Where to Breathe
There is of course the obvious musical punctuation:
• After a tonal resolution.
• After a perfect cadence.
• Between two staccato notes.
• Between two notes of the same name. It will also help to articulate them.
• On a syncopation:
Breathing (Where to breathe) Example 1. Bach, Sonata in B Minor, BWV 1030, second movement, measure 13 to end
The gasps reinforce the tension build-up or release of the syncopations. You can almost breathe on each syncopation. It helps you and the music too. In other words, the rhythmic character of a piece lends itself to many little breaths. Ram-pal gave magnificent examples of this in many of his recordings (the Bolling suite and post-baroque concertos by Stamitz and Benda, among others). It is said that Gaubert was also a master at stealing gasps here and there without being heard.
The problem is compounded when the passage is slurred or fast. If it must be interrupted for a biological reason, here are a few ideas:
51
• Chose a place where the music is not offended too much and match the tone on either side of the breath, for instance in the Sarabande of Bach’s Partita in A Minor, BWV 1013, or in the opening bars of the second movement of the Martinu Sonata.
• Breathe with your ears. If you must interrupt the line, your ears should tell you how to deal with the sound and the phrase just before and just after the breath, especially if is not a musically obvious place. Do not systematically taper off on the release before the breath. Think of matching the dynamics in the very recent past and in the very near future.
• Do not to hit the following note just because you filled up and are no longer threatened by immediate asphyxiation.
In other words, always breathe in the direction of the phrase, whether it is as-cending or desas-cending. I am not trying to say that you can breathe anywhere.
The line must continue through the silence of the breath, just like a cloud or a tree can hide the trajectory of a bird in flight from your view for a moment.
In the Allemande from the Bach Partita, do not sit on the notes following the breaths. In this very difficult work, one hears too often a diminuendo followed by a sucking noise and then an accent. Here, again, match the notes on either side of the breath.
To practice this, play a few notes beyond your intended breath, then repeat the last notes you have just heard yourself play, this time with a breath. Try to musi-cally balance the tone on either side of the break as if there had been no inter-ruption. If the line is increasing, the previous note should not taper off before you breathe, and the note following should be in direct progression with the con-text. Conversely, when the line decreases, don’t let the perspective of your breath affect the remaining energy of your tone. The note following should not be sud-denly louder than the previous phrase.
Integrate small gasps into your daily practice on scales. Breathe after the first note in a group of four or eight notes and, again, match the tone on either side of the breath.
Breathe comfortably when you are alone and the accompaniment is sus-pended. This implies that you can slightly shorten the note before the break with-out tapering it. When your breath is, by necessity, not in the best musical place, using the accompaniment as a shield can hide it. On an accompaniment chord, your gasp is lost in the resonance of the piano. For this reason as well as many others, you must have studied the whole score, not only the flute part.
When you have no choice but to breathe or die, it is better to speed up just be-fore the breath than to come to a full stop and slow down after. A slight rush on the three notes preceding the break will give you just that little bit more time to stay on course.
In an avalanche of notes, it is preferable to contract a few notes than to take some out. A good example of this is Variation 5 of Schubert’s Introduction and Variations on “Ihr Blümlein Alle,” op. 160.
52
These little cheats give you a split second to breathe. They are barely notice-able, and 911 need not be called.
In a nutshell:
Scale Game Staccato
“Hhaah” Sound
Language Synchronization
Breathe to play as you breathe to speak. Good blowing leads to good breathing, but not always vice versa. Musical breathing is like punctuation. Breathe more often like a fish than like a whale. A middle breath is more manage-able than a huge one. Balance your tone on either side of the breath, and keep a smooth musical line. Use small breaths (gasps) to enhance shaping.
Please refer also to:
In the course of twenty-four hours in the life of a flutist, the break between low and medium ranges is breached hundreds of times. Yet it is still one of the criti-cal points of instrumental playing, especially when it must be slurred slowly. It shows once more how deceptive is the assumption that “only fast is difficult.”
After more than half a century of playing the flute, I still have to think ahead and work at making the bridge smooth and musical, but it brings rewards.
The problem lies in the fact that we have to go from two handfuls of fingers (D2) to only one or two (C2) and back. To make matters worse, these happen to be our dear little devils no. 1 and no. 2. “The second octave C–D, for instance, re-quires an extremely complex coordination of seven fingers and a thumb (an ex-change that can be simplified by anticipating the D with the second and third fin-gers of the right hand while playing the C and vice versa).”13 And, I may add, not using the right pinky.
The bridge question does not arise only for the C2 –D2 break. It is also implicit in the following:
13. Krell.
53
Bridge Example 1
For all these combinations, a better smoothness in the passage of the bridge will be achieved at no expense of tone quality — quite to the contrary — by using the balance provided by the right ring finger:
Bridge Figure 1. Right hand for these notes
In the case of most intervals involving D2 — namely the Bridge — the right pinky (little devil no. 2) can be left unused, because it is usually more of a nui-sance than a necessity. Of course, if DS or Eb are played, the right pinky comes down, but it is still the right ring finger that provides the comfortable balance. Ac-tually, a stiff right pinky pressed hard on the DS key is no longer the element of stability that it is intended to be, but a painful liability. Remember, an open DS key is absolutely vital on only six notes:
Bridge Example 2
Many purists will object that preparing finger combinations is a cop out, and that leaving a finger on a “silent key”14 (such as the right ring finger) is an offense to purity. Strangely enough, it is often the same people, invoking the same cor-rectness, who insist on forbidding the use of the Briccialdi thumb Bb key or the side lever for a smoother Bb and on always using the “real” Bb fingering. Yet, in this instance, the right forefinger is closing two “silent keys” for no other purpose than to activate the Bb tone hole. By preparing the bridge, you are not putting more “ silent keys” down than in the “real” Bb fingering.
This is not just a technical detail: smooth phrasing is a musical necessity. There is no good instrumental playing without a musical perspective, and vice versa.
Furthermore, one can readily see that the stability of the embouchure is often shaken upon the passing of the bridge and that the improved steadiness of the lip plate at this point is a definite musical asset.
14. “Silent” or “dead” key: a non–tone producing key.
54
In a nutshell:
Finger Antagonisms
Be inventive with your fingerings. The smoothness of the break from low to middle ranges and the stability of the embouchure depend on you.
Please refer also to:
Finger Phrasing Little Devils Silent Keys
A flute player’s center of gravity is neither the diaphragm nor the plexus, but a point below the navel that you feel when you sneeze or cough. When we sneeze or cough, a considerable amount of energy is concentrated at this point in a short time, since we are trying to expel something. This energy is similar to what we call support, except for the fact that it must be sustained to conduct tone.
When you shift slightly this center of gravity, even by imperceptibly moving your balance from one foot to another or feeling your weight on the floor, the air speed becomes faster or slower and provides the basic means of tone production in all ranges. Only then should the lips intervene to guide the air brush.
Air support can be compared to the sensation we have in our abdominal mus-cles while moving a heavy object: the tummy juts forward (and not backward, as is sometimes prescribed.) We have the impression that very strong muscles are producing the essential force, as in tone production. The center of gravity is ever lower. There is no energy in the upper body, and the shoulders must be low. Air support has its origin at this center of gravity, which is also the cough or sneeze point. Consciousness of its localization is vital. The famous diaphragm that everyone talks about, rightly or wrongly, is much higher, and no one has control over it. “The center of gravity must be found as close as possible to the ground, i.e. in the lower abdomen.”1