Day 077: Barry's in town; Sight singing
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day
77 — Barry's in town; Sight singing
18-October-1971
(Mon.)
TRANSCRIPT
Starting to be busy. Had lesson (so-so).
Practiced—still not satisfied. Went to classes.
Solfege class. Very interesting (in German, of
course). I am in the hardest group, and I can tell
it’s going to be hard. Today—the first day—we had
sight singing examples. They were atonal.
What a way to start learning sight singing. (Perhaps
this isn’t for beginners). It should be a great
experience. Start shaping up my ear for contemporary
music. (Wait till dictation.) Fixed
do
is
used...[confusing talk on sight singing edited out].
The Big Day. Barry is in town. Went to see Barry
Tuckwell, world-famous British horn player, playing
with a British string ensemble—Academy of the Fields
of St. Martin. It was one of the best concerts. All
of the concert was done without a conductor. The
small string ensemble followed the 1st violinist—as
in Handel’s time. It was unbelievable. Always
together and extremely musical. (Bartok, Handel,
& Mozart)
Tuckwell was fantastic and the sound and control he
had was unbelievable. He played a Holton [French
horn]. He was a very “mental
looking guy.”
He played a Haydn concerto and a Cherubini
concerto—both fairly hard and well done. He made it
seem so easy.
Guess what? Two surprises.
(1) I smuggled in a tape recorder (my friend's) and
thus, I have a tape of the horn pieces and the
strings also. What a memento of Vienna. The quality
is excellent. Why? Well, my seat was the 3rd row,
seat 3, and I was looking at him, like I could have
been a teacher giving him a lesson. Of course, I
couldn’t really get the secret to his embouchure.
(2) I actually met and talked with Barry. I can call
him Barry, now. He was really nice and we exchanged a
few words about the Holton horn, and that I was
playing on Alexander now. (He didn’t like the
Alexander.) I also asked him if I could borrow his
embouchure. Incidentally, he gives workshops in the
U.S.—it would be great to get in something like that.
He also gave me his autograph and shook my hand (2x).
I’ll never wash it again. Actually, I hope that some
of his “power” will go into me. I can use all I can
get.
Well, tonight has been a real exciting night.
REFLECTIONS
A long post today. The clarity of my writing is
starting to suffer and I’m fragmenting. Maybe I’m
writing very late at night. Regardless, I edited out
the paragraph on sight singing as it was confusing.
Here goes.
If you are not a music major or music student, skip
down to Barry.
Sight
singing. First, if
you’re not a musician and familiar with the concept
of singing music by sight, most often using solfege
syllables, then you won’t understand anything in the
second paragraph.
A music major will take
sight
singing classes
along with their music theory class. You learn to
sing music by sight. It is not easy, but it is a
skill that is gradually learned.
[I
taught music theory and sight singing to freshman
and sophomores as a TA in one of my graduate music
programs.] Actually,
it’s a great musical skill that will help you in
all facets of music, from conducting to composing
to performing. It “tunes” your ear to the music
that you “see.” With sight singing, you sing by
sight. On an instrument, playing music by sight
for the first time is called sight
reading.
Solfege
syllables. There are
different schools of sight singing. Most often, you
sing using
solfege
syllables. Think
about the movie, The
Sound of Music, those
beautiful Austrian alps, and that
do-re-mi
song
they sing. Fixed-do
means
that do
(do,
a dear, a female dear) is always the same
pitch. Movable
do means
that do
is always
the first pitch of a scale. The pitch syllables
relate to the steps of a tonal scale. In 1971, I
though fixed do
was
easier, but now I like moveable do
because it
is easier to anchor the harmony and intervals you
sing (using pitch syllables) to a tonal scale.
Atonal.
I’ll leave
you with this point, singing
atonal solfege
is crazy-hard. I could not do it well nowadays. It
is easier to sing to tonal scales. Fixed
do
might
be best for contemporary (or atonal) music.
If none of the above makes sense, concentrate on
those beautiful Austrian alps instead. That’s
actually the most important thing here. The beauty of
nature.
Moving on.
Barry
[the best] Tuckwell.
Barry Tuckwell
has
always been one of the premier performers on the
French horn. I’m three rows away from one of my
French horn heros. How cool is that? You didn’t
know that was possible, did you? Toss aside
Madonna, Michael, Iggy Pop, and Britney. Barry’s
in town!
Seeing a pro performer, especially for your major
instrument, from that close is amazing. As you can
tell it was an incredible experience. And I get to
meet him. We’re on a first-name basis now. “Hi,
Barry.” I shake his hand, get his autograph, and try
to exhume his “French horn talent” from his hand into
me—because I need help with my embouchure. Maybe it
worked a little bit. By the way, in college we used
the word “mental” to describe someone looking wild,
unique, cool, or whatever. Perhaps Barry’s hair was
frizzed up or something. It was a good term, for us.
I was actually taping a bootleg of Barry Tuckwell. I
was just a kid and I never gave it to anyone. Really.
No, really. (Really.) (Yes, really.)
A great day.
John
- - - -
