PREFACE These eight suites for solo recorder are amongst the relatively few compositions by Daniel de Moivre that have survived for us throughthe centuries. Not very much is known of the life of this composer, except that hewas a French Huguenot, the younger brother of the well-known French mathematician Abraham de Moivre, with whom he moved from France to England after their imprisonment in France for being protestants, and it is recorded that they both became denizens of Great Britain on 16/12/1687. It seems that both brothers earn their livings mostly by teaching in their respective subjects for the rest of their lives. Daniel de Moivre had early training in France in recorder and composition, and in England he was known as one of the best recorder players at the time, together with Paisible, Banister Loiletand others.

The solo suites that follow are of moderate technical difficulty and form a good basis for advancing the recorder technique to higher levels. But primarily are well made baroque dance tunes that can beused for both study and recreation. All ornaments are marked as trills starting usually on the upper note, but some of them can be interpreted as mordents or inverted mordents. There are quite a few baroque-rondeau movements withinthese suites, marked with double bar lines but without repeats. Repeats are optional here, and it depends on personal aesthetics. I find the following scheme of playing baroque- rondeau movements quite satisfactory: AA-BB-A-CC-A Legato marks and other slurs were not included in the original and are left to the performer’s decision. All tempi are only editorial suggestions which can be ignored to a reasonable degree. This volume has been created with decorated and undecorated pages and with individual front covers for each suite so that the user can add or omit pages at will and create his own book designs. The mp3 sample contains various movements from all suites.

Socrates Arvanitakis London 2021