For me there are still three levels to gain once you have practiced a piece.
First, you can read it through
Second, you can actually play it
Third, you can start to make music with it
Next week I will play the premiere of Rebecca Saunder’s Bite which is a 15+ minute piece for bass flute solo. If I am lucky, I will reach the third level. Watch this space, I would really like to write about it. I just hope I find time before the year is over.
I have been thinking about practicing freely and vacation time from the flute. In the past, I have put the flute down for long periods of time (8 weeks was my longest break, when I was juggling a big decision of where to settle down). However, despite my long vacation time this year I realized how much I enjoy vacation practice when the sun is warm and everyone is relaxed and enjoying themselves. I play a bit, go pick some raspberries, play some more, sit in the sun and read. It is a healthy rhythm that is denied to me under normal circumstances.
When the weather is cold or rainy (like most of the time where I live), I just want to be under a blanket curled up with a cup of tea. When temperatures climb over 20 Celsius (ca. 69 Fahrenheit), most of the people around me start complaining how warm it is, but that is when I come alive and want to actually accomplish something (maybe because I am a snake, according to the Chinese horoscope).
So I took breaks from the flute this summer, but only a few days at a time. Now I face the challenge of a new season with a dizzying amount of pieces to prepare. How can I stay free and relaxed? I took a very simple idea from traveling. When on the road, the simple thing to do is count your bags so you don’t leave them behind. Don’t worry about how big or what color, just count them. In flute practice, I will try to do this with my stress points, just count them. At the moment I have 3, so when I re-take the flute after a break or a breath, or when I stop a passage, I do a count. It is so much simpler than thinking: right shoulder-blade out, left shoulder down, lower back open. Just 1-2-3 and I am aligned again. So stress gets left behind, not good practice habits 🙂
Just for the my records and for those who give a rat’s, here are the pieces I will be performing between the 22nd of August and the 18th of November. (Not including December because I am not sure yet, but there will be concerts!)
Solo:
Rebecca Saunders – Bite for bass flute (premiere)
Farzia Fallah – Poshte Hichestan (premiere for C flute)
Ensemble:
Gordon Kampe – Arien/Zitronen
Tom Johnson – Self Portrait
G. Ligeti – Aventures/Nouvelles Aventures
Frank Zappa – Black Page and other works
Edgar Varese – Ionisation (Castanets and Guiro)
Luciano Berio – Points on a Curve to Find
Steve Reich – Radio Rewrite
Harry Partch – Delusion of the Fury
Hanspeter Kyburz – Danse Aveugle
Toshio Hosokawa – Slow Dance
Michael Finnessy – MuFa
John Cage – 16 Dances
Liza Lim – Tree of Codes (opera)
Claudia Molitor – Walking with Partch
Harry Partch – Li Po “Intruder’ (maybe!)
Michael Wertmüller – antagonisme controle
G. Kurtag – Bagatellen
Enno Poppe – Stoff
Several days until I record the Berio Sequenza no. 1. This winter break has been very stressful. I was with my family in St. Petersburg. Family can be stressful, my son is at a difficult age, I myself am at a difficult age. Russia is stressful. It was so cold that it has taken my skin and lips days to recover. But now back in the saddle of my bicycle in the temperate zone of Northwestern Europe, I have hit my stride.
I am allowing myself a luxury. Next week there are plenty of pieces to prepare, old and new, but I decided to forget about them and devote my practice time to concentrate on Berio.
The main reason is that my body feels soooo much better when I keep my practice time to only a few hours a day. This is how I want to feel during the recording. So I warm up, play Bach for sound, articulation, style and focus. (Watch Pahud’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUxY7tagf0g where he gives his ideas on playing with focus. I practice like this with either one or two movements of Bach. I don’t recommend learning new pieces like this, but with pieces you know well, it is a great lesson.) Then Berio. Then for the rest of the day I do my Helen stuff, read, hang out with family, watch dumb and smart stuff on Youtube, study Jazz. This is luxury, as I have said. No rehearsals or teaching this early in the year.
This time around I thought I would re-visit Gazzeloni’s recording. Just because. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SVeJhagG1I)
It reminds me of a conversation I had with Camilla Hoitenga about new scores and recordings. You receive a new score along with a recording by the person for whom the piece was written. So you dutifully sit with the score and listen, but so much doesn’t correspond. So how do you prepare, follow the score or the recorded performance? You assume the player worked closely with the composer, and the composer is happy with the recording otherwise s/he wouldn’t have sent it to you. Even though I am sure I have been that player/dedicatee, I still don’t have an algorithm to navigate this situation.
Since Gazzeloni’s recording is very much of its own time, I doesn’t spin me into a crisis. I find it very revealing though. I won’t end up following his tempi, but there are quite a few turns of phrasing that inspire me to think differently.
About the tempo. I was talking to another local flutist who had worked with Berio on the Sequenza. He told me Berio complained that most players “play it too f(*&^ing fast!”. Well, I have news for you, Sr. Berio. You wrote it too f(*&^ing fast. Funny that the new edition doesn’t even adjust the metronome marking.
I have also enjoyed watching Paula Robison speak on the subject. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irY1kHq_F3g) In the last section, she points out possibilities that Berio allows (one namely being a slower tempo). I was also interested to hear about how she connects the Sequenza to the works of Samuel Beckett. Through Berio’s electronic piece, Thema (Omaggio a Joyce), I was aware of the James Joyce connection, and Beckett does make sense. Through playing Rebecca Saunders music, I am quite familiar with some of Becketts’ texts. So another inspiration has surfaced 🙂
One big influence on Berio that I think really should be mentioned is that of the musicians around him, namely, his wife at the time, Cathy Berberian, for whom he wrote the third Sequenza. Her theatricality, her agility, never cease to inspire me. Only recently did I come to know she composed herself. Here is an example of her graphic score, Stripsody (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHUQFGhXHCw).
I love her recording of the vocal Sequenza too, but I just came across a recent recording of the Sequenza no. 3 for voice by a young singer, Laura Catrani that fascinates me. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0TTd2roL6s). I can’t aspire to this type of recording, but it does give me food for thought.
I am unashamedly playing from the old edition. Being a creature born myself in mid-20th century, I am hoping the good people of Universal Edition will forgive me. The old version has been in my memory for about 20 years now. But I do own the new addition, and am finding it more useful than ever this time around to answer questions about timing. For an interesting discussion of the two versions you can read Berio’s Sequenzas: Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis, Chapter one by Cynthia Folio and Alexander Brinkman.
For the past year, my colleagues and I have been working with a wonderful vocal coach, Martin Lindsay. His sessions are structured in a way that got me thinking. We start with light stretching and breathing exercises, just enough to activate the abdominal muscles and diaphragm. I won’t go into detail about what these exercises entail because I want to focus on the how not the what. The successful how is that these exercises become a leit motif throughout the session; we come back to them regularly, if only briefly. This is such a wonderful way to come back to basics, especially after a difficult passage where tension may have built up. For years I have been thinking of this but using it only haphazardly in my teaching and practice. Wouldn’t it make sense for all of us to use breath awareness as a leit motif on a more regular basis? Imagine how many physical and psychological injuries may be avoided!
I am reminded of a masterclass I attended some years ago given by a high profile flute teacher. The lesson started with a focused breathing session and an intelligent discussion of the breathing process. Then as the student played, she stumbled on a technical passage, over and over again. The teacher, instead of bringing her back to the relaxed and focused state she had at the beginning, continued to berate her for not being prepared. In the end, she was in tears, and I thought, what a shame! Perhaps she didn’t practice enough, but perhaps she didn’t practice well enough? Isn’t it also our job as teachers to address the issue of how to practice? Breathing awareness (whether you do actual exercises or not) should not be just an item on our checklist to be crossed off at the beginning of our session. We have to incorporate our awareness of good breathing in the literal sense of the word: to absorb it into our bodies. This will include repetition just as the development of a difficult passage, or the development of any good habit, will include repetition. To make any practice successful, whether musical, spiritual or the latest diet, it is not enough to just pay lip service. I pledge to make breathing awareness my leit motif.
This is an imaginary passage I have composed that has annoying and confusing articulation marks.
If you are not a wind player, the fact that this is annoying may puzzle you. It’s like this: as a wind player, from the very beginning you receive strict instructions on the use of the tongue. If there is no slur mark over a note, you initiate the note with the tongue, if it is under a slur mark, you don’t. Simple as that, a digital, on off situation. The passage above, as written, contains too many possibilities for easy reading. It involves guesswork, and that involves time. In some cases, a composer may want to leave the details of articulation up to the player, and that is fine. I enjoy 18th Century repertoire for this reason, and it is perhaps worthwhile for composers to familiarize themselves with what J. J. Quantz has to say about the possibilities of articulation in his treatise On Playing the Flute. (If for nothing else than to understand the weight of history that flutists bear.)
Time spent on interpretive decisions is interesting time.
Time spent on guesswork is not.
This is the 21st Century, and when I see music that is exactly notated, I want to play it exactly, and I want to know what it is I have to say, and how I should say it. Because that is what articulation is all about: how you pronounce your phrase. I want to think that the composer has put some thought into this, as I am putting some practice time into his or her piece.
And, dear composers, please don’t say about a slur: “oh, it’s just a phrase mark.” Really? I am a musician, I make phrases for a living. I don’t need to be told to make one. But I do need to know when to use my tongue and when to hold it. And please don’t just say, “oh, play that legato.” It doesn’t answer my question because I can articulate legato as well as slur something legato. Which should I do? Do you really care?
So if I haven’t pissed you off yet and you really want to see the possibilities for articulating the above passage, here they are.
The first two staccato B-flats are probably meant to be played:
but perhaps the composer meant:
I would really like to be sure.
Now, the two Es, the second one having a staccato, could be played:
But did the composer mean:
well, maybe not, but how can I be sure? So I interrupt practice to contact him or her, or interrupt the rehearsal time to ask, or take time out of the rehearsal break (in which I have twenty other things to get done.)
Several years ago I was working intensely on solo improvisation. I kept a notebook with comments on segments I had recorded. The words SAY SOMETHING DAMMIT were written in block notes at one point. When you listen to music, if it articulates nothing, it says nothing.
Things I wish I had spent more time on as a student:
Oh dear, this list could go on if I list everything I wish I had studied more of (traverso, Jazz), and it will lose the thread of attempting to make a sort of temporal commentary on my past, hopefully with some relevance to students of the present. Besides, one does not have to be a student to study these things.
Things I wish I had spent less time on:
These lists will probably grow as my experiences sift through time.
Here are some notes from a tabla workshop I attended, given by Samir Chatterjee. Like my former teacher, Chatterjee is one of the few Indian musicians who has a clear understanding of the Western education system and is able to teach non-Indians by verbal communication, i.e., someone who can explain his music in a way that makes sense to us.
I won’t get into the technical things we learned, you can find explanations for basic tabla bols here, for example. Or better, from Chatterjee’s Book A Study of Tabla. I’ll only share the personal stuff.
One thing that gave me hope: he said you don’t really become a musician until you are over fifty. Before that you are too busy with yourself. And if you have had a near-death experience, even better!
The Hindustani practice of chilla-khana intrigues me. You are shut in seclusion for 40 days with your instrument for intense study. Breaks are only for bathroom, naps and snacking. The room is darkened and there is no contact with the outside world; however, the process must be monitored by a guru. He talked about the emotions experienced, you might cry for a whole day, then find yourself laughing for no reason. Certainly, the person coming out is very different from the person who went in!
Our senses were created to perceive and make sense of the outside world. Chatterjee mentioned that one aspect of the philosophy of the Vedas is to turn these attentions inward. What happens when we direct these senses inside?
He also spoke of his relationship to his instruments, and the relationship we all develop with our instruments. He maintains that his tablas can speak to him. If I start thinking this is strange, I have to remind myself that it is exactly this I am striving for when improvising or interpreting. How can I speak through my instrument if it is completely stumm?
And speaking of aging, he told how after a concert he encountered a renowned musician weeping inconsolably. Perhaps someone died? No, this musician, at the age of ninety-five, was finally able to play something he’d been working on his whole life. So if you see me crying after a concert someday, don’t worry!
When playing through the harmonic series, the second overtone (a twelth above the fundamental) is a great check point. When students begin learning harmonics, this one often proves elusive because of the tendency to cover too much of the embouchure hole. By rolling out a bit and blowing down, it usually speaks. The following exercise I find useful because it begins by alternating between the normal fingerings and the harmonic fingerings. For those new to harmonic exercises, it provides a good anchor.
The next page gives a workout for the lips, and introduces articulation to harmonics, although it is also useful to practice legato in bars 13 to 38. I find articulation exercises with harmonics, such as those in Trevor Wye’s book, to be great stabilizers and strengtheners for the embouchure.
Continuing with articulation, I am further inspired by Paul Edmund-Davies’ “The 28 Day Warm Up Book”. His articulation exercises are a mainstay of my warm up, and I decided to go one further and translate some into harmonic exercises. (Read my review of this book here.) This first exercise strengthens the elusive second overtone:
This next one overblows the third overtone. It is for those already strong in this area; please don’t over do it, or any of these exercises. It is useful to combine these variations with Edmund-Davies’ original.
