recorder (musical instrument) (section)

==== Decline ====
Many reasons supporting the conventional view that the recorder declined have been proposed. The first significant explanation for the recorder's decline was proposed by Waitzman (1967),<ref>Waitzman, Daniel: "The Decline of the Recorder in the 18th Century". Published in ''American Recorder'' 8 no. 2 (Spring 1967). pp.&nbsp;47–51</ref> who proposed six reasons:
# The recorder lacked a significant class of professional players
# The recorder's true nature was not appreciated
# The high [[tessitura]] of the instrument discouraged composers from writing idiomatically for the instrument
# The exploitation of the highest registers posed special problems for makers and players
# Interest in clarino (4′ pitch) instruments was waning
# As a result of the first five factors, the recorder had a bad reputation, which discouraged students from studying the instrument
In the Baroque, the majority of professional recorder players were primarily oboists or string players. For this reason, the number of professional exponents of the recorder was smaller than that of other woodwinds.

Others attribute the decline of the recorder in part to the flute innovators of the time, such as [[Heinrich Grenser|Grenser]], and [[Johann George Tromlitz|Tromlitz]], who extended the transverse flute's range and evened out its tonal consistency through the addition of keys, or to the supposedly greater dynamic range and volume of the flute.<ref>Donald Murray et al. ''Musical Instruments: History, Technology, and Performance of Instruments of Western Music'', Oxford University Press, 2004. {{ISBN|0-19-816504-8}}. p.&nbsp;122</ref> Similar developments occurring in many other orchestral instruments to make them louder, increase their range, and increase their tonal consistency did not simultaneously occur in the case of the recorder.

A complementary view recently advanced by Nikolaj Tarasov is that the recorder, rather than totally disappearing, evolved in similar ways to other wind instruments through the addition of keys and other devices, and remained in use throughout the nineteenth century, with its direct descendant's popularity overlapping with the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century recorder revival.<ref name=":22" /> Support for this view rests on the organological classification of some nineteenth century duct flutes as recorders. For more on this question, see "Other duct flutes".