HOLDING THE FLUTE? 

 

"In order that the flute may be held at all times steadily and firmly, one of the essential conditions for good playing, its support must not be allowed to depend on any parts of the hands which are required to act, either directly or indirectly, on the finger-holes." (Richard S. Rockstro: A Treatise on the Flute, 1890) 

 

Usually students are taught how to "hold" the flute: I prefer to use a different concept with the expression "Leaning on the flute". 

 

 

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEANING ON THE FLUTE (1) 

 

THE RIGHT THUMB   You feel as if you were leaning to the flute with your right shoulder, arm, elbow, forearm and wrist while touching it with the tip of your thumb. Your arm is slightly moved away from your side and forms an angle with your forearm; consequently your elbow is slightly lifted: it's the weight generated by this position that keeps the flute in its place.   This works - curiously enough - in a way similar to how a flying buttress works statically generating the thrust that keeps a gothic cathedral upright. 

 

The tip of the thumb is placed on the side of the flute between the index and the medium finger.  This also reflects the well balanced right hand position violin players use to hold the bow. Always imagine you are leaning, not pushing or otherwise actively exerting a pressure. Your shoulder and elbow will feel "heavy", resulting in a relaxed position (but not a flabby one).

 

 

 

 

LEANING ON THE FLUTE (2) 

 

THE LEFT INDEX    Here the idea is crucially different from the traditional one: once again you are not pushing the flute against the lower lip (more later): you are leaning to the flute with your left shoulder, arm, elbow, forearm and wrist and with the soft part of the first phalanx of your index finger.   Your arm is moved away from your side and your elbow is lifted: this generats the weight the prevents the flute from falling away from your embouchure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEANING ON THE FLUTE (3) 

 

EMBOUCHURE AND BODY FREEDOM    Now where's the catch? How does the flute stay in its postion if we "lean" on it rather than "support" it? The lip plate actually rests on the inlet above your chin: here is where all the weight generated by the left and right hand (and the weight of the flute itself) rests. 

 

With the flute resting on the inlet between the lower lip and the jaw (and not against the lower lip) the lip is allowed a higher degree of mobility and flexibility.   This in turn makes your embouchure extremely flexible. 

 

To conclude: is the ability to keep the arms slightly moved away from the body at the right angle, relaxed and in balance with each other, that generates the contrasting force couple that keeps the whole system working.   So you don't have to hold your flute, but rather to lean on it.   You will be surprised of how much energy you will save and how much more free in your movements you will be.

 

 

 

SENSATION: THE PHYSICAL AWARENESS OF PLAYING  

 

Unlike with piano or cello, in flute playing most of the actions we perform in order to play are infinitesimal and out of our sight: I am specially thinking about the work of the embouchure.   It's impossible to check our embouchure - but also our finger action - and to correct both visually while actively playing.   So we have to take a different approach.  We have to depend on sensitivity and awareness. 

 

Not relying on our sight, we forcibily interiorize the action of playing: thus it becomes more similar to the action singing or reciting, than to that of playing the guitar or the harpsichord and consequently we have to refine our senses accordingly.

        

 

 

                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INSIDE THE MEANING OF A WORD  

 

"Sentire" in Italian has several different meanings: to hear, but also to feel an emotion or a bodily sensation and also to be sensitive.  How to put to use this complex concept in flute playing?  To correctly understand and make - for example - the exact embouchure and fingering for a G2, we must rely on what we hear, but also on what exactly we feel when we play that specific note.   We must have practiced and perfected and performed countless times a G2 before we become aware of the exact global synaesthetic, auditive and tactile, feeling - sensation - for that particular note. 

 

But to be receptive to sensation we must first become sensitive... 

 

 

 

DEVELOPING MY SENSITIVITY  

 

Working on my embouchure I gradually realised that if I wanted to dramatically improve its efficiency, I had to develop a different frame of mind.  Learning from different teachers with different experiences and background I have been shown how to better position my lips, how to shape my lip opening, to relax the embouchure and so on, according to their personal experience; but slowly I became aware that all these pieces of advice, though useful and sensible, didn't hit the point. 

 

I had to develop my own inner set of values, I couldn't rely on teaching from outside.  And first of all I suddenly realised that I was not listening to my self, not in the right sense at least. In this search I was specially inspired by the book Le Violon Intérieur by the French violinist Dominique Hoppenot and by my longlife interest in Zen.

 

 

 

 

 

                       

                                 

 

 

 

RIDING THE BICICLE  

 

I stopped telling my embouchure what it was going to do, instead I started to listen to it: to the subtle sensation of the air flowing through, of the pressure around the tiny lip hole, of the frequency of the note played, of the different resistance, the different muscle tension for each note. Slowly I became sensitive to the difference sensations tiny variations of colour or volume gave my lips.   It was like opening a new window on flute playing.   

 

When you ride a bike, you don't have to "tell"  your arms what tiny adjustments they have make every fraction of a second on the handlebar in order to keep the bicicle upright: the hands just feel the handlebar themselves and correct the balance accordingly.

 

 

THE INTELLIGENT EMBOUCHURE  

 

My embouchure was now looking after itself, reacting in real time on the base of the feed back it received constantly from the action of playing.   Now a new question started to take form in my mind: where am I playing "from"?  Where is my "music speech" flowing from?  Before I used to think that it was a combination between the action of the fingers, of the abdominal muscles and of the embouchure.   But the more sensitive the embouchure became, the more in charge of the whole action of "speaking" the music it felt.  The action of the fingers gradually faded in the background.   The embouchure pronunciation of each note - with that tone, volume, articulation, nuance, emphasis - includes also the fingering, like when you speak you do not think what your tongue, lips, throat are doing.