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!

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.

Firsts

All right, so first day and a half. I'm already so behind on this blog because I've already assimilated so much new information! Unbelievable!

So, travel day yesterday was pretty overwhelming. Last night of Hot Springs, stayed up with my friend Natalie until 4 am, which yielded 2 hours of sleep that night. Slept an hour and a half on the plane, but that was it. Got into Oberlin at 5:15, orientation at 6, and "audition" at 7:20. So no time to play oboe that day, and I was a little concerned that I would have to play a Baroque piece on modern oboe for the teacher (haven't recently worked on anything I would want to play for a professional Baroque performer ie I'm not about to play unaccompanied Bach for an expert).

But of course I didn't have to play anything, and the professor is super friendly. He wrote me out a fingering chart and sent me on my way. He was a little shocked at first, I think, that I had never even played more than a few notes on Baroque oboe. Possibly slightly concerned. But I think that after he considered it a little and noted my genuine enthusiasm, he started to get a little excited that I was a clean slate. No reed at this point yet.

So. Pushing the Nerf ball up the hill. Sat in my bed for a long time with the Baroque oboe and the fingering chart. Visualized the keyboard. Solfege syllables on keyboard. Arranged my fingers correctly. Thought about the staff too, but not as much since that's clef dependent. Was as intentional as possible! And I looked at the chart as little as possible, focusing on the fingerings that are different from modern oboe. I went through the entire range chromatically several times, saying each solfege syllable out loud as I fingered the note and visualized it on the keyboard. I made a point to consider all the enharmonic spellings as well, and did some fake reading of Modus Novus, just to get some practice reading crazy intervals I'll probably never see playing Baroque oboe. But hey, if I can quickly process that, I can read anything. And then as I was falling asleep, I went through all the notes in my mind again. First thing in the morning, I reviewed. After viol class, reviewed again, this time with oboe in hand. By the time oboe reed class rolled around, I could easily play anything he asked me to do (scales, thirds, etc). So that Nerf ball is up! And since I will be playing every day from now on, it will stay up easily. (Until I start having to learn alternate fingerings).

8am every morning - viol class. I have a bass!!! Even just carrying it around last night after it was issued to me was a little overwhelming. Such a huge instrument! You have to be careful turning around in the hallway with it! And there's a BOW. I've only really even held a string instrument twice that I can think of offhand. And gamba of all things. Class was hilarious though, and we made some really awful noises. The class situation was odd for me - the lack of personal attention resulted in a lot more doubt than I am used to. But I got over that quickly, and took more risks to see what sorts of things worked and what sorts of things didn't (I'm thinking specifically of the bow grip). I need to do that more in my modern oboe practicing. I think that because Jared is such a good teacher, I am a little too dependent on him to point out areas I could improve. How often do I take risks with how I think about embouchure or air in order to experiment with different tones? Not very often. Occasionally, but nothing has ever really come of it.

I was forced to do that today with the Baroque oboe. In reed class, he gave me a reed, a little bit of guidance on embouchure, and instruction on how to overblow notes, but that was really it. We spent the majority of the time discussing reeds. He gave us some exercises to work on (ocatves, scales in thirds). So in my hour and a half or so of practicing today, I really had to figure out for myself how to make the instrument sound the way I wanted it to sound (not that I've accomplished that yet). I had to hear what I wanted in my head first before I played. Same for intonation. Button pushing is literally impossible on Baroque oboe, and it really reveals how much button pushing actually does go on, even when I am conscious of notes and intervals. Without really hearing it first, nothing works. I even tried an exercise in thirds where I alternated between singing and playing notes. And surprise! The intonation was nearly perfect! Some of the more difficult notes were a little warbly, but considering that without listening first, they were almost a half step off, I think it was a major improvement...

So one interesting challenge is going to not only be intonation regarding the instrument, but how I listen for intonation. The pure intervals apparently are going to take precedence over scale degree function: that's why my teacher recommended scales in thirds instead of scales. Practicing this let me know I really do know how intonation should sound! Because I could sing what I wanted very easily. Need to trust myself!

Dang cross fingerings are a beast to tune.

Well, I feel like I'm skipping a lot, but like I said, a lot happened. A bit on the Bach chorales. The institute is performing St. Matthew Passion, and they are going to have us in the audience sing the chorales (kind of like a flash mob, but you know, with Bach chorales. Kind of). Like this...

Handel Flash Oratorio

Um, anyway, so we rehearsed two chorales last night, and it was one of the most beautiful musical experiences I have ever had. I've never actually sung a chorale in German - only in solfege syllables or scale degrees or what have you. But to actually immediately comprehend the word painting in real time was such a different experience than merely pointing it out after or even before the fact. The physical feeling of singing a tritone on "Missetaten" and understanding what it means immediately was incomparable. It was so great that the musical director had us sing every part before putting all our parts together; even with all my struggle with the German language, I got a nice picture of the part writing. It was a lot to wrap my head around though, considering I don't even reeeally know how to pronounce German. I guess I have a decent idea, but you try tracking on the keyboard while struggling to read a language you've never spoken aloud before...so of course, as soon as it was over, I was eager as a beaver to go contemplate some intervals and notate some heptachord shift. Played two parts at a time today a little. Goal is to be able to play all these chorales on the piano before we actually perform them! I want to really understand what is going on as I sing them.

Well I suppose that's really enough for now. Gonna go practice, sing some more Bach chorales. Maybe some gamba practice? <.<