Tag Archives: phrasing

Day 69 – December 8th – Phrasing and rhythm

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I had been steeling myself for another day of not being able to do anything right in class today, but things ended up going surprisingly well. My goal was to always play with the biggest dynamic range I could possibly muster, but otherwise to not think too much about rules and just enjoy the music. The results were:

Moyse #16: C#s are too sharp, then a couple of picky comments about phrasing when I did sections of it again. The variation wasn’t quite so good, added the high C#s was a need to bring out the first not more clearly.

Moyse #17: Started too fast, and so had the pleasure of repeating strings of chromatics for the class for five minutes. Then played it fine, and Trevor conceded that I’d just started too fast.

Moyse #18: Yes, I ended up playing three… I need to work on staccato low notes, which wasn’t news to me at all. Double tonguing needs to be louder.

Andersen #8: Good, I just need to play staccatos shorter. This was my big win for the day – I had really put a lot of time and thought into the phrasing, dynamics and make sure I didn’t clip phrases. Yay for improvement!

Altes #9: Some parts nicely phrased and expressive, others a bit flat. Yes…those bits were where there were lots of notes!

Moyse 50 Variations on Bach A minor #2: “Perfect” when I played it a little under tempo (yay!) but then when I upped the speed a little I wasn’t playing my semiquavers totally evenly.

Jazz Study #1: I don’t remember the composer of these, and my photocopy doesn’t have the name. I ended up making a bit of a pig’s ear of this, as I didn’t realise there was a backing track, and so hadn’t quite practised it fast enough. Trevor didn’t comment on my rhythm here, but I need to hold notes longer before glissandos, and make sure to observe staccatos.

Later this evening Trevor sent me an email about other things, but finished off with this comment:

“I thought the phrasing of your studies was better, and it improves each week.
Just fix the rhythms and it will sound much nicer.”

Righteo!

Day 46 – November 15th – Wibb masterclass reflections

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After such a busy day yesterday, it was good to get back to practice and let some of Wibb’s comments and ideas from the masterclass sink in. For some reason, I found that I got a lot more out of this masterclass than the last one we attended – maybe I was a bit better prepared for Wibb’s teaching style this time? Here, in summary, are a few of the key points that I took away:

– The flute is like a voice, and Wibb tends to express things in vocal terms when talking about both rhythm and tone. Almost every key phrase was given a set of lyrics, which helped to guide the performer’s emphasis or encourage them to correctly show the meter. There were also a couple of favourites that kept cropping up: “el-e-phant” for triplets, and then “el-e-phant’s bum” for a triplet followed by a less-important crotchet. For tone, the performers were asked to sing a phrase “like a baritone” or “like a soprano”, which showed how different vibrato and tonal concepts can give us such a huge palette of colours to play with.

– A Moyse quote, related by Wibb in a lovely French accent: “syncop take accent”

– I was impressed by how Wibb managed to related everything back to either Moyse’s De la Sonorité or his 24 Melodic Studies. The exercise would always start out simply, gradually adding steps so as to arrive at the sort of phrase he had found in the piece. It really did bring home to me just how fundamental expressive phrasing is, and prompted me to practice my tunes with renewed awareness this morning.

– Love final notes in phrases, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that vibrato is needed.

– Composers, even really good ones, often make mistakes with slurs. The phrase is always more important than slur marks, and so we should edit in a way that bring out the melody rather than always trying to respect every single marking on the page.

Hopefully I’ll be able to incorporate some of this wisdom into my practice in the coming days.

Day 20 – October 20th – Yay!!

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Early days to be bouncing around with glee, but I’m going to allow myself just a little bounce tonight!

Though some elements of today’s class were still rather painful, my Moyse Nos. 2 and 4, and Andersen No. 3 before lunch were finally deemed ‘expressive’ and got a smile out of Trevor. Yay!

In terms of what I did to play expressively – from my point of view I was overdoing everything. The crescendos and diminuendos were enormous, and all I was thinking about was the phrasing and musical direction. The Andersen study, as a result, was utterly exhausting. I put absolutely everything (or what felt like it) into my fortes, and when Trevor finally stopped me halfway through the second page to say that it sounded ‘quite good’, I was almost panting. Of course, there were still things that needed work – articulation, evenness of notes, not slowing down before I took a breath – but I was genuinely happy to have got the meaning of that particular study. As I said in yesterday’s post, the interrelationship between the different layers of phrasing is tricky, and several others in the class were asked to work on it for another week.

So some things to learn from this:

– I’m clearly still thinking about how things sound from my point of view as the performer and not from the point of view of the audience. I need to keep working (with all I’ve got it seems) to project my feelings about the music to the audience, even though it feels over-the-top for me.

– I can definitely feel the effects of my lesson with Carla! Yesterday’s new-found forte is definitely a result of our work on alto flute and breathing.

– Dynamic range is incredibly important, as is using it fully to communicate ideas.

– Knowing that Trevor is a harsh teacher makes it all the better when I do finally get a complement.

So…the work continues tomorrow, as there is still plenty of it to do. We’ve got Doppler’s Hungarian Pastoral Fantasy and the Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben aria from Bach’s St Matthew Passions to contend with on Thursday, as well as a looming sonata class with Juliet Edwards, for which I’m playing the first movement of the Poulenc Sonata. Then, of course, there’s all the various scales and finger exercises.

For now though, I’m going to give myself a little reward and catch up on some Dr Who!

Day 9 – October 9th – Time for some expression

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Our lesson today started with a hike across the fields to Trevor’s house. I love the fresh, brisk air, and the view going up the hill is amazing, well worth being out of breath at the top. Yesterday’s rain left the path a bit muddy, but nothing a good pair of hiking boots can’t deal with.

I had been gritting my teeth a little in preparation for the class, but it seems that my practice so far is working enough to at least keen the criticisms from getting any worse!

Warm-ups were a deluge of information: learn this one, and this one, oh, and the one on page 100 is wonderful for your fingers! Everyone was in the same boat though, we’re all trying to look calm while working frantically. I was quite pleased with how the Moyse finger exercises we’ve now been working on for a week have come along. Not perfect by a long way, and Trevor’s metronome marking of crotchet = 108 was rather brisk in the lesson, but at least I got through them from memory at the requested speed.

We finished off the warm-up session with Trevor launching into the first movement of the Bach E minor sonata from memory and all of us looking a bit stunned at having to play along. A bit of work still needed there!

From there, we moved into tunes – which some of us have been set as a cure for lack of expression. Mine is Sicilienne, written by Maria Theresia von Paradis as a a gift for Mozart. Though Trevor was generous in his criticism, I genuinely got a lot out of playing this for him. He really took the time to stress the importance of ever aspect of the musical line – really precise rhythm, note endings, separation, graduation of dynamics, beat stresses, and holding the first note of trills for a fraction to get full effect. This is the sort of detailed study that I think it’s difficult to get in a university setting, where the number of lessons necessitates a certain focus on exam-related goals. Hopefully, the my work on it will show in the repertoire pieces I play in the weeks and months to come.

In the car on the way to our evening walks, Trevor has set about teaching us a selection of call-and-response songs. Tonight, we tried to learn ‘Green Grow the Rushes O’ – all 12 verses! Needless to say that we need a little more practice in remembering all the lyrics. There isn’t a huge selection of videos online, but this one is closest to the way we sound, and good for a laugh as well!