Klarinet Archive - Posting 000865.txt from 1998/04

From: Jacqueline Eastwood <eastwooj@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: wind instruments and circus tricks
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 17:25:35 -0400

On Thu, 16 Apr 1998, Fred Jacobowitz wrote:

<BIG SNIP>

> The fact that a player uses circular breathing does not mean that
> the absence of breaths will be unmusical. It simply means that the player
> has not done his/her homework and made the phrasing completely natural.
> Violins don't have to stop for breath. Are they unmusical????
>
>
> Fred Jacobowitz
> Clarinet/Sax Instructor, Peabody Preparatory
>
>
>
Dan's original post referred to the human voice as the parallel. While
violins obviously don't HAVE to stop for breath, they still need to
"breathe" in the musical line to match phrasing with winds or voices.
I've seen both keyboard and string players instructed to breathe in
chamber music coaching sessions with winds, to feel the direction of the
line and phrase together.

Breathing is the most basic instinctive thing -- how many breaths have I
drawn while writing this post? Yet I did not consciously think about any
one of them. I think that our biology determines how we act as
interpreters of music and that breathing, as it is integral to our
"organism" (for lack of a better word), is necessarily a part of our
physical interpretation of music.

Just tossing another viewpoint into the fray!

Jacqueline Eastwood
University of Arizona/Arizona Opera Orchestra
eastwooj@-----.edu