Reliving Some Old Unfamiliar Tunes : Music: Performers gather to share a love of rare instruments and melodies from centuries past.

To the whisper of soft melodies and centuries-old arrangements, a group of 45 musicians met here this weekend to display their chops and share a love of old instruments.

“We’re all a little strange and we’re all willing to put on funny clothes and play funny music and make complete fools of ourselves,” said Nell Holland, president of the Southern California Recorder Society and a participant in the 18th annual Early Music Weekend Workshop.

Odd clothes were not much in evidence. But unusual instruments were--such as the recorder, a wooden flute built to be played in front of a musician like a clarinet, rather than to the side like common flutes.

Also on display were more obscure instruments, such as the viola da gamba, predecessor to the modern cello, and the rackett, a reed instrument that resembles a wooden wine bottle with holes cut along one side and that sounds like a buzzing tuba.

“They are very quiet,” workshop organizer Ellen Perrin said of the various instruments. They were making music “before music was (made) to project into a large room or music hall.”

Most of the tunes played during the weekend were 400 to 600 years old. The musicians appeared to have as much fun chatting about the composers and arrangements as they did performing the material.

“I wonder why he decided to leave that note at only a third?” one mused, pondering a chord in one arrangement that ended abruptly.

Another musician, discussing a 16th-Century French ballad featuring tawdry lyrics, was more curious about the composer’s attempts to woo the subject of his song: “Do you suppose he got the girl?”

For most, the workshop offered not just a chance to play rarely heard melodies with others who enjoy them--but perhaps to pick up a few tips along the way.

“When you’re playing the flute, you’re blowing across the hole,” said Perrin, demonstrating to a fellow player. “It’s like you have lint on your bottom lip--pff, pff, pff. You get a much cleaner sound.”

Held for the first time at Canyon Meadows, in the Angeles National Forest about 20 miles east of Castaic Lake, the workshop drew musicians from throughout Southern California.

“This is a very sociable lot,” said Stephan Chandler, 47, of Tarzana. “Everybody knows who everybody else is.”

A onetime professional musician trained in the trumpet and violin, Chandler began playing the recorder 10 years ago.

“The symphony instruments are deadly difficult,” Chandler said. “These (recorders) are very simple. You don’t have to do any lip exercises or special acrobatics to be able to play.”

Since many of the arrangements require four parts, most players eventually become proficient in the separate instruments that play in the bass, alto, tenor and soprano ranges.

This was most evident at the workshop--where members juggled multiple instrument cases. Some held $10 plastic instruments, while others safeguarded custom-made treasures worth more than $1,000.

Several players, including Holland, said their interest in old instruments was slow in coming.

“My mother played (the recorder) and I objected--I was a classically trained musician,” said Holland, 58, of Lawndale. “I saw my husband playing and I figured, ‘Why should he have all the fun?’ ” Now, she said, “My husband and I play duets together.”

“Like anything you get into, it takes you over,” Holland said. “It gets to be an all-consuming thing. And it’s fun.”