The President's Corner
April 2002
"Up, Up, Up"
How y'all doing. Four months in the Heart of Texas have improved my Texan, my appreciation of Tex-Mex food and my appreciation of the music making of the Lone Star State. During the time, I have made WASBE presentations at Baylor University, Eastman School of Music at Rochester, NY, University of Houston, Texas Music Educators Association conference at San Antonio, and at University of Nevada at Reno. Many of the sessions led us to ponder why the wind band/wind ensemble is not more popular, given that thousands, perhaps millions, of people play in wind bands throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. Gunther Schuller was probably right when he said that our work is tainted with the athletics programme and parade ground, so where do we go from here?
At Houston, Eugene Migliaro Corporon wondered whether we just do not play well enough, and a day spent recently working with one of the best Texas school band programmes, improving what was already excellent, led me to think about this again, and to look at a little book recommended by many people:
Note Grouping, A Method for Achieving Expression and Style in Musical Performance by James Morgan Thurmond, published by Meredith Music Publications at US$34.95.
Thurman studied with Anton Horner, principal horn with the Philadelphia Orchestra in its golden era, and anyone who worked with princiupals from that orchestra at Curtis or elsewhere will be familiar with the expressive phrasing insisted on by Horner, William Kincaid the principal flute, Marcel Tabuteau, the principal oboe, and other members of that fabulous orchestra. Thurmond's book is baxed on his dissertation, and has now something of a cult following.
In this book, he has drawn on classical rhythmic modes. the introduction of the barline in the 16th century and theorists throughout the last 400 years. It is academic, but it is fascinating and incredibly practical, and codifies many of the practical things we have learned over the years. Phrasing which singers do with the words, and strings do with the bow, are not as natural to wind and brass, but the author gives us dozens of examples to think about.
I remember conducting rehearsals of the Jeuesses Musicales World Youth Orchestra, and hearing the 'cello coach who had played as principal with the Berlin Philharmon under Furtwangler, Walter, under Richard Strauss even, insisting that the smallest note in the measure is the most important, and imploring the strings, wind and brass to give full value to upbeats. Then again in French, perhaps Russian music, you might want to crunch the small note into the beat, and in the classical repertoire, you might want to cruch the appoggiatura, with the appropriate accent, Mozart's beloved "Scotch Snap".
There is a wonderful page (106) when Thurmond writes one measure of a Haydn Symphony, to show the rhythmic variety of five differing parts, flute - oboes - bassoon - violins - viollas,celli and basses....no big deal, but just needing care over the articulation and stress, so that the counterpoint of articulation is clarified.
How many hundreds of performances of wind music do we hear nowadays with good tone, intonation, balance, but without the detail of texture and phrasing. Thurmond will I am sure help us to re-think our approach to phrasing and articulation.
"We all know what down and up means, but let's play as if there was only up, up, up".
A quotation from James Levine gets the book off to a good start, and the main thrust is for us to get our players to escape the tyrrany of the barline. Offbeats, upbeats, little notes, syncopations, these are the stuff of rhythmic variety. we do not need our players to study Thumond, but we do need to insist that they lighten accompaniment, and that they phrase not necessarily in the most obvious way but with freedom, ingenuity and a perception of the individualtiy of each phrase. Only then can we begin to make music with our wind groups which will rival a string quartet, a pianist or a symphony orchestra.
Thanks to Timothy Foley, Donald DeRoche, Paula Holcomb and the WASBE Research Committee for introducing me to this wonderful book, and to Baylor University for giving me some time to investigate this. We hope to pursue this approach to musical performance in our Conference sessions at Jönköping.
See y'all there.
Tim Reynish