Introduction...

I worked with Mr. Schaeftlein several hours each day for one week. The lessons, conducted in my hotel room, in his summer home, backstage at the symphony hall, or even around the swimming pool, were an inspirational exposure to a distinguished artist. Many of my students have, I hope, benefited second-hand from the information I gained during my lessons.

Mr. Schaeftlein died on February 15, 1986. 1 hope that by transcribing some of his comments many others will be able to learn something from him about the oboe, about music, and about how a fine musician learns his art. Mr. Schaeftlein will be greatly missed.

On his oboe study and his early life in Austria...

JS: I was born in 1929 in Graz, Austria, and I went to school in Austria until the age of eighteen. I had played the recorder as a small boy, from the age of five, and was influenced greatly by my father. He was not a professional musician, but played the viola and the piano. I was always sitting under the piano when he played from the Well-Tempered Piano. I have liked Bach for as long as I can remember! I had a sister who also played recorder, and my father thought it would be good to form a group. He played the bass, then he ordered my mother to start recorder, and she played the alto. My sister played the tenor and I played the soprano, and when I was seven to ten years old we gave several public concerts. Later I played the violin, but I was not gifted on the violin, and I also played a little piano, but also without much success. When the war finished - well we had some trouble in this country during the war, and I did not do anything for two years. Then I started at the Musical Academy in Vienna as a new student on the oboe. This was in 1947. I had had the experience of a few months of oboe with the first oboe in Graz, but then I started in Vienna and changed instruments and got the Viennese oboe, and again with my first teacher I started from the very beginning. My first teacher was the principal oboist of the Vienna Philharmonic. I had a wide range of study - if I would finish everything I start I would be a composer, a teacher for high school, many things! I found that the oboe was the right thing for me. In my fifth year at the Music Academy, my last year, I was already principal oboe in the Tonkunstler Orchestra, a small orchestra that plays in cities around Vienna. When I had the chance to go to Japan (I was not married at the time!) I took that opportunity. I was the first oboe in the NHK Orchestra. I came back to Austria and in 1955 started to be the first oboist in the Volksopera Orchestra in Vienna, and we did a lot of recording.

DH: I have some recordings with that orchestra.

JS: Yes, we did a lot of recording, both before my time and during it, so I don't know if you have me on those recordings or not. I was there from '55 to '59, and in the last year I was also the first oboe in the Vienna Symphony. It was kind of an audition for them and for me. Meanwhile, I kept playing in the Volksopera, and I must say, I have played enough opera in my life. I like much better to be on the stage, playing with the symphony.

On the Viennese oboe...

DH: What pitch do you tune to in the Vienna Symphony?

JS: A-445. We've tried to bring it down, and though the official pitch is 445, it may be that some days we are playing a little flatter. There was no official pitch for a while, but the harpist had a tuning fork that was 447, and she wanted the pitch to be not too flat.

DH: Does this tuning pitch have anything to do with the oboes you play?

JS: Yes, our instruments are constructed to play at A-445. The history of the Viennese oboe is interesting. In about 1880 a very gifted oboist came from what is now Czechoslovakia to Vienna with an oboe made by Golde. Golde is the man we call the father of the Viennese oboe, though he was working in Dresden. The Czech oboist, from Prague, had much success in Vienna, and his colleagues in other groups forced all the other oboists to change to his kind of instrument. That instrument he brought played at about A-445, the same high pitch we have today. Vienna was at that time flatter, so they constructed oboes to bring the pitch down with the same bore and keywork as the Golde oboe. During the next years the pitch gradually came up, and they found that they had to reconstruct the old instruments, and now since maybe 1937 or '38 we have newly built instruments at the pitch of 445. Vienna is somehow an island because of the instrument situation. The often-mentioned Vienna oboe is used only in Vienna, but in Vienna now it is necessary to use these oboes in order to become a member of any important orchestra. We have the feeling that it is our job to defend the existence of this instrument because of the many composers who have written for this very instrument. Keep in mind that the man brought the "Vienna Oboe" from Prague. Dvorak composed with this instrument in mind, and in Vienna Brahms and Bruckner composed their late symphonies with this oboe player in mind. So you can understand that the composers were influenced by this instrument. For example, the 2nd oboe has to play low notes so soft in Dvorak and playing low notes softly is easier on the Vienna oboe than on the French oboe.

On reeds...

DH: Do you use different kinds of reeds for different music, say, a different reed for Mozart than for Strauss?

JS: My way with reeds is to have many reeds, not just one reed that plays, but many reeds, and then to see which important piece I have to play and then to select from these reeds the best reed for this particular piece. Normally I do not make reeds for a specific occasion. I try to make reeds that have their own personality. I don't give it the personality, it develops its best quality on its own. Some cane is different from other cane, sometimes you change little things in the scrape, you don't know exactly what you did, and then the reed plays in a certain way. Then you have to wait to try the reed in a rehearsal. I don't work on reeds for a specific work. What I do is to make 100-150 reeds a year. It depends on when I have time to do that. Today is bright, I won't be making reeds! If it were raining, I might be making reeds.

DH: How difficult is making reeds for the Baroque oboe compared with the modern oboe?

JS: It is about the same.

DH: That difficult, huh?

On Baroque music and the Baroque oboe...

DH: How has your playing of Baroque music changed in the last several years since you have been playing Baroque oboe with the Concentus Musicus?

JS: Of course there is much influence from the very instrument I am playing. You get many ideas about how to play from the Baroque oboe itself. The other thing is that I am studying old descriptions of instruments and that is very interesting. If you read, for instance, the Quantz book and you really understand what the man says, you would change things in your modern oboe playing.

DH: Do you play Baroque music differently on the Baroque oboe than on the modern oboe?

JS: I do not want to play it differently. I have played the Bach Concerto for Oboe and Violin many times, both before I started Baroque oboe and after. It was very interesting to me that the last time I played it on modern oboe I wanted to play it very differently than the previous times on modern oboe. So this was the influence of the Baroque oboe and of getting more information about Baroque music. And of course working with Harnoncourt was very influential.

DH: When did you start to play the Baroque oboe?

JS: When I moved to the Vienna Symphony I was immediately a member of the Concentus Musicus, but at first only on recorder. We tried at this time to find original oboes, and it took us two or three years. In July 1962 1 played my first public concert on the Baroque oboe. I started playing the Baroque oboe in a different way than a student normally would. I started with the instrument, and I had to find out for myself how to make reeds for that instrument, to find out which form of staples were good, that sort of thing. That is the hard way! I had the instrument for a year before I played the first concert. I started to play at home, and. started with pieces in C major or D major,, because the flat keys are more difficult. I could not understand why people composed in keys with many flats! So I started with a Telemann Quartet in C major, and had a good success. But I was a very beginner, remember, so I used the same piece for the next concert. It was very difficult at first. But those were the two important concerts. The next April I played the 2nd Brandenburg. I was forced to learn in large steps.

DH: You played the Bach Concerto with David Oistrakh, didn't you? That must have been a thrill.

JS: Yes, it was. He was a very kind partner. He not only played he also conducted, but he was always asking me "how do you want to play this?" and then "if you don't mind, I will play it this way. " Then sometimes he would say "OK, we'll do it your way" because he had to play the same phrase before or after me, or he might say "if you do not mind, would you change to this way?"

On articulation...

JS: I do not double tongue at all. I find I can single tongue fast enough to play, say, La Scala di Seta. I would have to practice that if it appeared, but it would be OK.

On breathing...

JS: It helps to think of a dog sniffing something, inhaling gradually in short bursts. This helps me check where I am putting the air. The shoulders should never go up when you breathe. It is only the abdomen - if I am breathing deeply I can see much movement. For an oboe player it is important to change the air so you don't get stale air in the lungs. For instance in the Bach Concerto slow movement I have points where I say "here breathe in" and "here breathe out." Then you can really recover. That can be a problem - sometimes the brain does not get enough oxygen. I remember a performance of the lst Brandenburg in a room with candles. I had asked the third oboe to play in the Minuet, to help me a little after the oboe trio. I did not have enough oxygen in my brain to remember this, so I went right on playing!

About the writer...

The interviewer, David Hawkins, has been a professor of oboe at the School of Music at East Carolina University since 1977. A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, he studied with Richard Woodhams and with Wayne Rapier.

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