JAVS Spring 2013

Example 8. Rodolphe Kreutzer, 42 études ou caprices , no. 2, mm. 9–11.

assigned to each note. For example, when examin ing bow pressure with Kreutzer No. 2, one would increasingly add pressure with the second, third, and fourth sixteenth note of a beat to have forward motion toward the climax at the first note of the fol lowing beat. This is particularly convincing begin ning in measure 9, because following the first six teenth note under a beam, there is a drop in register that ascends in a scalar approach to an apex at every half bar (ex. 8). This exercise should be repeated using bow speed (increasing bow speed as motion numbers increase), contact point (increasingly approaching the bridge as motion numbers increase), and can even be experimented with levels of vibrato speed (increasing oscillations as motion numbers increase). The primary purpose of all of Tabuteau’s numbering systems is to facilitate the circulation of musical expression from the written notes of a composer, via actions of a performer, to the ears of the listener. McGill, author of Sound in Motion , wrote, “When audience members are involved by anticipating what is to come, then the performance has lifted them out of themselves and put them into the musical thought of the composer. The listener is drawn for ward by the ‘up’ and allowed to relax on the ‘down’ only to be lifted again immediately by the next ‘up’ inflection.” 19 Tabuteau’s number system methodically plans movement within beats to allow for the listen er to be drawn forward and to come to a downward relaxation. The combination of scaling, motion, rhythmic, and phrasing numbers allows musicians to have a systematic approach to musical phrasing. And while critics might feel that using numbers is a too calculated, inorganic approach to develop musicality, it at the very least provides tools to begin the process for a student to explore different ideas for motion, phrasing, and musical expression. Tabuteau may not have been a violist, but his influence on phrasing,

expressions, and the pedagogy of musicality tran scends all instruments.

Sources

Dew, Robert. “In Response to Instinct—

Karen Tuttle’s Insights into the Coordinated Action—Its Mechanisms, Articulation, and Prerequisites.” Journal of the American Viola Society 18, no. 1 (2002): 51–54.

McGill, David. Sound in Motion: A Performer’s Guide to Greater Musical Expression .

Bloomington: Indiana university Press, 2007.

Storch, Laila. Marcel Tabuteau: How Do You Expect to Play the Oboe If You Can’t Peel a Mushroom? Bloomington: Indiana university Press, 2008.

Notes

1 David McGill, Sound in Motion: A Performer’s Guide to Greater Musical Expression (Bloomington: Indiana university Press, 2007), 3. 2 Laila Storch, Marcel Tabuteau: How Do You Expect to Play the Oboe If You Can’t Peel a Mushroom? (Bloomington: Indiana university Press, 2008), 517.

3 McGill, Sound in Motion , 18.

4 Ibid., 40.

5 Ibid., 79.

6 Ibid., 72.

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