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As we come back from over a year of spotty, Covid era practice, one thing I have observed is a lack of dynamics and phrasing.
Of my own students, I’m seeing great improvement after only a couple lessons, and I am hugely enjoying the return to all in-person lessons. But for those of you not studying, or studying with a teacher who has not commented on dynamics and phrasing yet, this is really an important topic.
What has happened is, even if you have been practicing, likely you have practiced at maybe MF and below for a LONG time. You need to really work to wake up your ability to play dynamics, as this is a prerequisite to playing phrases that other people can hear. Loud louds, soft softs!
Backing up a step, you also have to realize as a player that you may be imagining great phrases — but other people simply can’t hear them, as you are in reality playing everything at about the same dynamic.
Also, I should mention that Farkas wrote a whole book on the topic, The Art of Musicianship. It is well worth reviewing for inspiration at this point in time; for a brief look see my article, “Hornmasters: Farkas on Musical Phrasing.”
With the creation of my new personal website, I’ve been working to document and organize more my own teaching method. I recently updated the list (here) to include phrasing. It is a topic that can sort of sneak by a horn teacher, but is absolutely a very important topic. As of now my text there reads,
Phrasing
• A first step involves control of all dynamic levels
• Beyond that, a simple system (“picking flowers”) can be applied to almost any piece of music
The “picking flowers” system is very simple relative to those I have heard some teachers advocate for. One notable system is based on the Tabuteau system of phrasing by the numbers. Which may work great for some (a quick search pulled up an entire DMA horn dissertation on the topic!) but I’m just not into so much mental effort.** The picking flowers system is from a woodwind quintet coach I had years ago at Aspen, bassoonist Ryohei Nakagawa. In short, the “flower” was the high point of an individual phrase, and you would use your pencil as a substitute and actually “pick the flower” (pencil) to feel that point even more deeply. The result is a natural, vocal phrasing.
I mark the high point with a * symbol, as seen in the musical example (the second one in the worksheet photo). I have had students who called these “Ericson flowers.” It might be worth me putting together a video to describe it more completely. But to get a good result it is a simple combination of control of dynamics and highlighting the natural peaks and valleys of phrases.
For our studio class a first project this semester is to listen to different recordings of the beginning of the Franz Strauss Nocturno and document the exact phrasing, as in the worksheet. You will hear different things from different artists, but also will hear many similarities as to the peak moments. No artist, for example will treat the first four bars as a series of one-bar phrases! But a student, without thinking, might just do that, as might someone with an overly complicated system of phrasing.
The whole topic is a big one, and it certainly separates real artists from people who just play the notes. Coming out of Covid, the reminder being that playing the notes is just a starting point. Now that you are back to real horn playing, you need to hit a level beyond that, and it involves phrasing and many other musical choices on a high level. Good luck!
**Also, the suggested phrasings in the dissertation puzzle me greatly. They seem choppy and mechanical to me, not natural like a fine vocalist would spin out. To understand my own system further, listen to some final vocalists, listening to the phrase shapes. You will hear their typical two or four bar phrase shapes and how the “flowers” fit in as a representation of the peak moments.
