Baroque interpretation and articulation for the modern flutist – Part 3

If you haven’t read yet part 1 and part 2, I recommend you to start reading them first.

In this part I would like to offer to you few suggestions and ideas how to integrate Baroque articulation into your daily practice routine.

As explained in part 1 and 2, the different notes we play were not expected to be equally played – not dynamics-wise nor length-wise. These days though we are trained in many cases to play our scales, exercises and pieces in the most equal way possible and that creates a habit which is hard to break when approaching baroque music.
Therefore, I strongly recommend to you to add few simple but effective baroque articulation exercises to your daily practice routine (and I hope you do have one) and develop new sensibility and awareness for the baroque articulation and how it differs from the ‘modern’ articulation.

➕ Ex. 1 – Add baroque articulated scales to your daily practicing routine

Whether you use Taffanel & Gaubert or Moyse or any other warm up/scales exercises, add the following exercise to your routine:

You can use every day/week a different combination of articulation. Make sure to apply the baroque interpretation rules in order to create a clear difference between the baroque and the modern way.

These are of course only examples for scales with different articulations and the way they should be play. You can and shall apply it through all your scales (all major and minor scales) and registers.

🔔 Ex. 2 – Bell notes – One step further

Remember the Bell-notes exercise? Now you can use the same technique with more notes and get the same effect. This exercise helps you to continue the process of developing your lips flexibility.

Play the next exercise:

Ex. A is a one note Bell-note.
Ex. B should have the same characteristics from Ex. A, but with a change of note.

After you feel comfortable with playing this exercise in different keys with thirds intervals, you can make the interval bigger (fourths, fifths etc.) and increase the difficulty.

I have created for you a FREE PDF file with the exercises. You can download it, print and use for yourself and your pupils/students:

Enjoy experimenting,
Ory

Ory Schneor is a principal flutist with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, Tongyeong Festival Orchestra and member of the Geneva Camerata. He is teaching masterclasses around the world and he is the founder and instructor at FLUTEinWIEN