learning recorder duets (and generally, trills)

[anacrusis]

I've just got back from my recorder lesson - our teacher had put two of her pupils in contact with each other, and after we'd met up, we realised there was a lot we didn't know about how to set about putting a duet together. The logical next step was to organise a joint lesson, which we had today...

We had a couple of Telemann pieces to try out - wonderful stuff, with the melody being batted back and forth between the two of us. It quickly became apparent though that the music would sound boring if we just copied each other all the time, and kept all the articulation the same, so we experimented with different patterns - echo effects by playing repeated phrases more staccato, legato tonguing to contrast with lighter tonguing, and thinking all the time about where the music peaks and subsides. The score had very few marked ornaments, so we filled in cadential trills, and learned about the different speed trills need to go at, depending on the pace of the movement. Our teacher likens the slow baroque trill to letting a tennis ball bounce - bouuunce.......bouuunce...bounce..bouncebouncebouboubo - very effective imagery for how to do this well.
Another nice facet of the lesson - we didn't half laugh a lot too .
Now to try to persuade a bunch of modern string players to do their trills like that...

[scurra]

Hate to break it to you, but I'm in two string chamber groups (one's a quartet, one's an orchestra) playing mainly Baroque stuff, and we do do our trills like that!

I think the accel. trills sound more exciting on wind instruments though...

[YetAnotherKlavierist]

accel trills on piano sound beautiful. The trick is to vary the articulation as well as the dynamic and speed. If one plays slightly detaché during the faster sections of a trill and legato during the slower sections, the result is quite remarkable. It's also a nice auditory illusion - the flutter of notes gives the impression of it being a lot faster than it actually is.

As for playing trills the wrong way up - my AB edition of Bach's WTC suggest that in places where no credible recordings would dare. They also suggest bolt-rigid trills, eugh.

[Steve Hopwood]

Apr 16, 2008 21:06:16 GMT YetAnotherKlavierist said:

accel trills on piano sound beautiful. The trick is to vary the articulation as well as the dynamic and speed. If one plays slightly detaché during the faster sections of a trill and legato during the slower sections, the result is quite remarkable. It's also a nice auditory illusion - the flutter of notes gives the impression of it being a lot faster than it actually is.

My limited understanding of 'detaché' (never got my head around it properly) is that it is a string playing technique. How does this apply to the piano?

As for playing trills the wrong way up - my AB edition of Bach's WTC suggest that in places where no credible recordings would dare. They also suggest bolt-rigid trills, eugh.

'eugh' sums it up rather well. Players' best interests are served by ignoring editorial 'realisations' of trills and learning to play them musically by listening to master pianists perform them. Some of the nonsense printed by the AB has to be seen to be believed.

[Steve Hopwood]

OIops. Just realised that this thread is being hijacked by a discussion about playing trills on the piano. Sorry. Didn't mean to.

Maybe we can continue the trill discussion somewhere else, YAP?

[anacrusis]

I'm quite happy to get my trills wherever they turn up ;D

I have a Bach sonata with a looooong trill in it too - still, the apoggiatura is always longer than the rest of it, the way I play it.

More on ornamentation - my new teacher is good at getting us to think about these too - and the various ways to decorate the music. Part of the trick seems to be just having the courage to give them a go...

[YetAnotherKlavierist]

Apr 16, 2008 23:39:33 GMT Steve Hopwood said:

My limited understanding of 'detaché' (never got my head around it properly) is that it is a string playing technique. How does this apply to the piano?

It's a technique I've borrowed from harpsichord, the practice of which was in turn borrowed from wishing to imitate detaché on string instruments.

Imagine that one had to make alternate up- and down-bows when playing adjacent notes. Naturally, this would create minute gaps between the strokes. Now, likewise, one can apply the technique when playing trills or rapid-fire scales: not staccato, not legato, a sort-of middle ground. With legato, the sounds blur marginally at the edges due to the resonance of the previous notes. With staccato, the gap is apparent. This way, however, through cutting notes ever so slightly short the resonance dies off just as the next note comes in. The resulting clarity is quite wonderful when applied well, and can prevent rapid trills or scales from becoming too stodgy and dominating the other parts. On the harpsichord, where trills emphasise notes, it's a particularly important skill for when the 'emphasised' note isn't the important one; but still, on piano, having both this and dynamics to play with gives a rich palate of textures from which to draw.

There are a few performance practices like that which may seem idiosyncratic - for instance, considering string crossing on larger leaps and leaving a slight gaps. On the one hand one might think 'but why, you have a keyboard instrument, that's a weakness of string instruments so why replicate it?'. But on the other, if one looks at the music, a lot of keyboard repertoire was written in instrument-ensemble forms - once the introduction has passed, and before the contrapuntal orgy, the first movement of Bach's second Partita, for instance, could be seen as a flute solo with continuo. Here, the performance sounds better if one considers string crossing in the bass - it gives it some shape, and provides some outline articulation.

[anacrusis]

One of the things I got clobbered about when foolish enough to have competed in one of those Competition Festival things was my trills in a very early baroque piece - by Dario Castello, 1625- these do start on the note marked, but I was playing later baroque trills, whoops.

Thanks to the way recorders were built in Renaissance and early baroque times, trill fingerings were a bit of an approximation, too, so it's permissible to have really wildly wide trill intervals - sounds really edgy and crazy, but it works .

[Steve Hopwood]

Apr 17, 2008 10:00:33 GMT YetAnotherKlavierist said:

Apr 16, 2008 23:39:33 GMT Steve Hopwood said:

My limited understanding of 'detaché' (never got my head around it properly) is that it is a string playing technique. How does this apply to the piano?

It's a technique I've borrowed from harpsichord, the practice of which was in turn borrowed from wishing to imitate detaché on string instruments.

Etc

Thanks YAK (you do know what a Yak is, don't you?). It was the terminology that confused me.

Pianists can create this effect by not retaining contact with the keys. This articulation is especially useful when playing Mozart.

Truly great Mozart players seem to create a sort of shimmer of sound that lingers after a passage has finished. The technique you describe is how they do it. The effect is indeed magical.

[jod]

The trouble with learning trills for recorder duets is making sure your other player plays the same trill as you do.

[anacrusis]

hehe, that's exactly the difficulty we got into - not just recorder duets, either, I have a Bach trio sonata I play with my husband (his two hands make up the other two voices of the trio, in case anyone was wondering), and we also have to match trills frequently.

Do modern orchestras and chamber groups decide on trill frequency in the same way, or is it just a case of go as fast as you can?

[jod]

It's just as bad when I'm singing to accompaniment too. The Pergolesi Stabat Mater was the most fun. Not only do the two singers have to agree on trill frequency, the the harmonies are so close tuning and blend of voice have to be really accurate. Finding a Soprano and Counter Tenor who blend really well is an art form in its self.

[anacrusis]

counter tenors
have you ever heard Jochen Kowalski's voice?

[jod]

No. Spent the morning reading facebook and listening to Andreas Scholl.

I have a Counter-tenor friend who I perform this with. Any period Instrument Orchestra wishing to use a dream team should contact me.