Intonation, in my experience, belongs in a very special category. Musicians without deeper experience with the recorder are content to lead pupils to cover the tone holes, often with bad fingerings that are inappropriate for the instrument, and if the tone is out of tune, they just say "oh well, that’s the recorder". The basic prerequisites for good intonation are missing here - not only correct work with the breathing technique and correct fingering, but familiarity about how the instrument works and what its possibilities are. The situation is often sad, e.g. at the grammar school which is close to where I work, the recorder is taught as part of music education, where the whole class plays it. I would just like to say that it is almost 60 years since Louis Andriessen wrote his composition Sweet (for the barbarization of the recorder, see chapter 10).
The other opposite pole is represented by teachers who know almost everything about the recorder, but their pupils usually play at a higher pitch for the sake of expressiveness. The sound of these performances, however often brilliant, musically convincing and dazzling with technical perfection, is often sharp, as if detached from the reality of the accompaniment.
What leads us to favour a kind of "expression" over colour of sound and intonation is a rather social question. I would like to show how I work with pupils to make intonation and good tuning a matter of course for them, and how we work on playing colours as beautiful as the sound a recorder can have.
Textbooks talk about air pressure and the fact that intonation depends, among other things, on air pressure. That is of course true. However, if I try to guide pupils to deal with intonation by trying to influence the muscles that are responsible for breathing, I end up in a situation where intonation is like on a swing - because this muscle group is too extensive to achieve sufficient subtlety in the regulation of intonation. For me, it is far more beneficial to teach children to perceive the air in the oral cavity (see chapter 5 Movement and Breathing – Connected Vessels), because the oral cavity is the ideal place where we can effectively perceive the movement of air and changes in pressure when blowing into the instrument.
When working with the materials, I try to lead pupils to the idea that the accompaniment "plays in their mouths". My point is that they are aware of the colour of the sound before they blow into the instrument, because that is the moment when good intonation and tuning is created. Once they blow into the recorder, the note is finished, and nothing can be further done with it. Its quality is thus heard not only by the player, but also by the listener - for better or worse. The same is true when playing in an ensemble: you have to feel the tuning even before the notes are heard. So, intonation appears to be a matter of feeling (and its quality is linked to inner hearing and imagination). To imagine the sound in your mouth, you can usemetaphors like "imagine that you have a small harpsichord in your mouth that is playing there", "try to feel the sound of all the recorders around you in your mouth", "imagine that you are blowing (in a duo) into the instrument of the other person". Of course, high-quality recordings also play a role. Pupils can listen to the ideal colours of the sound of recorders in them.
The position of the instrument on the lips, the shape of the lips and oral cavity also have a great influence. It is usually said that there is no embouchure on the recorder. The reason is, among other things, that we don’t need to create such pressure when playing the recorder, as it is needed with other wind instruments. However, isn't it the case that pressure is in fact needed to make the instrument sound, but much less than, for example, when playing a clarinet, etc.? And what if we need to perceive this small amount of pressure? What if it is actually the case that we also need anembouchure for the recorder, only its quality is different – it is looser, softer? To many, this will sound like wind blasphemy, but I would strongly advocate that we think of the recorder as a form of non-press embouchure.
Pupils with their lips drawn into their mouths (where they search in vain for a reed), pupils with completely flabby lips (and the air they lose through the cracks in the corners of the lips), pupils with tight pursed lips - all of them would have a greater chance of playing better if we admitted that the lips, their shape and the degree of tension on them (as well as the subsequent shape of the cheeks) have the character of anembouchure and that it is absolutely necessary to work on this technical element from the very beginning of teaching. I don't mean to say that there is only one correct type of recorder embouchure. I want the pupils to be aware of their connection to the instrument and to feel the air they use to make the recordersound according to their individual dispositions for the position and shape of the lips. The recorder can thus truly become an "extension" of the human body, which D. Liebman discusses in his book Developing a Personal Saxophone Sound (e.g. p. 20). And it is quite possible that the lips have a similar function in the recorder as the reed has in other wind instruments.
I try to guide my pupils to keep their lips in the right shape and with the right relaxation/tension ratio, because I believe it is much easier to teach them to feel the air in the mouth, its movements, and changes in quality, which allows them to play the recorder more in tune. I leave space for the naturalness of the pupil's approach and try to make corrections only at the moment when I see that their efforts are heading in the wrong direction. I do not deny that correcting "bad lips" is perhaps one of the most difficult things that can happen to us in teaching, because I think that the position of the lips is very closely related to the inner attitude of the pupils and their character.
The space immediately behind the mouthpiece in the mouth is essential for the perception of air. My experience is that if I draw pupils' attention to this space and they gradually learn to perceive it (and the changes in the quality of the air in it), then they are able to adapt better in tuning and intonation. (It is also important to point out that the sensation of the mouthpiece lying on the lip is much stronger than the sensation of air in the mouth, and that it is therefore important to be able to distinguish between the two.) Later, when we learn to play fingerings in piano with more advanced pupils, it is much easier for them to find the right colour of the tone than if they try to do it with just a "blow more/less" instruction. Diminuendo also works better: the idea of a gradual change in the quality of air in the mouth is combined with a gradual subtle change in the colour of the sound, and it is not so difficult for (advanced) pupils to keep the note in its centre and thus good intonation.
Similar to articulation, intonation is also influenced by how pupils perceive the movement of air in the mouth for individual tones. Each tone has its own specific colour, which can be linked to a feeling associated with the perception of air in the mouth - in the space behind the mouthpiece, around the tongue and teeth, behind the upper and lower lips. Certainly – groups of tones, as they belong to each other in the individual registers of instruments, have this feeling in common. In addition, this feeling, for example, in the progression from c´´ to c´ smoothly transforms in very subtle steps. But the moment when we play larger intervals and we want the notes to sound good and in tune, the feelings that we can assign to the individual notes of the interval can help us achieve both a clean and reliable response and clean intonation. So, learning to feel the quality of the air for each note is very beneficial in my view for intonation of the intervals because it is easier to play the notes in the correct pitch.
The ability to sense the air in the mouth can also help with intonation on different types of recorders, as well as on different instruments of the same model (for example, when we want to choose a new instrument). Sensing the air in the mouth also has an effect on whether we feel the resistance of the instrument (of the mouthpiece) and the ability to play in its ideal colour - not blowing too much above the instrument's capabilities, but not below them either.
I think tuning in an ensemble of recorders is basically easier than tuning with an equally tempered piano or harpsichord. Simply put, this is because different tones of individual intervals in natural tuning create a boundary or a kind of "resistance" to which it is easier to add your own tone. In equal temperament, which in principle is detuned in the same way in all intervals, it is like in a (bad) school canteen, where UBS (= universal brown sauce) is still on the menu. Nevertheless, I think that uniform tuning should be a starting point for pupils, with which they learn to "tune in" and from which, if possible and interested, they can step out for a deeper experience in other tunings.
In practical terms, one more thing is important, and that is to temper the instrument before playing. The recorder and its intonation are very sensitive to changes in temperature and the ability to play cleanly depends to a large extent on how the recorder is warmed up and ready for air being blowed inside at about 36°C.
If the instrument is cold, there is not only an unwanted condensation of water in the wind channel, which the pupils try to "clean" to a certain extent with regard to the safety of the labium, but the difference in the intonation of the recorder differs by about 20 cents compared to a heated instrument. So, I try to guide them to always warm up the recorder well and to learn to have it ready (i.e. headjoint pulled up) for 440 Hz tuning when working with accompaniments, because most of the instruments currently sold are tuned to 442 Hz. However, tempered recordersare often higher pitched. Therefore, it is necessary to learn to work with them so that the sound is in the right proportions in its pitch with respect to the accompaniment, but at the same time it does not lack any of its natural colour of sound.
The use of a tuner is essential not only for this preparation, but also for the practice itself, as I consider it essential that pupils learn to hear the notes of their instrument at the correct pitch and in the correct proportions. That's why we use the Charlie heating bag in lessons and at concerts. It speeds up the process and stabilizes the temperature of the instrument. If we start talking or discussing some matters during our lessons, and therefore stop playing the recorder, pupils put the tempered recorder head under their armpit (or in their bag). Consequently, the recorder doesn’t get cold, it keeps its tuning better and doesn’t suffer from condensing moisture.
Literature:
ANDRIESSEN, Louis: Sweet, Schott 1972
LIEBMANN, David: Developing a Personal Saxophone Sound, Dorn Publications, Inc.,1994
