Tag Archives: flute history

Day 77 – December 16th – Playing for the Gardeners

Posted on by
Reply

Today has been a busy one, and I’m definitely ready for an early night! It was also a day of ups and downs, and of trying to figure out whether a few of the downs were just in my head.

Class this morning went well for the warm-ups. IfI trust myself and don’t get flustered, I can play a lot of the exercises, and now I’m also trying to use mental practice a bit more to help strengthen things and avoid learning in mistakes. At the end of the warm-up session, Trevor announced that some of us were “absolved” from using long Bb in our studies, and that I was one of them. To be honest, I almost fell of my chair!

Studies, however, didn’t go as well as I wanted. For some reason a combination of being really cold and some funny nerves made me jittery, and I made silly mistakes. Andersen No. 9 (including the double-tonguing variation) were quite good, but my selection of Moyse studies earned quite a lot of criticism. Altès No. 10 just felt uncomfortable, as I hadn’t learned the accompanying part well enough, and my 50 Variations No. 5 was not in the correct rhythm. However, when I later mentioned to Trevor that I’d been feeling a bit off colour, he looked surprised and replied with “oh, I thought you did quite well today”. I must keep focusing on the learning process rather than the day-to-day.

This evening’s short concert for the village Gardeners Society Christmas party went pretty well. We played three sextet pieces, Alyssa and Roya did The Emperor and the Bird of Paradise for flute and spoken voice, and I played Ulpirra by Ross Edwards. I’m not totally sure what the audience made of my final performance direction to ‘stamp and shout’, but they seemed to enjoy the concert overall, and Trevor was pleased. As an ensemble, we played well together considering it was our first concert, though the different acoustic of the hall made a few people a little nervous. I need to remember to compensate a little more for a cold piccolo!

Our flute history papers are finally submitted and the cheese, biscuits and two glasses of wine at the gardeners’ party was a nice reward.

Day 76 – December 15th – Abnormal Mondays

Posted on by
Reply

Instead of class today, we had another practice day, a trip to Tesco in the afternoon and then a chamber rehearsal in the evening. I’m rather glad of the extra day – I’m feeling about as confident as I’m going to with all my various studies for tomorrow, and looking forward to the concert.

Following my chat with Trevor on Friday, I’ve thrown myself into all the technical work with renewed determination, and was particularly happy with Reichert No. 2 this morning. Taffanel and Gaubert-style scales (from memory) are feeling good in major, but I still keep second guessing myself in the minor keys and then falling apart. I good proof of how much I’ve improved in the last ten weeks though was that I played the Pinkie Polka at crotchet = 80. I haven’t touched it for a couple of weeks now, but wanted to see where I was at, and rather surprised myself! The first metronome marking I’ve got down on the page is crotchet = 56, so it’s been quite a good step up.

Lesson: Remember the bigger picture as well as the day-to-day.

Our flute history paper is due tomorrow, and I’m rather glad – I need to stop proofreading it and move on to other things! At this rate I’ll probably launch straight from this one into the 1700-onward paper due in March!

Day 75 – December 14th – To-do list

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been so focused on proofreading my flute history paper over the last couple of hours that I almost forgot to write my post!

Due Tuesday, the paper is just about there, and it’s got to the point where I’m just being a bit overly pedantic about things like footnotes and spelling. I’m just about ready for bed now, and will finish off the sections on Renaissance and Baroque flutes tomorrow morning. There’s no class tomorrow; we’re going to Tesco instead since we have a class on Tuesday in preparation for our concert.

In addition to all this, I’m trying to sort out some final Christmas cards and presents, as well as starting to think about my application for the Bang on a Can summer festival in Boston, USA next year. And of course there’s always practice!

Day 66 – December 5th – Short day/long day

Posted on by
Reply

Today was a funny one – I had grand plans for all that I was going to get done, have achieved some of it, but am now absolutely exhausted at 10pm! My morning practice sessions were ok, though not stellar, but by the afternoon everything felt sluggish and heavy. I managed to get some good work done on the CPE Bach (attributed to JS Bach) Sonata in Eb major for our masterclass with Rachel Brown on Thursday, but didn’t feel like I was achieving much with my studies.

So I spent quite a bit of the afternoon working on my flute history assignment, writing about the ocarina and flutes of China, Japan and Korea. It’s really interesting to see all the links between instruments of different countries, and I’m at once enjoying the research and increasingly conscious of the due date!

Hopefully an early night will revitalise me for more practice and writing tomorrow.

Day 54 – November 23rd – Wet and wintry

Posted on by
2

I seemed to get an incredible amount done today, probably because all there was to do was stay indoors and practise! I chatted with my parents and a friend in Australia in the morning, as well as sending in my Hatched application, but still managed all my practice hours before dinner. Had it not been raining, I would definitely have gone for a mid-afternoon walk, but alas this is England in November.

One of the things I haven’t written much about yet is my written project on the history of the flute, due just before Christmas. Essentially, this is part one of two, and we’re supposed to cover both the history of the flute to 1700 and ethnic flutes. The ‘paper’ (I don’t tend to use this word, but oh well) is 30-35 pages long, and we’re allowed to include pictures. Trevor gave us an example of one that he liked from a few years ago to have a look at, and this is where my inner academic kicked in. The example had no references or bibliography, wasn’t really formatted at all and didn’t reference any of the pictures that had clearly been copied from published documents. I was a little surprised that such a piece of writing passed muster, but then I need to remember that Trevor hasn’t been through the university system, and probably doesn’t consider that sort of thing as important as simply learning about the flute’s history. For me, I will write my paper to my own academic standards, partly because it matters to me, partly because it feels natural to write in that way.

As for how it’s coming along – I’ve done all the reading that I probably need to on early, renaissance and Baroque flutes, but still need to do a more research on the ethnic ones. Trevor has an impressive collection of books, and finding resources hasn’t been at all hard. The best selection of resources on ethnic flutes are a set of publications entitled Flûtes du monde, and their being in French means I’ve got them all to myself. I’ve made a start on typing out a first draft, and will easily make Trevor’s 30-page minimum. At the moment, I’m actually feeling that the problem may be keeping it below 35 pages!

I also had another big traverso practice session today, and am getting there with my Telemann Fantasia. The dolce movement is sounding quite presentable, and I’d be happy to play it in class tomorrow if asked. The allegro sounds good at an andante speed, and some of the runs are actually happening quite fluidly. We have our second class on Wednesday rather than Thursday this week, and I’ll definitely be able to play it by then!