The Joy of Feuillard – A Sequential Approach to Teaching Bow Technique (Part 27 – Feuillard No. 35 – Variations #26-41)
The Variations in today's Blog all deal with staccato and legato strokes across three strings in various combinations. The string crossings should all be executed with the upper arm. Because they are to be played in the middle of the bow the staccato strokes should be played with the lower arm. We should pay attention to the "catch and float" on all these staccato strokes: "catch" the string at the beginning of each note, and then "float" to release the sound for resonance. Each note should have a nice starting "k" sound. Variations #26 - #31: After he played Variation #26 fully (with four beats per measure) I asked Zach to only play two beats for each chord in order to save a bit of time in the lesson. By now [...]
The Joy of Feuillard – A Sequential Approach to Teaching Bow Technique (Part 26 – Feuillard No. 35 – Variations #10-25)
Today's Blog continues to explore the staccato and legato strokes over three strings, with 16 variations that coordinate these horizontal and vertical motions. Variations #10 - #13 I asked Zach to play the entire variations #10 and #11 with four repetitions to make sure that he was concentrating well. But then with Variation #12 I asked him to just do two repetitions in order to save some time in the lesson. Once the students have reached the point that they are concentrating well, and playing with more consistent accuracy, I usually ask them to cut some of the variations in half in order to save some time in the lessons. That will be the pattern in future lessons: doing a few variations full value, and then cutting them in half [...]
The Shape of Brahms: Looking at His Music
Brahms the Architect One of the keys to understanding the music of Johannes Brahms is through his use of shapes and sizes and the manipulation of them in building his architectural forms. He was always stretching motives and phrases, making them overlap, go in and out of sync, hiding the bar-line and bringing it in sight again. Irregular phrase lengths, hemiolas, working with conflicting slurs in order to make us unsure where the strong beat is - he had many tools to confuse us. What this playing with blocks of material means for us performers is that one should not fall in love with only one line and its details, everything is always part of a larger picture and while detail is important it always relates to larger structures. [...]
The Joy of Feuillard – A Sequential Approach to Teaching Bow Technique (Part 25 – Feuillard No. 35 – Variations #3-9)
The next seven variations of Feuillard No. 35 all combine legato and staccato playing in various configurations over three strings. The issues involve coordination, and figuring out how to play smooth string crossings alternating with "catch and float" staccato strokes. Variations #3 and #4: At this point, most students are still working with the underlying concepts that we discussed in the last Blog: the twist motion and the release of the fingers while doing these variations. Zach made a lot of progress while practicing these things during the week. Today's videos demonstrate that he is absorbing the new concepts, compared to the videos in last week's Blog. At the end of the next video, Zach had a "revelation" about the relationship between the twist motion and the release of [...]
The Joy of Feuillard – A Sequential Approach to Teaching Bow Technique (Part 24 – Feuillard No. 35 – Theme and Variations #1-2)
With today's blog we will begin our look at the Feuillard Theme No. 35, and the variations on that page which deal with string crossings on three strings. The main issue will be trying to get smooth connections while crossing the strings. This is a lifetime occupation for cellists and other string players. It is relatively easy to play legato on one string, but to play legato while changing strings is truly difficult. There are a number of things we can do to try and get smooth string crossings. One of the concepts, as mentioned before, is to overlap the notes slightly - just as pianists do when they play legato. Another thing we can do is to make sure that there is a nice "ring" to the sound, [...]