CAPÍTULO III SEÑALES VISUALES
EMBARCACIONES DE SUPERVIVENCIA 4.1 Prescripciones generales aplicables a las balsas salvavidas
4.1.4.3 Todas las balsas salvavidas de pescante de los buques de carga estarán dispuestas de modo que su asignación completa de personas pueda embarcar en ellas en 3 min como máximo a partir
• Study with the complete score (piano for entire works, or orchestra for ex-cerpts).
• Find the tempo from a passage that has a running flow of notes and a pulse, not just from the beginning of the piece.
• When the accompaniment has a rest of one beat or longer, the composer is allowing you to take time. If the accompaniment has a strict rhythmic pat-tern, the safe and musical thing to do is to follow it. An excellent pianist might follow you but an orchestra? Never.
• Music, like life itself, develops on tension and release. Find the places that have tension and take time for it to build. After the release that you should physically feel, don’t linger. The score will help you. Examples:
• Appoggiaturas and harmonic accents (for instance, a leading tone from a dominant seventh resolving tonally).
Interpretation Example 9
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Wide intervals (especially if they are dissonant).
A dynamic progression.
A written accent (sfz, sfp).
• A slow or fast passage in an even scale pattern is not usually loaded with in-tention. Some passages are purely ornamental. Even in Mozart, virtuosity plays a major part; one should not make an emotional issue out of every note.
• When two notes are slurred, it can generally be assumed that the second one is a release of the first. This means not that the first note is louder than the second, but that the second one is softer than the first. Technically, you can help this by not slapping the keys on the release and by keeping fingers close to the keys for phrasing.
• A wide interval is somewhat comparable. Consider the second note as the release, while playing the first one with tension.
• In Italian the suffix -ndo means “in the process of.” Read “accelerando” as slow in the process of speeding up, “crescendo” as still soft in the process of growing louder, “diminuendo” as loud in the process of getting softer, and so on. Therefore, play your dynamics in the direction of the phrases — that is to say, do not systematically diminish long notes if you are in a crescendo line, for instance, or do not be already soft at the open end of a decrescendo line. A change in dynamics or tempo is most effective when held back and then executed with conviction.
• Be conscious of silence, before you start and at the end, when sound dissi-pates, but also in the course of the piece. Silence by Mozart is louder than many ff’s.
• Use colors.
• On repeated notes or patterns, change dynamics, vibrato, timbre. Here is where your imagination and knowledge come together. Don’t always use a
“big tone.”
• Feel and taste the difference between major and minor, between DS and Eb.
• Do not play tempered:4 play the tonality, the key, the mode, the happy D major, the somber E minor, the tragic C minor, the triumphant C major, the quizzical F minor, and so on. Scales and arpeggios will help you with that. Give them the color you like, as you will apply it in your interpretation.
Music speaks without words, changes our view of the world without graphic representation, disturbs without physical aggression, and seduces without caresses. But through immediate perception, it is the symbol of evi-dence unsaid.
4. Tempered: a scale where all the half steps of the chromatic scale are equal — i.e., they are all a little bit out of tune.
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In a nutshell:
Accompaniment Dynamics Images
Intonation, Intonations Upbeat
A musical composition is the fruit of thought, craft, and inspiration. Our interpretation must take the score apart through analysis, then put it together again in perform-ance. Form precedes content, but it is a means to the end of expression and feeling. All our instrumental tools serve that purpose. Intelligence has never hurt emotion.
Please refer also to:
Rubato Tempo
Tension and Release Phrasing
An accent is a punctual concentration of musical energy that highlights or stresses the tension of a moment. It can be of a different nature: acoustical, har-monic, or expressive.
Indicated fp or ffp, an accent is sometimes almost percussive, louder than the note:
Interpreting accents Example 1
Interpreting accents Figure 1. Reproduced with the kind authorization of Alphonse Leduc publisher and owner of the world wide copyright — Paris, France
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An fp or ffp requests a very fast drop, on one note, from the loud to the soft. It is as much an accent as an effect, frequently used since Beethoven. The flutist must go from a very sustained sound to nothing, as if the blowing had stopped.
Played by the strings, it becomes visually explicit: the bow almost stops. The player must convey the impression that this note burns.
An sf (sforzando) must not be misread for an fp. It also affects one note only, or, more precisely, one sound: if the note is long or carried over bar lines with slurs, the “reinforcing” applies to the duration of that note. There can be many sf in a general p: the sf brings the prevailing dynamic to the next level (p to mp, mf to f, etc.).
The fp in measure 2 of the following example is not sustained, but the sf is.
Interpreting accents Example 2. Beethoven, Symphony no. 3, “Eroica,” first movement
Interpreting accents Figure 2
An sfp is again different. Starting with a relatively soft tongue attack, the sud-den surge is followed immediately by a fast diminuendo. Achieved, for flutists, by a sudden acceleration of the air speed, it is produced by pushing the air out with the abdomen, an action comparable to what happens when we sneeze. The strings increase and decrease the speed of the bow, along with its pressure. We should try to do the same with the air.
Interpreting accents Example 3. Beethoven, Symphony no. 3,
“Eroica,” first movement, letter E
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Interpreting accents Figure 3
A harmonic accent is normally not indicated; it results from tension in the har-mony, or, in a single melodic line, from an interval, itself a reduction of the im-plicit harmonic environment.
Interpreting accents Example 4. J. S. Bach, Partita in A Minor, BWV 1013, Sarabande
Knowing where to place an accent is the groundwork of interpretation. Study the complete score, not just the flute part, to find the points where the music writ-ing provides space to build up tension. Pacwrit-ing requires patience to construct the tense moment. Once the climax is reached, release implies returning to tempo and to conclusion without systematically slowing down, as is so often done.5
The performer must track down the high points through analysis and intu-ition. Awkwardly placed accents affect interpretation in the same way comical foreign accents deform our own languages.
Harmonic accents are usually not indicated by signs in the score when they conform to implicit laws of style and agogic. For instance, the release of an ac-cent is always less loud than the acac-cent. If it occurs in two slurred notes, as in an appoggiatura, the second note must have less emphasis than the first. This does not necessarily mean that the first note is louder than the second, but that the second is softer than the first.
For an accent followed by a developed release, the note(s) bearing the accent should not be diminished, so that the first note of the resolution is not more in-tense than any part of the accent.
This is one of the great difficulties for pianists, who must somehow give the il-lusion that the release comes out of the accent’s decay.
5. Unless the release is the conclusion of a piece.
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Interpreting accents Example 5. Brahms, Symphony no. 4, Finale
Interpreting accents Example 6. Mozart, Concerto in G Major, K. 313, second movement, measures 16 – 19
Interpreting accents Example 7. Mozart Concert in D Major, K. 314, second movement, measures 19 – 22
Another example of an implicit law of style is that an upbeat placed on weak beat(s), or half beat(s), should be less intense than the strong beat(s) it leads to.
When the latter is written in a less favorable range than the upbeat, one must control the agogic: the higher upbeat, in spite of its naturally brighter color, should not be louder than the downbeat.
Interpreting accents Example 8. J. S. Bach, Sonata in E Major, BWV 1035, third movement, Siciliano
Syncopations6 shift the accent from a strong part of the beat to a weak one.
They need not be indicated because they have their own natural tension.
6. In romance languages, syncope is also used medically for “missing a heartbeat,” i.e., a heart attack.
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Interpreting accents Example 9. J. S. Bach, Sonata in B Minor, BWV 1030, second movement, measures 13 to end
“The accent in syncopation is not my rule, it is the rule of life.”7
On the other hand, when the composer wants an accent different from the im-plicit rule, he uses the sign > to give stronger emphasis to the unusual.
Interpreting accents Example 10. Reinecke, Sonata Undine, Finale
The sign indicates the need for a greater weight on one note. Here the sound spreads, for a brief moment, to alter time, space and dynamic.
In a group of notes, the sign > designates a passing inflexion. This went with-out saying in baroque interpretation at a time when accents were not indicated.
It was left up to the “good taste” of the performer. Editions covered with dy-namic and accent markings can be very misleading in this respect.
Before an accent, there is, as it were, an imaginary grace note of expectation or silence, of tension within the musical discourse, a fraction of suspended eternity, constructed and desired. This is true whatever the weight of the accent indicated by >, sf, or fp, and even more so when it affects a harmonic accent.
The upbeat to an accent should not be vibrated too much. Excessive vibrato weakens the implicit tension of the harmony. The accent and its release can be vibrated. The effect is comparable to the compression of a coil until it can accu-mulate no more tension, and then vibrates on release.
Interpreting accents Example 11. Mozart Quartet in D Major, K. 285, third movement, measure 12
7. Trevor Wye, Marcel Moyse, an Extraordinary Man (Cedar Falls, IA: Winzer Press, 1993).
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In a nutshell:
Baroque Silence Air Speed
Accentuation is like the features of a beautiful face. Un-derlining them enhances beauty, but exaggerated make-up deforms it. Venus becomes a clown. An accent must be understood, constructed, felt, reached, and released.
Please refer also to:
Agogic Appoggiatura
Vibrato
I do not understand why tone is practiced as a separate entity any more than technique or tonguing. Instrumental playing is the sum of it all: listen to your sound in rapid passages, mind your intonation during staccato, smooth out your finger movements during phrasing, do not slam-and-squeeze in an interval (or anywhere else), and so on.
The tension on the first note of an interval is like the action on a trigger: pro-gressive and imperceptible. If the squeezing is too brutal, the rifle moves and the target is missed.8 The effort needed for an interval does not come on the change, but just before it. The actual interval is like a release.
In my way of playing, intervals should be practiced without lipping. If you should indulge in jawboning during a performance, fine. Music is the issue. But in a practice situation, you are trying to educate the basic tone production and control. Since you are not going to have time to work your chin on every note of an arpeggio in Peter and the Wolf or Mozart concertos, or any fast movement, you might as well keep your basic mouthpiece position and support. This is what you practice on intervals.
I do agree that for a shift or interval of more than an octave, some lipping is practically inevitable. The question is: do we really live constantly with wide jumps? Conservatively, intervals of an octave or less make up 99 percent of flute music. For example, out of thousands of notes:
• Ibert, Concerto: in the first movement, the separation of any two notes by more than an octave occurs eight times (only three slurred); in the second movement, none; in the third movement, seventeen intervals are wider than an octave (three staccato).
8. The only time I fired anything was under orders by the French Army, many, many years ago.
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• Mozart, Concerto in D Major, K. 314: in the first movement, twenty-six in-tervals wider than the octave (all separated or staccato); in the andante, none; in the finale, none.
• Ravel, Daphnis et Chloé, Second Suite: First flute, two intervals wider than an octave (separated). Second flute, two notes wider than an octave (separated).
Therefore, the intervals that I advise for daily practice are all within the range of the octave or less:
Intervals 1
Intervals 1 deals with half steps and octaves.9
Average vibrato, stable dynamic without crescendo or diminuendo
Comfortably
Intervals Example 1
Continue until the lowest note (B or C), then octaves up:
Intervals Example 2 And so on until the highest note, then:
Intervals Example 3 Go back in half steps until the starting note.
Intervals Example 4
9. Derived from Marcel Moyse, De la sonorité: Art et technique (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1934), but without swells or dovetails.
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Intervals 2
Intervals 2 addresses minor and major thirds as well as their inversions, minor and major sixths, to be animated with a feeling for movement.
Average vibrato, stable dynamic without crescendo or diminuendo
Comfortably
Intervals Example 5. Average vibrato — stable dynamic without crescendo or diminuendo
Avoid slam-and-squeeze and continue to the lowest note (B or C):
Intervals Example 6
And so on until the highest note, then:
Intervals Example 7 Go back in thirds until you reach the starting note.
Intervals 3
Intervals 3 work at steadying and tuning perfect fourths and perfect fifths.
Shift using the center of gravity and air speed without jawboning and with av-erage vibrato. Slur with the fingers. Sing the second note.
Intervals Example 8
131 Avoid slam-and-squeeze and continue to the lowest note (B or C), then up in fifths. Use stable dynamics without crescendo or diminuendo.
Intervals Example 9 And so on until the highest note:
Intervals Example 10
Then go back in fourths until you reach the starting note.
Intervals Example 11
Since the sum of the intervals is always an octave, these exercises have the same duration. Descending chromatics take longer than ascending octaves. The same for descending thirds and ascending sixths (or vice versa), and so on. The only missing intervals are augmented fourths (diminished fifths), which can be readily devised at will.
Before attempting dynamic changes, sing the interval mf at full sustained tone.
I have long thought that controlling tone in one dynamic is more productive than swells on every note. Try also pp and ff, but the most basic is mf. You may change the dynamic of any interval, as long as the intensity of both notes of the inter-val is as equal as possible.