Suggestions For Practicing Technically Difficult Passages For Bassoon
by Stephan Weidauer
Saarbrucken, Germany
This article first appeared as "Anregungen zum Uben technisch schwerer Fagottstellen in "OBOE-KLARINETTE- FAGOTT - TRIO D'ANCHES. It is reprinted here in English translation by Allan Ware with the kind permission of the author and the publisher. -Ed.
This article deals exclusively with the practicing of difficult bassoon passages, as the title explains, but it should not create the impression that this is all that practicing is. The more essential part of
practicing and the part that is more intellectually taxing is, of course, the musical and interpretive work. However, nothing can circumvent the fact that the bassoonist, like every other instrumentalist, must spend a large portion of his or her time doing technical drills which polish the coordination of the brain with the movements of hands, tongue and the breathing apparatus. These will be demonstrated here with sample passages from the operatic and symphonic literature, but the methods mentioned here can also be applied to the solo and the chamber music literature as well.
One can approach the goal of perfectly mastering technically difficult passages from two sides at once:
1. Deductively:
From the individual bricks to the whole house.
The fact is that most of the music that we have to play consists of scales, triads and variations of basic chords. These must be intensively practiced over a long period of time, in all major and minor keys, (as well as wholetone, chromatic or twelve-tone scales) also in their varied forms (broken thirds and other broken interval exercises). Through this practice one is prepared to play difficult passages by having played the basic elements before. If one wishes to do this very thoroughly, one should practice no more than one scale and its closely related variations in a single day. In doing this, two hours can go by very quickly. Everybody can determine for themselves that, for instance, the Bassoon Concerto from Mozart "sits" better if one has thoroughly trained the playing of B-flat major, F-major, E-flat major and G-minor scales.
II. Inductively:
Recognizing the individual details in the whole structure.
In this article I will only be discussing this "inductive" type of
practicing. One can make a technical etude out of any particular passage from works of our composers. There is no limit to the fantasy one can apply in
doing this, but I will discuss five of the possibilities here:
1. From slow to fast
a) Step by step, one metronomic marking at a time.
b) Double the tempo.
2. Varying articulations and rhythms.
3. Practicing segments, dividing up the passage into its smallest units.
4. Expansion drills.
5. Longer, more complex etudes.
1a) Step by step, one metronomic marking at a time.
Even if it takes a lot of patience, it is a practically "foolproof' method to begin practising a passage in a very slow tempo and then to gradually increase the tempo by one (at the most two) metronomic marking at a time. A sixteenthnote passage with quarter note at mm=120 would be practiced at mm=60, then at 63, 69, etc. for example, until one could play the passage at mm=100 without any difficulty. One should quit at this tempo on the first day and on the next start anew, not at the fastest tempo achieved on the preceding day, but again very slowly. If the passage is then more steady, one can for example increase by bigger increments, i.e. mm=60, 80,100,120.
lb) Doubling the tempo.
A special form of polishing passages that already sit a bit better is to use the principle of doubling or multiplying the tempo, as in the following example from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro Overture.
Suggestion for practice:
2. Varying
the
articulation and rhythms.
There are a number on instructive works in which the respective editors give suggestions for varying the articulation and rhythms as a practice method. I would like to cite a few here.
C.L. HANON, Der Clavier-Virtuose. Wiesbaden/Boulogne 1923, S. 4
Ferdanand OUBRADOUS, Enseignement complet du Basson. Paris 1938.
Rolf Julius KOCH, Technik des Oboenspiels, Mainz 1990, S. 80
Martin GALLING, Klavieruben. In "40 Jahren Musikhochschule des Saarlandes." Saarbrucken 1987.
Now we will dissect the following passage from Mozart's Cosi fan Tutti, Finale
1 (Nr. 19)2
II) Rhythmic variations
III) Articulation and Rhythmic variations
The last three examples are admittedly a bit far-fetched, but they should serve to demonstrate the unlimited combinations possible. If one can play this last variation cleanly, then playing the original is like "falling off a log". By taking a detour in
practicing one has unconsciously tricked oneself into being able to play the excerpt well.
3. Practicing segments, dividing up the passage into its smallest units.
Practicing longer passages in smaller groups belongs to the basic repertoire of many instruments, methods and teachers. (See Archie CAMDEN, Bassoon Technique, London, 1962.)
In the following example the passage to be practiced is reduced to four notes, not through dividing the whole excerpt into four note groups, but rather through overlapping the groups, starting each time one note later and playing only one new tone further.
As an example we shall use the following excerpt for bassoon from the first Act of Rosenkavalier from Richard Straus. This passage, in octaves with the first violins, is meant to emphasize the clumsy bows of Baron von Ochs.
From it we can construct the following practice patterns:
4. Expansion Drills
One often finds expansion drills in language primers and texts as step-by-step exercise in training the ability to speak long sentences fluidly. Usually the drills start with the end of the sentence, then the next-to-the-last word is added, then the second-to-last word, etc. until the sentence is complete. (On this point one could refer to John DeFrancis, Beginning Chinese, New Haven, 1963, Pg. 183, as an example.) Starting "backwards" is not a bad idea for
practicing either, since it avoids the common mistake of always starting a passage from the beginning (and making the same mistake in the same place each time.)
From the passage in Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major alternating between two bassoons at sixteenth notes at mm=144, we can make two expansion drills.
(a) one from the beginning:
and (b) one from the end:
5. Longer, more complex etudes.
For many passages there are already prepared "classical" etudes, for other excerpts one could easily write similar etudes. (I would like to cite the following here:)
Julius WEISSENBORN, Fagottstudien, op. 8, vol. II, Nr. II, as a preliminary study to Schumann's
First Symphony.
Karel PIVONKA, Study for the execution of Smetana's
Die Verkaufte Braut,
in FORMACEK/TVRDAY,
School for Multiplex Staccato,
Prague 1976.
As a small tidbit in closing, I would like to present suggestions here for all etude oil one of the most famous of all bassoon solos from the
4th Symphony
of Beethoven.
Author's address:
Stephan Weidauer
Gauss-Str. 66
D-6600 SAARBRUCKEN
Germany
Translation by Allan Ware
END NOTE
2 See also the contribution of the author in OBOE-KLARINETTE-FAGOTT 2/89, "Uben -Ja bitte! Thoughts of a bassoonist about the lecture of Otto Friedrick Bollnows Buch " Vom Geist des Ubens", pp. 76-83.