A Plea for Musical Phrasing from the Start

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phrasing and inflection, rehearsal technique

Though I’m not a “music educator” per se, I have worked daily with flute (and sometimes band) students of all ages and abilities for a very long time. What I can predict with a great deal of accuracy for you is where students are going to breathe, especially if their only musical experience has been in band. Where would you guess? They are going to breathe on the bar line, whether it fits the phrase or not. This is true for beginners and frequently for fairly advanced high school students. It’s been my observation over all the years I’ve spent teaching lessons in schools, that the vast majority of times, the kids are rehearsed and taught to practice measure to measure, single beat to single beat from practically the day they start playing their instrument. I genuinely would like to know why this is. As a consequence, I hear kids play everything from beat to beat and measure to measure, regardless of phrase structure. In fact, the kids seem to be completely oblivious to the idea that a musical phrase is a thing. 

We all know the melodies shown here because we use them all the time with beginners. In the first two tunes, the phrases are clearly straight two bar phrases with the correct breathing on the bar line. The implied harmony shows us this, as does the poetry of these well known songs. Where I guarantee we run into trouble is when  we start to introduce tunes that have a pick-up of some sort and/or phrases that end after the bar line. The commas show the correct breaths. The red check marks show where I predict for you that kids will breathe unless you have taken the time to explain otherwise. (Kids who sing tend to have a much better understanding of breathing and phrasing.) If you know the words to this song, it becomes immediately apparent why the red check marks are so very incorrect. Who takes a breath before the very last……word? “O give me a….home where the buffalo…..roam” Nobody talks like this nor do they sing like this. Why do we let kids play their instruments like this? Why don’t we have kids sing more? (A topic for another time.) They would develop a more intuitive sense for good phrasing.

It does take a few extra minutes to explain phrasing and correct breathing to your students in the context of whatever piece you are preparing for the next concert. I am certain that there is more phrasing that starts and ends in the middle of a measure than ends squarely on the bar line at virtually every level of playing and in every style/period of composition. We want our students to love music. I really believe it is essential to not only teach them to form an embouchure, blow with an energized air column and develop sound technique, but to teach them the language of music, i.e., phrasing and inflection. When one learns to respect and observe the phrasing, developing an emotional connection the music comes as a natural consequence.

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.

A Few Thoughts on Training Musicians

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rehearsal technique

If you asked me if I call myself a flutist or a flautist, I think the best answer I could give is that it doesn’t really matter because I consider myself a musician first, who just happens to play the flute. If you had asked Marcel Moyse the same question, I’m sure he would have said something to the same effect. He spent his career playing in the pit of the Opera Comique in Paris and performing with some of the top musicians, both instrumentalists and singers, of his day. He was so inspired by the example of musicianship and phrasing modeled out by these great artists, he compiled his famous Tone Development Through Interpretation, along with the 24 Little Melodic Studies and 25 Little Melodic Studies. These three books are essentially training manuals of phrasing, inflection, style and interpretation.

You might say to me that this material is only for advanced players at the conservatory level and professionals. And my response is the principles demonstrated in these three books are universal to music making at any level, from the youngest beginner to world famous concert artists. We need to live and breathe these principles into every note, every phrase that we play and teach. What are they?

• Teaching the hierarchy of beats in every time signature. In 4/4 beats 1 and 3 are strong, 2 and 4 are weak. In 3/4 beat 1 is strong, 2 is weak and 3 is weaker and so forth. And weak goes to strong. In other words, 4 leads to 1 and 2 leads to 3.
• Teach phrases or parts of phrases rather than measure to measure. Many phrases start with some sort of anacrusis. It can be as short as a 16th note or as long as half a measure. The anacrusis always leads to the down beat. Always make your rehearsal technique or practicing musical rather than just about mastering the technical skills.
• Teach correct breathing habits by how you rehearse your ensembles. In other words, breathe with the phrases or parts of phrases. Phrases are like musical sentences. Breathe at the ends of phrases or in the natural pause in a phrase. The biggest phrasing crime I see kids commit is breathing before the very last note of a phrase that ends after the bar line in the next measure.
• Teach your students the difference between a strong ending and a weak ending to a phrase. Have you ever noticed that strong dissonances often fall on strong beats in order to resolve into a consonance on the next weak beat? It is correct to lean into the dissonance to make the resolution sweeter.

It is easier than you might think to teach these principles right from the very beginning. If you teach them inflection and phrasing from the start, the kids learn to phrase naturally, musically and intuitively almost without knowing they are doing it. If you wait several years into their instrumental training, it is much more difficult to help them to phrase. The kids get locked into thinking it’s all about technique rather than using technique, tone, articulation and inflection to make music.

If you find these entries helpful, subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back next week for another flute tip. Please comment and feel free to ask questions. Maybe the answer to your question will be the next flute tip. Find me on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.