I looked on the Susato site yesterday, and noticed that their famous (or infamous, depending on one’s taste) Kildare line of whistles has been renamed the Kelischek.
https://www.susato.com/collections/kildare
Even though the website link is still called Kildare.
I am pretty sure I checked them this spring (when I bought a set of cream-coloured whistles with black trim on eBay and was trying to place the model).
Anyone know when they changed and why?
It still says ‘Kildare’ at the top of the page, over the image.
Kellicheck (-workshop) is the company name, isn’t it?
The company name of the website is Kelischek, but as of Sept 3/22, there seems to be a labelling error
on the website page for naming the Susato Kildare line. A webmaster needs to clean that up.
Whistle name text beside the whistle images doesn’t match the whistle name text on the left column.
Anyone played the gemshorn, kelhorn, crumhorn, pentacorder or wide-bore recorders? What do you think?
Hmm I see what he’ saying.
“All Kelischek models have separate…”.
If you read the text on the kildare page it always says Kelischek where Kildare would be. I’ve been to this page before and I feel liek it said Kildare before.
And before I thought the website was Kelischek workshop, not susato.com.
That only changed in the past few weeks. I’d even say it was only in the past seven days.
I have several double Kildare/Kelischek whistles which they were kind enough to make me. I started with the Oriole Dolce-Duos doubles (Bb, C, D and Eb), but with four holes on the lower pipe rather than three, allowing third intervals all the way up. (This is in the style of a Ukrainian Djolomyga/Dvodencivka, but lacking the chromatic holes on the left pipe tube.)
I then enquired about getting M-series double Kildares in A and G, which arrived and work a treat. The low G is the longest upon which I can play four holes with a single hand without keys.given the spacing.
I have since gotten four V-series double Kildares (the smallest size) for the keys of D up to F.
The Kildares (or now, apparently Kelischeks) stay true in the octaves over a range of breath pressures compared to the Orioles, so I am now moving towards ordering two S-series doubles, one each in C and D.
So, I’ve been budget planning for the expense over the last month, and writing up the preliminary enquiry email over the past two weeks, and have been looking at the prices again over the last week. That’s why I’m pretty confident this is a really recent change.
I’ve played the Crumhorn and Gemshorn over the years, as well as their small soprano ocarinas in C. I recently even was playing one of their earlier alto wide-bore recorders. Some love their tone, and some don’t. I happen to like the tone a lot. I also like that the semi-conical bore on a lot of their fipple instruments have octaves which play in tune. They are also capable of being loud.
Matters of taste aren’t really open to dispute (“this is what I like!”), so I accept that some prefer cylindrical whistles. I personally hate out-of-tune octaves, so I’ll go conical/semi-conical any time there’s a choice. I figure that it’s like people who always listen to .mp3s, so their ear is accustomed to and prefers a particular sound profile compared to uncompressed .wav files.
I also have preferred Susatos, with their woodier tone, ever since the early days when I think they actually used wood for their fipple blocks. In my opinion, that tone is less shrill than the metal-bodied whistles with the injection-molded heads.
The crumhorn was interesting, had a timbre you don’t find everywhere, but eventually fell into disuse because it has such a narrow range. If I was dedicating a lot of time to playing that kind of music though, I’d have no complaints.
The recorder doesn’t get pulled out much due to my more often using recorders with modern English (often called Baroque) fingering, which is fully chromatic. If I was sticking to that medieval repertoire though, I’d have no complaints using the Susato wide-bore recorder.
George Kelischek is an interesting guy
https://www.mountaincollegium.org/about-us
From what I gathered in the late 1970s when I got my first Susato whistles was that he had been making plastic wide-bore Renaissance Recorders, and for whatever reason started offering them with the six-hole whistle arrangement.
The early ones were machined out of brown or white ABS stock, with a wooden block.
People criticised them for sounding like Recorders. Little’s the wonder; they were Recorders.
I’ve told the story of the non-tunable white ABS high D whistle I bought from Kelischek in the late 1970s which, to my dismay, proved to be quite flat.
It was made to A=415, not uncommon for reproduction Baroque woodwinds.
I chopped the bottom and carved out all the holes, inadvertently creating the loudest High D whistle ever. I gave it to a street busker who said he could never find a whistle loud enough.
BTW the term “Susato Kildare” is amusing, Susato being a Renaissance composer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tielman_Susato#:~:text=Tielman%20(or%20Tylman)%20Susato%20(,publisher%20of%20music%20in%20Antwerp.