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Re: Is Barret Obsolete?

Author: kdrew922
Date: 2008-01-04 21:46

What a great thread!

My opinion is that Barret remains a valuable pedagogical tool, so long as its limitations are recognized. Barret is great for learning how to play Beethoven and Brahms. Of course, since it's mostly second-rate composition, one can perhaps learn to play Beethoven and Brahms better by actually playing Beethoven and Brahms. This is a matter that has always puzzled me. I think one would be better off ordering oboe parts and miniature scores to all the symphonies and concertos of Beethoven and Brahms. Of course, that would cost a bit more than a single method book. So, I think Barret is valuable primarily because it is a convenient and expedient book for getting a general idea of how to play a certain portion of the oboe's repertoire. It's an excellent starting point for students who wish to learn basic concepts of phrasing and articulation as applicable to tonal music of the nineteenth century.

Having said all that, I think it is too often forgotten that Barret is an ineffective, even counterproductive, pedagogical tool for most seventeenth and eighteenth century music, and it teaches absolutely nothing about the performance of much twentiety-century repertoire.

Yes, Tabuteau and Mack and DeLancie and many others have sworn by Barret... but consider their situations: they were full-time orchestral players who were training their students to be full-time orchestral players. Most kids who pick up the oboe never end up playing in a major symphony. They are more likely to play Bach cantatas in church, Telemann partitas just for fun, or a predominantly twentieth-century woodwind quintet repertoire.

As oboists, most of our best repertoire comes from the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. As a solo and chamber instrument, the oboe mostly died out in the nineteenth century. Sure, we have all the flashy salon music, and I love that gibberish as much as the next fellow, but we have very little quality repertoire from that era. All the good stuff is in orchestral scores, and only a small percentage of oboists end up playing full-time in orchestras. Yet many young oboists are taught how to phrase and articulate music primarily from nineteenth-century methods. What an incongruity! This works out well for the 1% of oboists who end up playing professionally in orchestras, but it leaves the other 99% ill-equipped to perform convincingly the repertoire they are most likely to play.

OK, there's my rant about Barret. I like it. Honest. I really do. It's a very useful book. But it has serious limitations, and it just bothers me every time I hear someone who was raised on Barret, Brod, and Ferling absolutely butchering a Handel sonata.

Cheers,
Drew

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ohsuzan

2008-01-04 15:40