Author: Dutchy
Date: 2007-05-22 14:39
Barret is lovely, Judy. Dunno what M. Barret was like as an oboist, but as someone writing small teaching pieces for beginning oboists, he's tops. They're obviously written by someone who was intimately familiar with the oboe, someone who knew exactly where all the wonky notes and the difficult fingerings are, and also where all the fat notes are, and how much fun it is to play them, and how often your embouchure really needs a break, if only for an eighth rest.
Every time I'd come up against a difficult fingering and would think, "Hmm, Monsieur, are you sure?", after I'd worked with it for a little bit, I'd see that he was right, it does go like that.
They are the next logical step up from "Go Tell Aunt Rhodie" and the Essential Elements little band arrangements. They start out as "Pretty easy" at No. 1, and progress steadily through "just challenging enough", to "interestingly challenging", to "hmm, this is harder than it looks", to "I'm not sure I can play this."
But I'm here to tell you, that even the "I'm not sure I can play this" ones are easier than they look. Take it real slow, work your way through it, and you'll see, the fingerings just fall into place, even on the ones in keys with five sharps, or the ones with lots of intimidating-looking sixteenth notes. You don't have to play all those sixteenth notes up to speed, you know. Since it's just you by yourself, you can slow it down to "Glacier Moving".
I have now worked my way through all 40 pieces for "basic notes", and am now starting over again for "basic notes plus all the other stuff". I try to play one a day. It's quite entertaining, and educational, too.
You should DEFINITELY get the Martin Schuring edition (it'll say "Edited by Martin Schuring" right on the front cover), because the facsimile reprinting of the original, while interesting for historical purposes, is hard to read. Life's too short to have to squint at 19th century handwriting. ![[grin]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie5.gif) If Schuring is remembered for anything in the oboe world, he'll be remembered as "the man who fixed Barret".
And you want to watch out for other "arrangements" of Barret which are out there. Since it's in the public domain, all kinds of people have fiddled around with it, incorporating it into their own ideas for oboe pedagogy. Make sure it's the Schuring edition.
P.S. That Amazon price is a good price for it; I doubt if you'll find it cheaper anywhere. Even on the Evil Online Auction site, new Schuring editions, when they turn up, which isn't often, tend to go for about market price.
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