Author: Laura Conrad

And they all seem to be pretty good.

Cornetto technique with Stephen Escher

We did a lot of talking and not much playing yesterday, but
the talking was to the point. We went around the room and talked
about how and why we got into cornetto playing, and each played
single notes and talked about them and what to do to improve
them. In my case hardware is part of the answer. Steve loaned me
his 465 cornetto, which is just enough smaller than a 415
instrument that I can play it, although not easily. And he has a
jar full of mouthpieces that we’re going to see if we can find
something that works better on the cornettino.

He pointed out that once we get a sound we like and are really
listening to, there isn’t that much difference between us and
Bruce Dickey — he just gets to that sound immediately and keeps
it up to the end of the note and we don’t.

Mass

That’s what they call the mixed choral and instrumental
performance at the end of the week that everybody can do. This
year it’s the polyphonic church music of the French Calvinists, who
weren’t allowed to play polyphony in Church, so they did it at
home.

It’s all good music for serpent. There’s a bunch of settings
of Psalm CXXXVII, and a large Te
Deum by Claude LeJeune.

Wim Becu

I think the class is called “Josquin and Goudimel” or something
like that, but people signed up for it because they want to work
with Wim. There are 8 of us, but mostly trombone and bass curtal
players, so they’re in need of instruments that can play top
lines. I was surprised that anyone would rather listen to me on
cornetto than on serpent, but I did in fact end up playing
cornetto all class. We’re doing two choir music, and I got the
lower of the two top lines (the other cornetto player in the class
is much better than I am).

The music is wonderful, and two choirs full of people who can
sightread it isn’t something I get anywhere else, and Wim is a
really good coach, who can make a piece sound like you aren’t
sightreading in a very short time.

Steve Escher again

I forget what this one is called, but there are 5 loud wind
players playing what Steve brings. In this case, I’m playing low
to middle lines. I started out playing the second from the bottom
line (there’s a good bass curtal player on the bottom), but I
turned out to have more serpent high notes left than the trombone
player had trombone high notes, so I switched to middle lines.

People were pretty zonked by then, so some of theh sightreading
wasn’t as good as the same people had been doing only an hour
before, but I’m sure it will but a good class.

At the Amherst Early Music Festival at Connecticut College in
New London, Connecticut.

The dorm room is a bit spartan — no mirror on the wall, no
hangars in the closet, no wastebasket. There are two power
outlets and an ethernet connection, but the ethernet connection is
10 feet from the nearest power outlet. So at the moment, I’m
trusting the wireless ethernet, since I know the battery on this
machine gets hungry fast.

But for compensation, the acoustics for playing Renaissance
instruments are wonderful.

I met the cornetto teacher (Stephen Escher) seems to be
pleasant, and not freaked out by having a serpent player.

An improvement on previous years is that they posted the class
schedules before the orientation session. The have indeed given
me 4 brass classes.

So it looks good so far. I’ll tell you more when I’ve met the
classes.

Or, less colloquially, The Amherst Early Music
Festival, which this year takes place at Connecticut College
in New London, Connecticut.

The reason to go is because I hope it will be an opportunity to
play brass several hours a day, and get my lip closer to the
kind of shape the people who played in band in high school for
several hours a day have.

Amherst is lots of things to lots of people, and in the past
I’ve used it to do lots of singing and recorder playing. So I’m a
little nervous that they won’t read (or won’t believe) what I
wrote on the form:

Q: What are your primary interests and goals for this
workshop?

A: play brass instruments all day every day.

I did do as instructed and put second and third choices for all
the class periods, and of course there aren’t always 3 classes
suitable for brass instruments, so they might screw up and give me
a recorder class.

If it’s a good recorder class, I’ll put up with it,
but it might be another ten years before I try to see if I can get
what I need for being an early brass player out of them.

If it’s one of those babysitting classes for 20 people of
varying abilities, I’ll just tell them I need the time to practice
or take a nap.

Not only might they be confused about what I want because it’s
different from what I wanted 10 and 15 and 20 years ago, but they
might make a judgement that my lip isn’t strong enough to play for
4 hours a day. This would certainly be true if I were playing
cornetto, but I routinely play 3 hour rehearsals on serpent, so
I’m sure 4 classes wouldn’t be a problem. And any reasonable
person would rather have my serpent playing in an ensemble than my
cornetto playing. At least after the first 10 minutes.

In any case, there’s lots of singing and dancing and eating
dormitory style with good people, and good concerts, so it will be
fun even if I still haven’t figured out how to convince them that
they want to develop early brass players who weren’t modern brass
players in high school.

I’ve set up a category for blogging about this experience.
You have even less time to blog at a workshop than you do at a
festival, so I don’t know how much blogging I’ll do while I’m
actually there. But I promise to tell you how it worked out afterward.