Four lines into his first rehear­sal of Cecile Chaminade’s Concertina with flutist Marcel Moyse, conductor Arturo Toscanini put down his baton. Later he ex­plained: "I was surprised. This man knows music."
   Marcel Moyse knew music and taught it to others, and through his students, as well as recently discovered videotapes, those who never knew him can gain some of his knowl­edge. A new generation of musicians should learn about this figure whose musicianship reflected the traditions of several centuries.
   Toward the end of his life, Moyse lamented "Music is dead." The im­mutable rules of music he had learned were rarely observed late in the 20th century. He felt that music and lan­guage have many things in common: "the interrogation point, interdiction, preposition, and conjunction." His musical laws had much in common with the inflections of speech. For ex­ample, the weak ending occurs in mu­sic as it does in every language.

   Moyse sang, demonstrating from his own 24 Petites Etudes No. 1. One would never stress the last syllable in any language. Singing "Oh, yes I love you" in English one would never ac­cent the you, unless, as Moyse pointed out, there was some question whom you loved.
   For Moyse other points of grammar in music included the appoggiatura and syncopation. He pointed out how the original meanings of the words il­lustrate their musical purpose. "Ap­poggiatura means to lean, to press,"¹ he said as he bore down on an embar­rassed young student’s shoulder. "Why did the composer write the ap­poggiatura (a nonharmonic tone on a strong beat)? Because he loved the principal note."
   He went on to say that syncopation comes from Latin for a missed heart­beat, a heart attack, or fainting spell,² evoking an image of falling backward in a dead faint. According to Moyse, it should be preceded by a silence, have an initial impetus, then come away. "Of course, you should not vi­brate on the syncopation. Can you imagine a man falling back in a faint going eh-eh-eh-eh?" Often, the syn­copated note is followed by shorter notes that are part of the falling-away gesture:

   Without accenting these little notes, make them part of the fall, as if the syncopated note is the head of a com­et and the little notes that follow are particles in the comet’s tail.

   Moyse’s rules of syntax are back in vogue under a new guise: original per­formance practice. His sculpting of appoggiaturas and weak endings would even please such present-day baroque experts as Christopher Hagwood or Trevor Pinnock. This is surprising, considering that Moyse was a relic in our time, a living remnant of the 19th-century tradition. He knew many masters who were students in the late 1800s, including Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Toscanini, Walter, and Caruso. During the 19th century the art of improvisation was more prevalent in classical music than it is today. Such composers as Beethoven and Liszt were renowned for their im­provisational creativity in concert, which some reported was greater than their written music. Improvising was equally prevalent in the flute world. Moyse reminisced about his teacher, Philippe Gaubert, who created end­less melodic cascades with beautiful modulations. Such performers were extremely well versed in the theory of tonal music. Because they could im­provise like their baroque and classical ancestors of just a century earlier, they knew what was structural or ornamental in earlier literature. In baroque music the performer added these ornaments, naturally bringing out the structural notes and connect­ing them freely with light ornamental passing notes like cobwebs draped over pillars. In classical and romantic music, composers wrote out these or­namental notes within the same tonal tradition, and performers could recog­nize them as ornamental. The appog­giaturas and other nonharmonic tones were shocking as they formed disso­nant intervals with the bass.
   Today many performers are not well versed in harmonic structure and have become accustomed to playing atonal passages, so dissonances are no longer shocking. As a result, the tendency is to play everything the same, without inflection or recogni­tion of syntax. Moyse, a composer as well as an educated 19th-century mu­sician, provides a link to Western mu­sic’s tonal heritage. Through his un­derstanding of tonal structure, he reduced a phrase to skeletal form; often he sang this passage in solfege, defying his students to identify it.

   Rarely could anyone recognize it as the skeletal form of a passage from the last movement of Mozart’s Concerto in D major, K. 314. Then Moyse added the appoggiaturas, trills, and ad­ditional chord notes that make the passage recognizable. "You see, the music is like a squelette (skeleton)." Pointing to his own anatomy, he would sing the passage:

   He explained that composers used or­naments to bring out the strong parts of a phrase. Just as the shoulder is stronger than the elbow, the down­beat of the second measure is stronger than the second beat of the first mea­sure and thus has not only an appog­giatura but also a trill.
   These rules of syntax do not mean there is only one way to play a phrase; but as in spoken language, certain ways of inflecting a phrase are unac­ceptable. No one quotes Shake­speare’s Hamlet as "To be or not to be, that is the question." The range of normal inflection nevertheless offers myriad possibilities for fine shadings and subtleties to vary the sentence’s meaning. Each of the following is an acceptable inflection:

• To be or not to be, that is the question.
• To be or not to be, that is the question.
• To be or not to be, that is the question.

   The same is true in music; accenting certain notes within a phrase is simply wrong, but correct syntax allows many possibilities for individual ex­pression.

   Moyse based much of his art on im­itating great singing voices. As a 19-year-old flutist in the Paris Opera Orchestra, he was struck by how singers Titarufo, Caruso, Tettrazini, Barientos, and the young Marcoux could color phrases. In 1912 Moyse toured America for the first time with the great singer Nellie Melba. "I tried to analyze how she had learned this kind of coloratura; the term also means color. This flexibili­ty and inflection of the tone in­spired me to write some exercises to practice my sonority."
   Moyse compiled the arias he heard in­to an anthology he called Tone Development Through Interpretation and used them to develop color in his playing. He explained,

In music there is not only one flute tone. Vannie Marcoux said we should have a color for every sentence. When he sang Don Quix­ote he found an expression of resig­nation, color so impressive I tried to imitate it. When he wanted to ex­press joy, the voice became bright, brilliant, conquering. On the flute I play some passages with expression, some smiling with pleasure; for me this is music. If some people like mu­sic to show that the fingers can jump on one another without regard for expression, that is their business, not mine.

   Today few students know how to use Moyse’s Tone Development Through Interpretation, his 24 Petites Etudes, and other books. He used a 19th-century style of rubato which is seldom heard today. In lessons Moyse talked, sang, and gestured to shape a phrase and not allow the wrong part of the phrase to stick out "like a per­son with his elbows sticking out." A new generation of flutists can profit from learning Moyse’s musical ap­proach.

—————
Pictured above: Julia Bogorad with Marcel Moyse following a performance at the Marlboro Festival in 1978. Carol Wincenc is pictured on the left.

The Marcel Moyse videotapes were made at his seminar in West Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1975. They include coaching sessions with Julia Bogorad, Carol Wincenc, Max Schonfield, Alex Ogle, and others, plus and interview with Moyse.

¹Appoggiatura (It., from apoggiare, to lean upon, rest): "a grace note or pass­ing tone prefixed to an essential note of a melody." The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Ox­ford University Press, 1971), p. 102.
²Syncope (from 13th century Old French sycopin): failure of the heart’s action, resulting in loss of con­sciousness and sometimes death. Syn­copation is the action of beginning a note on a normally unaccented part of the bar, and sustaining it into the normally accented part, so as to pro­duce the effect of shifting back or an­ticipating the accent." Ibid, p. 3210.

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   I became fascinated with whistle tones after reading Thomas Nyfenger’s Music and the Flute where he describes how to produce the sound of the whistle tone, “If we begin by fingering third octave A, we find if the embouchure opening used for a sustained mezzoforte can be maintained or held stationary while sending up less and less air – difficult because our old habit is to close the lip opening gradually, as in a diminuendo – the note will ‘fall’ through a number of nebulous, unusable tones and finally result in the emission of a miniature version of the original A. This is a whistle tone.”
   Whistle tones are difficult to demonstrate through words. If you have never heard a whistle tone before, look up some examples on YouTube.
   My teacher Clement Barone, former piccoloist of the Detroit Symphony, used to tell me, “There is always another way.” We would experiment in lessons with finding new ways to create different sounds. I keep this in mind when practicing and teaching whistle tones. Teaching whistle tones to students for the first time can be a big challenge as they have to learn to think and feel outside of the box.
   Here are several ways to go about finding the whistle tone on the flute:
   1. Play a low G and back off on the air. Don’t taper the note with the lips, just simply let the air slow until it is almost silent. If you don’t push your lips forward as you would in a diminuendo, you will most likely hear the whistle tone at the end of the sound.
   2. Another way to produce whistle tones is by fingering notes in the high register. This is the opposite of the above exercise. Start from silence and try to gently blow across the embouchure plate like you are fogging up a mirror while fingering the top octave G, for example. If you produce a low register tone, then you are blowing too hard. Pretend that you are blowing many octaves lower and super softly. If you can’t get beyond the low register tone, this can be frustrating at first. This is where the experimenting comes into play.
   Try slightly separating the lips and relaxing the corners of the embouchure if they are tense. Think of having a tall embouchure and visualizing a little cushion behind the lips so that the lips are not touching the teeth. Roll the flute out to open up the embouchure plate and slowly roll it back in until you find the sound. Drop the jaw and create space between the molars. Release the pressure of the flute on the chin. Try whistling or singing the note first. Change the vowel sound in the mouth. 
   If at first you don’t succeed, be patient. This is like asking you to touch your toes when you have never ever stretched your hamstrings. It takes flexibility and time. Try this for a few minutes at the end of your practice every day – it may take a week or two to produce the whistle tone.

   After years of teaching whistle tones, I find that the primary cause of not being able to produce them is the proximity of the lips to each other. They are usually too tight or close together. For this very reason, practicing whistle tones is a great exercise for intermediate flutists to unhook the corners of their embouchure and begin to support their sound with their air, rather than the lips. When I began playing the piccolo in high school, I often developed a case of piccolo lips and was searching for a way to relax my embouchure to the flute. Whistle tones have always been the answer for me.
   With this in mind, I created the following exercise:
   1. Begin by opening your mouth completely. Slowly bring your lips together to form the embouchure on the flute, but begin the blowing while the lips are still apart. I call this my horsey face. It is not a pretty look, but if you approach the embouchure with the lips completely apart, you will have no chance of the lips being too close together.
Again, be patient with this, but this one usually helps frustrated students find results quite quickly.
   2. While fingering low C, gently blow the whistle tone. This will cause the entire spectrum of the harmonic series to appear. I like to stay with low C for a while and then change to low C#. The different harmonics will flip in and out on their own as the air stream fluctuates, sounding like an improvisation. Try to pick an upper register note and sustain it. You might suddenly notice how the beating of your heart alone can make these very sensitive harmonics change.
   Once you can sustain the whistle tone, practice whistle tones for 10 minutes a day.  Start on top octave G and ascend to the highest C and then come back down to top octave G#, holding each tone for one complete minute. Practice this in 10 second intervals, six times per note. If you lose the tone, don’t stop. Try to keep blowing and adjust your embouchure with the experiments mentioned above. When you are done, reward yourself by playing a first octave G with a real tone.
   Use this chromatic exercise as well. Continue as low as you can go:

   William Kincaid, former principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, mentioned using these in the orchestra to quietly find his embouchure before a high register entrance.  To discover the correlation, try this exercise:
  

   Whistle tones actually carry quite drastically in the concert hall. Sometimes I will think I am playing a discreet little whistle tone on my piccolo during a rehearsal, and the entire violin section will turn around wondering where that noise is coming from.

   When it is after hours in your apartment or hotel room, you can always quietly play whistle tones. I love warming down with my 10-minute exercise while watching the 11 o’clock news, especially if I have an audition or big performance the next day.
   Pick a favorite melody and play it on whistle tone:

Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah by Saint-Saëns Using Whistle Tones

    Helen Blackburn, flute professor at West Texas A&M University, talks about the Zen of whistle tones. The harder you try, the more you have to surrender. They will get better over time, but don’t overdo it. Whistle tones are healthy for any flutist to practice. If they are impossible at first, I encourage you to experiment and find another way. You may discover a new and improved method for your flute embouchure and tone.

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    The third plane or the sheerly musical plane states that “music does exist in terms of the notes themselves and of their manipulation.” Listening while considering the notes, the rhythm, the harmony, the form etc. constitutes active listening.
    Musicians are primarily concerned with the third plane or active listening. It is imperative to play the correct notes, in tune, in time, at the proper dynamic, and in the right style. However, learning to be an active listener while playing takes concentration and diligence. A fellow conservatory student often asked, “How much did you practice today?” Guilt was felt if I couldn’t reply four hours, six hours or eight hours. On reflection who has total concentration for four, six or eight hours – no one. A better question would have been, “What did you practice today? What were you listening for? Did you make progress or did you hit the wall?”
    The role of teachers is to guide students through the process of what to practice, why it is important to practice this, practice techniques, and what to listen for in the finished product. Here are some ideas to accomplish more in less time.

The Lesson or Practice Session
    Divide the time into three parts: warmups/theoretical technical material, etudes, and repertoire. If you have only an hour, then each segment receives 20 minutes. If you have three hours, then each topic receives an hour each.
    Before beginning the warmups/theoretical technical material, most flutists find that a little mind/body work is advantageous. Whether you prefer yoga, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, or something else, the important thing is to be at your best when you pick up your flute for the day. I heard one pianist say as she was clearing up the breakfast dishes and doing a few household chores, she incorporated swerving gestures with her hands and arms. She was using the physical gestures of playing the piano with a beautiful sound while washing each dish or dusting a piece of furniture. Once her chores were completed, she sat at the piano and found that her arms already had experienced the gestures and relaxation of creating a beautiful sound. If you approach the flute while still tense from the day’s activities, the results of your practice will be less good. Come to the flute with relaxation, a clear mind, and with specific objectives to be accomplished.

Moving the Air
    For wind players moving the air is of primary importance. Sometimes I begin with one note in the middle of the range. With each played note, I think of spinning the sound for a few seconds, increasing the length of each note until I reach 15 or 20 seconds. I listen for the attack making sure it is clean and not sharp. Too much fast air at the beginning of a note produces a sharp beginning that lowers to the pitch as the note progresses. Better to have the note in tune from the first sound to the end of the sound. Ending with a small taper is good too. Tapering can be done by making the aperture smaller during the diminuendo but remaining cognizant of continuing to move the air stream. Joseph Mariano taught pushing the end of the flute forward to keep the pitch up. Most longer notes will be played with a triangular shape – strong at the beginning and less strong at the end. This is especially true when playing with additional parts because when you have a long note, someone else has moving notes that should be heard more prominently. Decaying on longer notes allows the listener to distinguish the separate parts more easily. Listen carefully to the vibrato cycles. The vibrato starts at the beginning of the note and should be continuous with the same structure. Check your posture. The arms are hung as is the jaw. Practice these notes while looking in a mirror making sure your overall posture and demeaner is what you want.
   Most flutists progress on to the first exercise in the Marcel Moyse De La Sonorite. This is probably the most famous tone exercise in the world. There are variations on this so do what pleases you as there is more than one way to accomplish what the exercise is about. Michel Debost told me that Moyse always intended this exercise to be played with vibrato. Why? Most flutists struggle with keeping the vibrato cycle going when changing fingering. Unfortunately, most slow or stop the vibrato when moving to the second note. Keeping the vibrato spinning takes a lot of concentrated listening. The other objective is this exercise is shown in the next lines where Moyse adds more notes into the slur. Here he is working on achieving a homogeneous sound throughout the range. This means the goal is to have one sound throughout the range – not a low octave buzz sound, a middle octave vibrant sound and a top octave screeching sound. Where the sound changes from a middle octave sound to a lower or upper octave sound should be so smooth that while it does change somewhat, the listener can’t tell exactly where.

Harmonics
    Practicing harmonics offers the best payoff for improving the sound of anything you can practice. I prefer placing the right-hand on the barrel (name plate) of the flute to position the embouchure plate well into my chin. Begin with the left-hand harmonics beginning with low octave G and overblowing to produce a middle octave G and then a top octave D. Do these in every possible combination or order (middle, high, low or high, low middle, etc.). Make the slurring from one harmonic partial to the next sound as clear and easily produced as possible. This will fine tune your embouchure technique. Playing vibrato cycles on a harmonic is more difficult than playing them on a regularly fingered note. This extra resistance improves the formation of the vibrato cycle. Repeat using each of the left-hand notes (G, A flat, A, B flat, B, C, C#) as the fundamental before progressing to the right-hand harmonics (low octave F, E, E flat, D, D flat, C, B).

 
Theoretical Technical Material
    This includes five-note major and minor patterns, scales of all kinds, thirds, sixths, arpeggios (major, minor, diminished, augmented) and seventh chords. Whether you use The Flute Scale Book by George & Louke, the Taffanel & Gaubert 17 Big Daily Exercises, or Vade Mecum by Walfrid Kujala, the content is similar. The goal is to eventually have all of these exercises by memory, in all keys at a fast tempo.

    At a lesson with Julius Baker in 1963, he remarked to make it as a professional musician, the flutist should be able to play the T and G at quarter note = 144. Now almost fifty years plus I suggest that number has moved up to about 200. For the exercises in compound meter (6/8, 9/8, 12/8) the tempo is in the range of 88 to 96 for the dotted quarter. Baker was known not only for his incredible sound but for his outstanding technique.
    When practicing this material ask, “What does my playing need and practice that?” Use various articulation patterns and marks, different rhythms, and a variety of dynamics. (See Michel Debost’s in this issue.)
    In practicing this material, remember there are two kinds of technique: slow technique and fast technique. Be sure to practice this material on a slow/fast rotation to develop articulate fingers. Remember the fingers move from the third joint back from the fingernail except for the left-hand index finger. Practicing with the metronome ticking on each note helps make the fingers articulate. The metronome may be set at very high speeds such as 200 or more. Another good practice technique is to alternate dynamics on the passage – playing one note forte and the next piano, then doing the opposite and finally playing the passage normally.
    Scale-like passages are more easily played than ones with the intervals of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh because more fingers are required to move. In some cases, some fingers move up while others move down. Practicing intervals while watching in a mirror adds a visual element to the aural one. William Kincaid taught students to linger for a nano second on the note before a skip of a fourth or more. During this lingering, the embouchure was positioned for the next note. This contributes to a seamless slur. Robert Willoughby taught a technique where you fill in first chromatically a large interval, then fill in diatonically, and if possible, by triads. The idea was to realize the actual size of the interval by knowing how many notes it took to fill in. Willoughby’s students are easily recognizable by their execution of intervals which contributes to a beautiful, intelligent musical line.

 
Vocalises and Etudes
    Instrumentalists have borrowed the idea of playing vocalizes from vocalists. They warm up by singing a simple pattern in a key and then repeating it on every step of their vocal range. The idea is to make each note as beautiful as possible and to create a homogeneous sound throughout the register. Instrumentalists also do this with the added idea of developing a technique thoughout the range. Explore  vocalizes by Andre Maquarre, John Wummer, D. S. Wood, and M. A. Reichert. As you progress through all the keys, both major and minor, notice that some keys are easier to make sound beautiful and in tune than others. Conquering all the keys adds to the musical and technical product. It is possible to do drone work with some of these vocalizes. This improves intonation. Or, you could work with a friend and alternate back and forth by group (In a group of four notes, one plays 2341, and the other the next 2341). This helps develop the ability to match another flutist’s tone and intonation.
    Flutists should always be reviewing old etudes and learning new ones. Many of the etude books have been written in all 24 major and minor keys. Learning to change from one key to the next successfully helps in playing accurately in chamber music and large ensembles. Most etudes focus on one technical issue and drill that issue throughout the entire etude. Before you launch in to play the entire etude, determine the technical issue the composer has presented so you are concentrating on the right objective. The greatest improvement in your playing will occur if you mark the phrases (or breathing places) and follow them exactly. This develops discipline in your overall playing and teaches how to use the air stream effectively. Luckily for flutists we have a huge repertoire of etudes – certainly enough for a lifetime. Some of my favorites are by Berbiguier, Andersen, Hugues, Altes, Kohler, Kummer, Furstenau, Soussmann, Paganini, Karg-Elert, Damase, Drouet, and Bach/Schindler.
    At first, set a goal of how many etudes you can learn in a week. This may be only one or two. Be realistic with the time you have. Make a commitment that is easily kept. If you are experienced at working on etudes, it may be that your goal is by the day rather than by the week.

Repertoire
    Always have something on your stand that you love to play. This will inspire you to keep practicing towards the reward. In selecting repertoire, select one piece from each of the style periods in which the flute existed: Baroque, Classic, Romantic and Contemporary. Also, when selecting repertoire, choose from the following genres – sonata, suite, concerto, and solo work – because each has its own set of intrinsic problems.
    Before starting to play, study the score from the piano part. Then listen to several recordings while following along with the score. Some players feel listening to recordings too soon hampers creativity. However, learning to interpret is a skill to be developed so listening is a way to learn musicianship.
    Mark the phrases and place breathing marks. The next steps are up to you. If it is a sonata, I may learn the recapitulation first, then the exposition, and lastly the development section. If you discover a place that is technically difficult, then stop and ask what is the problem. Then find etudes that work on this problem. If none exist, write your own. Otherwise, for the rest of your life, you will think, “Oh, here comes that difficult place at the top of page 3, lines 4 and 5.” This negative chatter impairs a spontaneous performance.
    Take a piece of white computer paper for each page of the flute score. Place the sheet over the music and trace the dynamics only. Then looking at the dynamics, you will easily see where the high points in the music are and the places to back off. Too many flutists learn a work mf though out and find it difficult to ever master the dynamics as they should be performed. The most interesting players have a wide range of dynamics.
    Recording yourself frequently helps develop a better sense of what you are playing. Listen for the obvious: clear attacks, bulbing (an unwritten crescendo on a longer note), evenness of fingers especially larger intervals, phrasing and musical line, dynamics, intonation, and a general sense of playing and communicating well.
    Once you know what you are listening for in practicing, practice sessions become something to look forward to and enjoyed. Many of us as children hated practicing because we found it tedious. Imagine if we had known what to listen for other than playing the right notes at the right time.

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