I think the focus of my performance preparation is a little different than most flutists. I like to learn the part, definitely. I even try to have it all or mostly memorized. Beyond that, I do some maintenance practice for flutey things like scales, vibrato, and attacks/note endings, but I don’t obsess over it. I guess I feel like those skills get better over time, and don’t really benefit from cramming.

However, I do have a bit of an obsessive mind (for better or worse), so with something big like my recital, I’m always itching to work on something. 

Beyond regular flute practicing, I like to spend a lot of time getting into the music in other ways:
-memorize the flute part
-play the piano part (at least try…)
-listen to recordings
-play with recordings
-learn about the composer
–theory/analysis in the form of arrangements

Quick story time

In grad school (now 13 years ago!), I took a Schenkarian analysis class. I really struggled in that class because apparently I had signed up for part 2 of the class without having taken part 1. I probably shouldn’t have been allowed to enroll. Incidentally, this is the class where Robert and I first came into each other’s worlds, though we never formally met until a few months later.

I was completely lost. Fortunately, the professor was a bit of a creative type that appreciated my effort and attempts at understanding, so I stuck with it and did my best. At our one-on-one meeting at the end of the semester, I told him I was a flute performance major. Perhaps this was unusual. He asked me why I thought I would be successful as a performer, with so much competition out there.

I guess I was feeling pretty positive about my prospects at the time, because I didn’t take offense at his question. I had noticed that there weren’t many performance majors (ie. my friends) that had a related field in music theory. I guess music theory was supposedly one of the “difficult” related fields. I told him I wasn’t sure, but that I felt my interest in music theory was unique, and it might give me a distinct perspective. And here we are!

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Paquito D’Rivera, Three Pieces for Clarinet (1991)

I wasn’t satisfied with the recordings I found of this piece. I wanted to lean more into the driving feel of dance rhythms– less rubato and romanticism. The movements are names of dances- Contradanza, Habanera, and Valz Venezolano. So I didn’t think it would be presumptuous to play them in a dance style. 

Recently, the Pan-Tones recently played an arrangement by Connor Kent of a cha-cha by the Cuban band Irakere, which D’Rivera was a member of in the 1980s. Having that sound in mind confirmed my concept of the piece.

This piece reduced well to a flute duet- of course, things must be left out, but the duet gives you a much better idea of the harmony and rhythm.

This piece is not in the public domain, but here is the first movement:

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Claude Debussy, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894)

This piece is a completely different animal. I had attempted a duet arrangement early in my arranging journey, but wasn’t too happy with how it turned out. Now I understand why- most of the harmonies in this piece have at least 4 notes, often more.

I had the idea to arrange it like a jazz chart- write the flute part with chord symbols. I’d done a similar thing before with Mozart (Concerto in G), but this is definitely more complex. 

As I was describing my experience making the chart to Robert, I hit on something that made me crystallize an important realization with Debussy: the drama of this music is in the harmony, not the melody. 

After my analysis and reading the poem this piece is based on, I feel like I understand what Debussy was going for. Here is an excerpt:

A Faun’s Afternoon
Stéphane Mallarmé and Richard Howard

If only they would stay forever – nymphs
whose rosy flesh can spur the drowsy air
to dancing.
Did I love a dream?
My doubt,
the residue of all my nights, dissolves
into a branching maze, this grove of trees:
proof that what I took for rapture was
an artifice of . . . roses.
Just suppose
these . . . women had no more reality
than figments of a faun’s deluded mind:
illusion seeping like spring-water from
the coy one’s cold blue eyes, contrasting with
the other’s sights – as if the day’s warm breeze
had fondled my pelt.
And it was all a lie!
No stream arouses from their somnolence
these suffocating fields; it is my flute
whose faltering cascade relieves the grove;
and the only wind, quick to escape these pipes
before the sound spreads in an arid rain,
is the visible and artificial breath
— rising serene on the undefiled horizon —
of inspiration which remounts the sky.

Very sensual and dreamy. The wisps of melody in Faun repeat, but are slightly different each time. It seems to be morphing in front of our eyes (and ears). The ethereal but insistent C# plays a different role in the changing supporting harmonies, changing the color, as if the light has shifted.

Note: This chord chart is a reduction of a piano reduction (originally an orchestral score), made for my personal study. There may be some slight discrepancies, and the chords are spelled in the way that made the most sense to me.

Here is what I ended up with for my analysis:

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What do you think?