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Re: Technical facility, musicality?

Author: oboeblank
Date: 2005-10-11 04:57

I seperate the notion of technique into two ideas with my students.

Velocity is how quickly, smoothly and cleanly you can move from note to note; technique is how you how you release a note, how you shade and colour tone, how you use vibrato. Essentially it is all of things that we all struggle with. There are many fine players out there with great technique but poor velocity; however, I think it would be damn near impossible to keep a job without great technique.

As far as the musical aspect of playing; that is something else. Even velocity and a great technique cannot help you if you are musically illiterate. Music is a language and we have been duped into thinking that there are no right or wrong ways to play things. While this is somewhat true there is basic comprehension of music. I would not want to hear a young student, no matter how fluent and beautiful their tone and technique is play the Schumann Romances because their rudimentary understanding of music is lacking.

There are more technically qualified oboists out there than ever before; but not nearly as many musical ones.

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