Do Re Mi

Part of me really wants to practice modern oboe. I don't know if I should. Professor Hauser recommended not. I think my poor battered ego wants a boost. I'm listening to a recording of myself playing principal in the Beethoven octet. That's pretty bad. I NEVER listen to myself playing oboe. My ego must be desperate.

Well, I think things are coming along very well, all of that aside! Today I took a nice long practice session (about an hour) without my instrument. I really need to get on this style train. A lot of the stuff we talk about is stuff I've worked on with Smith, both in class and in our Hertel chamber music coachings. One of the most basic ideas in the Baroque style is that of rhetoric. Music should be natural, like talking, and have the same sorts of natural inflections and emphases that talking does. So I took that idea and spent an hour talking through my music. (Solfeging, of course). At first I was solfeging and singing, but still not exactly getting the results I wanted. I reverted back to just talking the syllables, but concentrating on attaining a beautiful, lilting, well-phrased speech, with the grammar just so and the rhetoric right on target. It was a heck of a lot harder than I had anticipated. And of course this was the right step, because if I couldn't even say the phrases exactly how I wanted consistently, how would I possibly expect to be able to play them on an instrument I have only been playing for two days? Silly. So in that time I worked on all four of the movements in the French duos I will be performing in the chamber concert on Saturday.

Just now, I got back from practicing these movements about an hour and a half on the actual oboe. I have to say, I definitely achieved a lot in a relatively short amount of time. The most difficult part about getting the style is getting the style consistently - getting all of the inegalite just right all the time, not forgetting myself at a phrase. But having a much better idea of how the speech of the piece went, I could really think much more clearly. Sometimes I really had to remind myself by speaking the phrase of how I wanted it to go, but then it would be fixed when I played it after speaking it. Didn't entirely help the squeaks and whatnot...I'm still looking for a reed I really like. The second teacher coming next week plays on the same type of oboe that I do, so that should be pretty helpful.

We learned to play a scale in gamba class this morning! Definitely...the two hands at once bit is a little difficult. It's funny though. I notice that I want to stop the bow when I change notes. It's exactly the same problem with oboe! A common oboe problem is stopping the air (our "bow") between notes instead of speeding it up, which is what we really need to do in order to make a seamless connection, particularly over large intervals.

We had another oboist join us today! She's been playing Baroque oboe for about 4-5 years. She started after her kids left, etc, but she had played modern oboe before she had kids.

Gee, I sound pretty good in this Beethoven recording. But anyway, another reason I kinda want to practice modern oboe is so I can brush up on the Vivaldi enough to maybe have twenty minutes of my lesson on style, even though I'd be playing modern oboe. But I think it would be well worth it.

Oh my gosh, the sleep really did the trick. After that three and a half hour nap yesterday, I also slept from 10pm-7am. I was awake all day! And could focus! Yay! Now I just have to remember to bring snacks with me in the morning, since we typically have oboe class from 10-1:30 with no breaks for lunch. I get a little eeeee if I don't have lunch.

In Baroque dance, we've learned the German/English and French minuets. And some other fancy step, I think we danced it to a Gavotte and maybe something else too. So much fun!

Crash

It's been two days and already equal temperament makes me uncomfortable.

So, I completely crashed today. Napped three and a half hours. Straight through dance class (well, my alarm went off in time, but there was no way I was getting up at that point). But I really needed it. I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in three weeks now. This morning was a real struggle, especially during the Music of Bach lecture, at which point I almost fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Had been a little irritable all morning and not really accomplishing what I wanted to be accomplishing with Baroque oboe in class.

I keep wanting to complain to myself that it's impossible to play stylistically correct while I'm still worried about the mechanics of the instrument. But I know that's an excuse, and that kind of thinking is NOT going to help me. When so many notes inegales start coming all at once though, my brain turns on panic mode, I get all tense, and nothing works mechanically. Wait, that isn't true. It's not true that nothing works mechanically. I just don't sound as beautiful as I would sound were I relaxed, open, and resonant. Hopefully, I will get to bed early tonight, and start mornings off with some Alexander from now on.

One of the major challenges for me with technical passages - in Baroque oboe playing, you don't blow equal air into all the notes. On modern oboe, a good, fast, steady stream of air will get me nicely through any crazy passage. But on Baroque, that strategy breaks down. In fact, it seems easier to get all the notes out if the beginning of a difficult phrase of inegalite is really lengthened and blown through, but the subsequent notes are played on hardly any air, relatively speaking. It also sounds better, not forced or driven. It's difficult to get into this mindset, but I just have to keep gently reminding myself.

Overall, I think I have been doing a pretty good job of being non-judgmental about my playing in practice and class. Class is much more of a challenge to achieve this state of mind for me because there is an external judge (my teacher) who does place value judgments on my triumphs and failures. The importance to me of his approval sometimes gets in the way of actually doing something the way he wants it to be done. I will focus more on being wholly observational in class of my own playing the way I am in the practice room. The real danger in the practice room is unconsciousness. There's so much to think about in playing this music on this instrument that instead of keeping an awareness of everything, I focus too narrowly on one skill to the neglect of other, basic skills. Or I just space out. Spacing out = not good. But I suspect that largely has to do with my lack of sleep, since it is not normally a problem for me.

Bach in a Minuet

Just got back from my first ever Baroque dance class. So hilarious, so much fun. It's amazing how difficult the simplest small, graceful movements prove so difficult. It just goes to show for me how unaware we really are in general. I mean, as adults, we have full motor coordination, and we do things every day that are totally amazing feats of balance and coordination, but we aren't aware of our own capacities, in such a way that prevents us from trusting our own bodies. The dance teacher is also an Alexander teacher! We did some fancy ballet type warm up things, then learned the basic minuet step. So helpful for playing minuets - I feel like I have a much better idea now of the phrase motion and groupings. The step occurs over the course of six beats, not three: two bar phrases. The heel goes down on three and the plié is on six. Three four five six one two three... Etc. I mean you do learn these things in lessons or in music history class, but the kinesthetic comprehension is so enormously valuable. Can't wait to go practice my minuet movement later tonight with this new understanding!

Had a great masterclass/lesson/reed time thing today. There's only two of us oboists, and the other student has had more experience than me, but not a lot, and she hasn't worked with a professional before. So in many ways, we are on a similar plane, which is great. I was a little concerned I might be holding someone back, but I think we will both have a lot to learn from each other.

My room has no air conditioning. Eurgh.

Finally got a reed designed for my type of instrument (or rather, Hauser's type of instrument, I'm borrowing it). That is, Saxon Baroque oboe. It's so much easier to play in tune now, I have to do much less manipulation, and the cross fingerings are about a thousand times easier. My teacher seems impressed about some things I seem to be able to do right away but sometimes people can't do after years, for example, play notes a half step down without changing the fingering. (Thank you Caldwell Ab-Bb-C-Db exercise.) It's encouraging to know I have a somewhat natural affinity for the instrument and that I really can hear intonation. Really, really well, actually. As long as I listen and don't try to control, it's there, and it's correct. Somehow Baroque oboe allows me to let go and trust myself in that way. I think it is partly because there is such a wild range of possible intonations that the only solution is to observe - because I don't know the instrument at all, I can't predict whether I will need to lip up or down like I can on my modern oboe, whose tendencies I know so well. And surprise surprise, when I simply allow myself to observe the pitch rather than try to guess at where it is, I place it correctly, right on target.

We started playing music today, some Boismortier duets. Talked about some basic performance practice concepts - breathing and phrasing, rhetoric, and inégalité. For those of you who aren't familiar with inégalité, I'll include here a short paragraph from an essay I wrote in Smith's class on it.

In French Baroque tradition, a group of two notes that is notated equally may be played in a number of different unequal rhythms, a custom known as inégalité. The performance practice was understated enough so that composers did not indicate it with standard notation, and one contemporary authority recommends the notes “should be dotted with such restraint that it is not obvious.” The degree of inequality varied from “mild and lilting to sharp and vigorous,” but by no means the ratio of long to short a strictly geometric relationship; the proportion was left to the discretion of the performer and was a means for expressive, musical effect. Primarily, the principles of inequality or equality were determined by the style of the piece, styles with which contemporary performers were quite familiar and comfortable.

So basically, a slight dotting of notes that appear equal on the page. It's tricky to get just right in performance, but when it's right, it's SO right. It sounds as if that is what it should sound like. Natural, like speech.

All right, maybe getting a little too technical here.

Gamba class this morning was excellent. I simply could not believe the amount of improvement that happened overnight. I practiced for about twenty minutes last night, and this morning, I wasn't hitting extra strings (every once in a while, of course). Holding the viol and holding the bow felt natural. I would have predicted that it would have taken me at least a month to feel natural holding a bow. And today when the teacher came around the room to check in on us individually while everyone was scratching away at the fourth string, practicing continuous bow strokes, she had no corrections to make for me! She said, "Excellent! And you're not a string player?" GO ME!

One more general thing I'd like to mention about my time here - recording. I've decided to record all of the lessons, masterclasses, and lectures that I attend instead of taking notes. That way, I'll have everything. But even more importantly, I am really going for an implicit sense of trusting in myself and my brain's capacity to remember and record. Taking notes takes energy away from the present moment and the experience of learning in the now. As long as we are truly dedicating our full awareness to a teacher, I believe we have the ability to remember what he or she is saying. So I am concentrating on attaining a very full, intense focus during these critical days of learning new skills (and of course, ideally, all the time).

I think I am getting much better at not using vibrato and not driving through notes. Ahhh.