🎶 In Maquarre’s Daily Exercises for the Flute, pages 4 through 8.
🎶 In Album of Flute Duets, revised and annotated by Louis Moyse, Jean-Jacques Naudot’s Sonata for Two Flutes, the fourth and final movement, another allegro.
🎶 In Interval Duets by Thomas Filas, the third duet. I am playing the second flute part this time through these deceptively simple pieces.
🎶 Revisiting the Adagio and Allegro from Jean-Baptiste Loeillet’s Sonata No. III in Selected Duets for Flute, Vol. II (Advanced). Again, I am playing the second part.
🎶 In P. Bona’s Complete Method for Rhythmical Articulation, 120.
🎶 In Contemporary French Recital Pieces, Vol. I, Louis Aubert’s “Lied.”
Because we don’t have band rehearsal next week, I am setting aside my concert folder until after my next lesson.
It had been two months since my last music lesson, and my practice time was limited during those months. But somehow I pulled it together for a productive hour-long lesson today.
🎶 Having completed work on Hans Köhler’s Sonatina for Two Flutes in Album of Flute Duets, revised and annotated by Louis Moyse, we have selected Jean-Jacques Naudot’s Sonata for Two Flutes in the same collection. For my late-July lesson, I will prepare the Adagio and the first part of the Allegro (the first page of the four-page piece).
Over the spring semester, we completed the fifteen pieces in Interval Duets by Thomas Filas. The deceptively simple collection focused on achieving a clear, beautiful sound. Over the next fifteen lessons, then, we have decided to work through the book again; this time, I will play second part. We are also revisiting the Adagio and Allegro from Jean-Baptiste Loeillet’s Sonata No. 1 in Selected Duets for Flute, Vol. II (Advanced); again, I am playing the second part.
🎶 Today I finished (if that is correct verb) the third of Köhler’s “moderately difficult pieces as studies for flute” from Op. 33, Book 2, in Robert Cavally’s Melodious and Progressive Studies from Andersen, Gariboldi, Koehler, and Terschak for Flute, Book 2. In April, I shared with my teacher that pieces like this feel needlessly difficult for an adult learner whose chief goals are (1) to do well in community band and (2) to always be learning and improving. She has now moved me into his Twenty-Five Romantic Etudes (Op. 66), and for my next lesson I will prepare the “The Swing.”
🎶 In April, I finished 116 in P. Bona’s Complete Method for Rhythmical Articulation, and my teacher provided excellent notes and examples to help me approach 120, my last assignment in the book; however, I have no plans to tackle this until after I present the first movement of the Stamitz Concerto in G major, Op.29, in August. Because I chose to work on the three movements out of order, this will conclude my work on the concerto, freeing me to focus on the Bona.
🎶 For my scales and long tone work, I have primarily relied on Parès Scales for Flute or Piccolo and ILMEA Senior HS Band Audition Scales sheet. My teacher now recommends that I begin working in Maquarre’s Daily Exercises for the Flute.
🎶 For my piccolo studies, in addition to exercises in Danielle Eden’s Piccolo! Piccolo! method books, my teacher recommended revisiting Köhler’s Op. 33, Book 1.
🎶 My July practice sheet:
— 15 minutes: long tones, scales, exercises — 20 minutes: Twenty-Five Romantic Etudes (Op. 66), “The Swing” — 10 minutes: Interval Duets, No. I — 15 minutes: Album of Flute Duets, Jean-Jacques Naudot’s Sonata for Two Flutes — 15 minutes: Selected Duets for Flute, Vol. II (Advanced), Jean-Baptiste Loeillet’s Sonata No. 1 — 15 minutes: piccolo
🎶 Earlier this month, my instructor and I completed Johann Christian Schultze’s Sonata for Two Flutes in Album of Flute Duets, revised and annotated by Louis Moyse, and moved on to Hans Köhler’s Sonatina for Two Flutes in the same collection. This week, I am focused on the second page of the Allegro.
We are also working in a new-to-us book: Interval Duets by Thomas Filas, which appears to be out of print. “[T]he playing of duets is the starting rung of the ladder which leads to higher musicianship,” the introduction gently chides. Truth. While providing a respite in a challenging program of study, these deceptively simple pieces have reminded this adult student that while “speed” (or “velocity”) may be difficult to achieve, a clear, beautiful sound is always achievable.
🎶 In Robert Cavally’s Melodious and Progressive Studies from Andersen, Gariboldi, Koehler, and Terschak for Flute, Book 2, I am now working on the third of Köhler’s “moderately difficult pieces as studies for flute” from Op. 33, Book 2.
🎶 Speaking of difficult, this semester’s band selections… so, yes, P. Bona’s rhythmical articulation studies has sunk to the bottom of my daily practice roster again. As I have mentioned, though, only two assignments remain in this book, 116 and 120. I will get to them eventually.
🎶 This week, having successfully presented the third movement, I began practicing the first movement of the Stamitz Concerto in G major, Op.29. (Yes, I chose to work on them out of order.)
🎶 I am not playing piccolo in band this semester, so my instructor has added short piccolo duets to my practice sheet, as well as a solo: “L’oiseau du bois” by Charles le Thiere. Yes, this is all quite a lot, but right now, I am exhilarated, undaunted. Check back with me over spring break, though; the Köhler study could break me.
Following a string of gray days, the sun is winking in and out of view, so it’s time to walk. Today’s other projects include my reading and notes for tomorrow’s meeting on The Magic Mountain, a “You took how many days off?!?” music practice, reading for this, and my current Latin unit.
• Practice music with particular emphasis on 113 (Bona Rhythmical Articulation) • Review Latin vocabulary • Read “The Geese” and assemble notes for first of three discussions on Essays of E.B. White • Walk before the light drains from the sky • Look up again tonight • Finish Chain Gang All-Stars (review here)
The graduation concert is behind us, and I have only two more lessons before the holiday break. Practice will continue throughout the holidays, but the respite this season brings is delightful — fewer pieces to cover and more time for “fun stuff,” like the album of Christmas duets for flute and clarinet.
During the winter break, my reading is often a bit more relaxed, too, although I’m thisclose to finishing a few books on my TBR shelf. It may be worth pushing a bit harder than I usually do in December.
Speaking of which, today was supposed to be an off day, but there we were, putting in a few miles before all of the light drained from the sky. Tomorrow we’re planning to walk in one of the conservation districts.
Since Tuesday evening, we have been fighting some sort of bug, the chief characteristics of which were congestion and lethargy. We have nearly snapped out of it, though, and look forward to resuming our regular walks.
During my sick days, I rediscovered NYPD Blue (Hulu). A fan during its long run, I appreciated returning to this engaging show when I was too weary to read but not enough to sleep. Had I been well, I would have finished Gissing’s The Odd Women, now a task for this weekend.
Next weekend, we will play at the graduation concert. We did manage some quality practice this week and look forward to more this weekend.
🎶 In last week’s lesson, we concluded our work on the Mozart Duetto No.1, K.378, an eleven-page undertaking that began in late June. Because this is the final piece in Selected Duets for Flute, Volume II (Advanced), I have moved on to Johann Christian Schultze’s Sonata for Two Flutes in Album of Flute Duets, revised and annotated by Louis Moyse.
🎶 Somehow I have arrived at page 16 of Robert Cavally’s Melodious and Progressive Studies from Andersen, Gariboldi, Koehler, and Terschak for Flute, Book 2, which means I am working on the second of Köhler’s “moderately difficult pieces as studies for flute” from Op. 33, Book 2. For this adult learner, they are simply difficult, but the work informs my progress in band.
🎶 Not long after I presented the first half of 113 in P. Bona’s rhythmical articulation studies, band rehearsals resumed. With only a few days until our fall concert, however, Bona has moved from the bottom of my daily practice roster back to the (near) top. According to my instructor, only two assignments remain in this book, 116 and 120, the latter of which is five pages long; hence, Bona will remain on the practice roster until at least mid-2024.
🎶 For the last three weeks, I have been working on the third movement of the Stamitz Concerto in G major, Op.29. Unsurprisingly, getting the passage of triplets at measure 45 and the quick measures beginning at 225 under my fingers requires the concentrated repetition in assorted rhythms that many instrumentalists hate but that I really appreciate.
🎶 I first joined the community band for the Spring 2018 concert program. While I felt welcomed and well-supported in what was then a large section, I also felt woefully unready. Four and half years later, when I arrived for the Fall 2022 program, I brought my husband and a significantly stronger skill set. For this weekend’s concert, in addition to a featured flute passage in one piece, I was also assigned the featured piccolo passage in another. What a difference 3,000 hours* can make.
* the (very) approximate number of practice hours between May 2018 and November 2023
Three weeks have passed since we departed for our NYC adventure. Sparing my seventy-three readers a cliché about time’s passage, I will confine myself to a bemused (virtual) headshake.
Reading: I’m more than halfway through The Woman in White and 195 pages into The Magic Mountain. I had thought I would read ahead in New Grub Street, but this week, I simply kept pace with the APS Together schedule. I hope to finish Our Missing Hearts (terrific review here) over the weekend.
Latin and music: The trip, re-entry, and preparation for the upcoming concert left me a bit short of time and energy for my Latin studies, although my husband did help me drill vocabulary on our trip into Chicago last weekend. (We saw Twelfth Night at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Recommended.) The two music lessons since my return from NYC were longer to make up for the lesson lost during vacation (yes, she’s a terrific instructor), and the assignments represent greater challenges, which, coupled with band music, require a continuing commitment to regular (and extended) practice.
Perhaps if I were as strict about Latin as I am about music, I might be reading Ovid by now. Sigh.
Although I had hoped to finish sooner, I only just listened to Lecture 17 of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, an Open Yale Courses program, this morning. (The course comprises twenty-four lectures delivered by Professor Roberto González Echevarría. Absolutely excellent.)
Somehow I finished Nights of Plague in time for a wonderful book discussion last night. I began reading as soon as I finished The Republic earlier this month but was happily sidetracked by an invitation to a reading group tackling Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd; then family came into town for several days. Finishing Orhan Pamuk’s tome really was a feat, then, given how little time I had.
Naturally, although I followed the #FaulknerinAugust discussion, I needed to set aside the book for most of the month, but I am back to a chapter a day in Absalom, Absalom.
I’m also reading Adrienne Brodeur’s Little Monsters.
After only three rehearsals, we have a break from band this coming week, so for the next few music practices, I’m focused primarily on my current étude, the Mozart duet, and the middle of the second movement of the Stamitz concerto. (I spent much less time on this over the last two months than originally planned.)
And though my Latin studies stalled in the second week of the month, after a vocabulary review, I’ve cracked open the next unit.
Nerdishly 