It is most important for a beginner to hear the teacher play the same things, or accompany them. The teacher should not hesitate to stay a long time on simple tunes such as “Three Blind Mice” or “Frère Jacques” or the ones given earlier.
Repetitiousness is not usually a problem for the first six months. Full pieces will come much later. At first, love starts with playing the flute, not so much with playing the music. At a young age, the aesthetic reward of great music comes after the exquisite pleasure of playing the beloved flute. Some fifty years later, my own delight survives and flourishes.
In a nutshell:
Hands Stability Lips
Proceed slowly with beautiful tunes that have movement.
Long tones are difficult and tedious. Breathe just enough to play a few notes. Big breaths are hard to control. Always give a tonguing on the first note.
Once the fingers are placed logically, comfort and sta-bility are the issue. A good stasta-bility with the fulcrums does not mean tightness. Do not “slam-and-squeeze.”
Please refer also to:
Blowing Position Comfort Posture
Fulcrums Slam-and-Squeeze
There is no answer to the sophistic question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” For us it translates to: “Which is first: blowing or breathing?” Breathing, of course, and yet it is the blowing that creates a sound. If you don’t know how to blow, your breathing will be just an organic act, a vital but musically void ne-cessity. Still, it seems that most of us are worried more by the intake of air than with the management of its release.
Examples of breath management problems abound in our solo repertoire: the first three movements of Bach’s Partita in A Minor, BWV 1013; the opening solo in Mozart’s Concerto in D Major, K. 314; and in Poulenc’s Sonata, the opening phrase of the Cantilena.
39 We find it in the orchestral repertoire also: among other places, in Ravel’s Bolero and the beginning of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony. The latter is never mentioned, but it was my personal nightmare: one single Bb held for what seems like hours by one flute (no second to help out), two clarinets, and two bassoons over three octaves. The more famous the conductor, the slower the tempo. . . . Pitch problems, breath management problems, attack problems. I preferred some of the technically “difficult” excerpts.
Most often required for auditions are the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Mid-summer Night’s Dream and Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune. I would like to illustrate my ideas with the Faune, but most of what I have to say would apply to other examples as well
“911” breath
Blowing long phrases Example 1
When you are playing L’Après-midi d’un faune in a concert situation, it is not so important if you breathe before the end of the first phrase. In an audition for an orchestral position, however, it is more or less expected that the opening, when the flute is totally alone, should be uninterrupted. Circular breathing (actually circular blowing) does not work here very well. So don’t linger on the long notes, and manage your air.
Even if you are in shape to go the whole nine yards in one breath, the music you are making is still the most important issue. By the time you have reached the end of the second bar, no one knows, except you perhaps, whether you will make it to the end of the phrase without breathing. Still, after these fifteen or twenty seconds, your listeners will have a pretty good idea of how they like your music, breath or no. The length of your breath must not be at the expense of tone quality. You must find timbre and color with very little expenditure of air.
This is what we will try to achieve first. The actual inhaling process will be ad-dressed later.
Good air management goes with my alliterative concept of Tenuto, Sostenuto,
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Ritenuto (in French, tenu, soutenu, retenu; to keep the rhyme, in English it would be “held, upheld, withheld,” although “upheld” is better described by our well-known “support,” which everyone talks about).
“Support,” for me, does not imply the diaphragm. It is an involvement of the abdominal muscles in the blowing process. When we lift a suitcase or push against a stalled car with the upper body, our powerful leg muscles contribute to the effort of the abdominals. The cough or sneeze point, situated just below the navel, is the seat of the most intense energy, strengthened by the action of the thighs. Therefore I advise the use of the legs (when standing) to provide support.
For the seated flutist, I do not agree with military posture: chin up, shoulders straight and elbows high, buns on the edge of the chair. Instead, try sitting with the kidneys reclining gently against the lower part of the chair back, pushing the tummy out for support and feeling the ground under the feet to complement the support.
Instead of the weak muscles (facial and labial), use your strong ones (abdomi-nal, leg, and left arm) to produce musical sound. I call this Tenuto. I believe that focus and tonal density are helped by the lips, to be sure, but that the main agent is the left arm.
The first joint of the left forefinger is the fulcrum of the flute. It provides the stability vital not only for technique and articulation, but also for the production of sonority. All the old illustrations of transverse flute players through the ages show this position — left forefinger halfway down, balancing the body of the flute. The jaw movements and the lips contribute to tone production, but stabil-ity at this point is essential.
To physically feel the Tenuto effect, try to cross your right hand over the left, which stays in place for this experiment.
Blowing long phrases Figure 1
Wrapping your right hand without tightness around the trademark between the lip plate and the first keys, play a few notes (low or high), for instance: “Three Blind Mice” in G, with the left hand alone. After a first feeling of awkwardness, you will feel the added control on the focus without spending too much air. You can also play the first bar of the Faune, repeating it three or four times in a loop until you run out of breath.2
Now let us consider the actual start of the piece. The deliberately bland CS has no natural center because there are no fingers holding the flute. It has a beauti-ful reedy quality, blue-gray, hollow, slightly fragile and out of tune.
2. For this, the AS must be fingered by the left thumb, on and off, which is excellent training for the use of thumb Bb.
41 Let’s assume that the inhaling process, which we will discuss elsewhere, is complete. As soon as possible after you have filled up with air, you should start playing. To hold a huge quantity of air, you must block your breath, which tends to make your attack explosive upon release. When you are in an audition, no problem: you are the boss. In concert, if the conductor knows his stuff (it hap-pens!) he should give a small sign for you to fire at will instead of the usual down-beat, which interferes with your inhaling sequence. You can always talk it over with the conductor (but not in the rehearsal: it might look as if you were teach-ing him his job, or worse yet, that you are havteach-ing a problem). This piece is often placed right after intermission; it cannot start the concert, nor can it end the first half, nor can it be the last work at the finish (not noisy enough). So it is difficult to concentrate because of movements and conversations in the audience as well as in the orchestra.
So you have started to play. Now comes the withholding (Ritenuto). Your main effort now is to not blow and to maintain the expansion of your rib cage to re-sist its collapse. By sheer elasticity of the cartilage in your chest and the natural weight of the bone in your shoulders, some air will be let out. The withholding is actually an effort to maintain the air cavity open, to counteract the support muscles in the lower body. With support and no withholding, the chest empties quickly and the phrase cannot be held to its end.
Do not blow at first: this is the secret. Until the end of the second measure, re-lease the chest air sparingly. Do not spend it, save it. When you realize you are short of air, it is usually too late. It is how you manage your airflow at the very start of the phrase that makes the difference.3
Then for the second and third measures, “normal” blowing is in order, sup-porting with the abdomen. For the final notes, you can think of making a crescendo because air is running out, and this ultimate support helps keep the sound in tune.4 Finally, if you are on good terms, ask the first oboe to connect his AS with yours preferably sooner than later, and to play it not too sharp, to match yours, because you might have a tendency to go flat at the end of your apnea.
Now we must retrace our steps to the inhaling procedure. I say inhaling be-cause it is a deliberate process as opposed to the natural breathing function.
First, as stress control and as a way to reoxygenate your blood, ventilate by tak-ing a few deep inhalations,5 producing the “hhaah” sound and cooling your deep throat. When we are making a physical effort, we are out of breath for the same reason: our blood needs more oxygen for our red blood cells to bring repair to the muscle cells.
Second, expel every ounce of air possible, with an audible (to you) “sschss . . .
3. Air management reminds me of personal finance management: it is wiser to save your salary when you get it than be reduced to poverty before the next paycheck.
4. If you realize at the end of the third measure that you might come out short, the most musi-cal breath to take is in the fourth measure between the two Bs.
5. Dogs, who do not sweat, must pant to eliminate excess body heat. Panting is also taught in so-called painless childbirth.
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tchhh,” ending with collapsed chest, low shoulders, and abdomen totally pushed in.
Third, start inhaling slowly through the nose, filling the chest cavity and every little nook and cranny in the upper torso. I advise doing this upper process first because the chest muscles work more slowly than the abdominals and because intake through the nose corresponds to upper breathing.
Fourth, open the mouth and throat, expanding the belt area, inhale to produce the “hhaah” sound, then play right away.
Preparation: 1. ventilate c. 5”— 2. expel all air — 3. upper breathing c. 5”— 4.
abdominal breathing c. 3”— start immediately Très modéré
play and save (by resisting collapse play and save (by resisting collapse
of chest) of chest)
normal playing mental crescendo
Blowing long phrases Example 2. Debussy, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune As I have said, you should not use this lengthy process every time you breathe, but only when you need to conduct a long phrase, such as in L’Après-midi d’un Faune.6 It does not take more than a few seconds when you master this technique.