The pieces that define us

Back in November I played for several performances of The Armed Man (I think every choral society in the country programmed this to mark 100 years since the end of World War 1 – no imagination!).  It is often paired with the Fauré Requiem, accompanied by organ on these occasions, so I could join the audience before I was required to play.

It is curious how certain pieces of music crop up frequently over the course of our lives as musicians.  The Fauré is one such piece for me.  They have this ability to accrue so many layers of meaning that when I hear them or play them I am transported to earlier performances, all the people and places involved alive again in my mind, and I am simultaneously several different versions of myself.

I am a naive 16 year old again, encountering this piece for the first time in the Farnborough 6th Form College chamber choir.  I ended up playing in the orchestra for the concert itself – all 27 notes the flute plays in the Pie Jesu, tacet for the rest – enjoying the beautiful singing our wonderful head of music, Paul Bamborough, coached us to produce.  The solos were taken by students, and I can hear again Felix’s Libera Me – he had a strikingly rich baritone which I never tired of – and Ellen, a brilliant scientist, taking the Pie Jesu as her first ever significant solo.

I am a first-year undergraduate at Manchester University, attending a harmony tutorial towards the end of a long term.  My small group are all looking exhausted but Professor Julie Bray is unfazed, feeding us all chocolate bars and encouraging us all to stand around the piano.  ‘When I am feeling a bit tired I sing Fauré!’ she declared.  ‘The Libera Me always does the trick!’  And with that she struck up the accompaniment and we all belted it out in our best chest voices.  It did indeed do the trick and the rest of the session was passed in high spirits.

I am a member of the Hallé Choir – performing it as a singer at last, and what a group to do so with!  The choir pursued a real clarity of sound during the years I was part of it, under James Burton, and the In Paradisum was breathtaking.  (The Verdi Requiem is another piece this happened with.  Learnt the alto part at 6th form – ended up on piccolo for the concert.  Learnt it again with University Chorus – ended up on 1st flute for the concert.  Finally performed it with the Hallé Choir, in St Paul’s Cathedral of all places!)

And, more recently, I am in the audience, enjoying performances by various amateur choirs around the region, before taking to the stage as a professional flautist in the orchestra for whatever comprises the second half.  I still have to pinch myself sometimes – I can’t quite believe how lucky I am to be making my living in music, or that I am actually being paid to play the flute.  You would think the novelty would have worn off after a decade!  I sit in the audience, and the alto line is still in my muscle memory, causing my larynx to twitch as I try to prevent myself bursting into song.  Part of me wishes I were there as a singer not as a flautist.

I sit and I listen and I remember.  And my 16-year-old self doesn’t seem so distant.  The friends I sang and played with as a teen are as fresh in my mind as if I saw them yesterday.  I am simultaneously in my 6th form classroom and a church in Aldershot and the Bridgewater Hall and Julie’s office.  The memories woven together gain a new strand.  And I remember anew why I am a musician, how I got here, and what it is all about.

 

Flutes & Babies Part 2: Flute Playing with a Newborn

It has taken me a long time to get round to writing this post but at least I now have the experience of two babies to draw on!  The photo on the right was taken nearly three years ago when Oliver was almost two months old.  I was preparing for my first recital after having him and he woke up when I started to play so I bounced him on my lap while I practiced the Lennox Berkeley Sonatina.  My Facebook caption to this photo at the time observed all the bopping was very good for his wind, a fact reinforced when I moved on to Hamilton Harty’s In Ireland and he promptly did a poo. The left hand photo was taken today, with a three-month-old Lucy – again I find myself preparing for a first post-baby recital with a small person who will not let me put them down!  She tolerated the Fauré Fantaisie in the sling but got a bit cross during the Gaubert Sonata.

Overall, I have found practicing around newborn babies has been easier than I feared.  Physically it is easier to play than it was late in the pregnancies – it is so nice to be able to breathe deeply again!  Practically, Oliver was easier than Lucy – he slept best when it was noisy and generally fell asleep the moment I got my flute out.  I have photos somewhere of him lying under the piano on a blanket while I rehearsed with my awesome duo partner Jemima, who was always very accepting of feeding and nappy breaks (it was normally a good excuse for another cup of tea).  Even top-octave piccolo practice when I had to get my marching music back up to scratch did not interrupt Oliver’s slumber!  Lucy is proving a little more awkward – she seems to sleep better when it is quiet and often wakes up if I try and practice during a nap, but as long as she is not hungry she does seem content to fall asleep in the sling while I make noise a few inches above her head.  It is also, inevitably, more awkward to practice this time round as the toddler only has a day and a half in childcare.  I used to be able to practice during his nap.  Now chances are if he is napping I am feeding Lucy, and if she is napping I am playing with Oliver.  This is not insurmountable however – if I am sufficiently organised (or desperate!) I can delay his nap until Lucy has had a monster feed, then try and fit in half an hour or so while she is happy and he is asleep.  Not enough for me to feel confident about my forthcoming recital yet but better than nothing!

I enjoyed getting back into playing pretty quickly.  My first recital after Oliver came when he was three months old – a programme of British music in Sheffield Cathedral.  My parents-in-law live not far from there so they came and pushed him round in his pram while I performed.  He was very good for them but he did let out one loud excited shriek during a quiet bit which echoed around the cathedral, which was funny but rather distracting – I think they took him out after that!  This next recital will be when Lucy is four months old, in the Wesley Chester series.  We will have to see how it goes!  Both times  I was out gigging with the band even earlier.  After Oliver it was a regimental dinner around 8 weeks postpartum.  With Lucy it was a whole evening of background piano music (my first piano gig in over a decade, which is a whole story in itself….), also around 8 weeks postpartum.  These brought different challenges – Oliver took a bottle well but didn’t sleep, Lucy (at that point) didn’t sleep much or take a bottle!  It was good for me to get out and make music though.

I should add the caveats that I only returned to playing so soon because practicing made me happy, and the majority of engagements I took on in the first six months were low stress with minimal rehearsal time.  The concerts themselves were some of the only times in these early months that I was out without the baby and I really valued spending that time doing something I loved.  There were a couple of concerts I had to pull out of last minute because Oliver was ill – that was ok, everyone was very understanding.  There were also days (and weeks) that practice was more effort than it was worth due to no sleep, growth spurts, jabs, illnesses etc.  That was ok too.  My advice would be to do what you can when you can and trust that it will all work out – it normally does somehow.  Plus all this music round the house must be good for the baby’s development – Oliver’s first sounds were very tonal and he now has a fine repertoire of nursery rhymes!

Reflections on Self-Definition

I am currently nursing my second baby, who is nearly 12 weeks old.  Maternity leave seems to make me even more reflective than usual and my thoughts have been returning to a topic which has bothered me frequently since music college.

There remains this idea, still prevalent in conservatoires and with the general public, that to have ‘made it’ as a musician you have to have that full time orchestral seat, or whatever your instrumental or vocal equivalent may be.  Inevitably a very small subset of music students will end up in such a position, if they even want to, but however much I evangelise about the diversity of careers a music degree can prepare you for and the genuine pleasure to be found in a portfolio career, this ingrained, irritating, nagging feeling of having somehow fallen short refuses to go away.  I was speaking to an academic recently who has been involved in researching the careers of musicians after music college, and their feelings about those careers, and she said the research highlighted an internalised feeling of failure amongst the majority of their population which is entirely unwarranted given the amazing range of work people end up in, but frustratingly persistent (I really do need to find a link to this research!).

The things which particularly nag away at me are that I do not play with orchestras anyone has ever heard of – the first question I am normally asked when I say I am a flautist is ‘who do you play with?’ and I am always uncomfortable when answering! – and not all my work is paid.  I worry people might think I am a fraud.  I am completely comfortable defining myself as a musician – while I undertook a variety of non-musical work immediately after finishing my Masters (including as a rock climbing instructor and as a sales assistant for climbing/hiking/camping shop), for some years now all my income has been derived from music, be it playing, teaching, researching, lecturing or anything else which has come along – but ‘flautist’ gives me pause for thought.

Rationally, I should have no qualms at all claiming ‘professional flautist’ as one of my jobs.  Since music college I have been involved in 225 concerts, including solo, orchestral, military band and chamber concerts, the majority of which have been paid.    This averages 28 concerts a year – more than a concert a fortnight for 8 years.  Even without reckoning for part-time PhD study, teaching and lecturing work, getting married, having two complicated pregnancies (and the resulting two children), going on some big climbing expeditions, running a marathon and all the other exciting things I have been getting up to over the past 8 years, this is a pretty decent number of performances!

But what has really brought it home to me over the last few weeks that, yes, I am definitely a flautist was, of all things, ClassicFM.  I have recently acquired a new car which, unlike my old one, has a working radio, so I have happily been driving my children around while listening to music – this is a novel thing for me!  I know ClassicFM has a focus on the more popular classics but it struck me that, piece after piece, I was hearing things which I have had the opportunity to play with an orchestra.  Big orchestral repertoire (Scheherazade, Rite of Spring, Pictures at an Exhibition, Peter and the Wolf to name just a few), numerous symphonies by composers including Mozart, Beethoven, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, key opera overtures, plenty of film music, lots of choral music (recently in the orchestra but previously with the choir) – all conjure up places and people and memories from youth orchestras through college to the current patchwork of professional, semi-pro and amateur orchestras I enjoy working with.  I would love to be doing more orchestral playing right now – it is the single part of my work I love the most so I will always want more of it – but, really, I’m pretty lucky to have done as much as I have.

I have also reached a point in my recital work where Jemima and I have performed much of the core repertoire for flute and piano, plus an awful lot of obscure repertoire along the way, and are looking forward to repeating some of our favourites again.  I worried when I finished at college that I would never have the opportunity to perform so much of the music I had played in the practice room.  Now the list of repertoire we have shared with audiences around the country over the past few years runs to several pages, including sonatas by Bach, Prokofiev, Reinecke, Liebermann, Schubert and Franck, most of the pieces from Flute Music by French Composers, big stuff by Jolivet, Mouquet, Roussel, Copland, the Schubert Variations, lots of unusual British/C19/Female/contemporary pieces and a few first performances of new works.

I have played in big venues (our St Martin-in-the-Fields recital a particular highlight) for big audiences and important people (including, twice in 2016, the Queen).  My playing has not been confined to the UK.  I have travelled to various European cities to undertake professional orchestral auditions (I am rubbish at auditioning unfortunately but the ones in Belgium were always a great excuse for a mini-break and lots of beer afterwards!), and given performances in various places around Europe and as far afield as the Falklands with my military band.

In bad patches, if I have a longer period without an interesting gig or with no orchestral playing in the diary, I do start to question myself – to wonder if I am deluded, or to worry that the amount of time I have to spend practicing to maintain a level may no longer be worth it. I need to remember that, first and foremost, I still love it.  I love playing and rehearsing and practicing.  I then need to look back at this post, to remind myself how much flute playing I have managed to fit in during the past eight years, never mind the past twenty.  How much incredible music I have played, how many amazing places it has taken me, all the wonderful people I have met along the way.  And that this is eight years out of a lifetime, with so much more wonderful music yet to experience.

My name is Rachel and I am a flautist.

Nineteenth-Century British Flute Music: A Research Project Revisited

Eight years ago, as part of my Masters study at the RWCMD, I undertook a research project into nineteenth-century British flute music.  My starting point was that some must have been written but nothing remained in the repertoire, so I was keen to find out what had been composed, who played it where, and why had it been forgotten – was it just not very good, or was it all a bit more complicated than that?  My investigations took me to the British Library reading rooms where I spent many happy hours studying nineteenth-century concert programmes, old flute tutor books and journals, tracking down the repertoire when I could and contextualising it all with biographical and historical research.  I fell in love with the world of nineteenth-century British music studies and with nineteenth-century Britain, savouring the glimpse provided by annotations and anecdotes into how people were experiencing this music and concert life two hundred years ago.  It is thanks to this research project that I am now undertaking my PhD.

But to return to the world of the nineteenth-century flute, in the dim and distant past of 2009 the BL did not allow people to take photos in their archives and the costs of using their copying facilities were prohibitive.  I found myself in the frustrating position of having identified hundreds of interesting pieces but I could not afford to actually play them, with the exception of the rather lovely Suite by Edward German which I had obtained from another source.  I wrote up my dissertation and moved on to projects new, keeping in mind a hope I could return to this music some day.  The opportunity presented itself in a course of lectures I was requested to give to the Glossop Guild in November/December 2016 on music in nineteenth-century Britain.  I immediately decided to make one of these a lecture-recital about nineteenth-century British flute culture.  Given the new photography rules at the BL I planned a visit, but first contacted Robert Bigio, the flute maker and researcher into nineteenth-century British flutes, to see if he was still happy to lend me some of his music as he had very kindly offered several years ago.  He was, so off I drove to north London.  He hauled several large cardboard boxes out of his shed, music given to him by the granddaughter of a flautist active at the end of the nineteenth century. ‘Take them away!’ he said.  ‘I haven’t even had the chance to look through them properly and they are taking up lots of space!’  We filled my boot with music, which is currently occupying my loft until I get a chance to catalogue, copy and return it.

The photograph of music accompanying this post is the first recital programme of nineteenth-century British flute music I have devised, from this collection supplemented by other sources.  I have now presented it twice, first in the context of a lecture-recital in Glossop, then in a shortened format at the Wesley Chester recital series in February 2017.  It is the tip of a very exciting iceberg – I was confident that much of the music I had discovered could work well in a recital programme, whether as great music in its own right, or whether as interesting pieces when framed and contextualised appropriately.  Presenting it to a general audience has confirmed this perception and several of the pieces have appeared in other recitals I have given since.

The stories behind this music, its composers, its performers and audiences are worth telling, ranging from pistols at dawn to not altogether honourable courting practices, but they deserve their own post.  For this one I will confine myself to a brief account of this recital programme.  It is approximately chronological, with several distinct groupings of repertoire style.  The first, by W. N. James, an amateur flute playing who published extensively, is very much intended for use in the home – an image of this piece is below, and you can picture the gentleman brandishing his flute in front of his friends saying ‘look what was in the Flutonicon this week!’.  It was James who met to duel with Charles Nicholson, the preeminent flautist in Britain at that time, after a series of increasingly heated exchanges by letter and in print.  They were arrested to keep the peace.  Nicholson’s piece here is one of his more virtuosic sets of variations, compared to others he wrote intended more for the domestic market.  It is rather difficult but a lot of fun.  The compositions by Prout, Barnett and Macfarren, all serious composers held in high esteem in their day, are the results of efforts by the flute makers and publishers Rudall, Carte & Co. to encourage and commission sonatas and similar genres for the flute, published in their Flute Player’s Journal and the Journal of the London Society of Amateur Flute Players who assisted in the cause.  There is some very appealing music within these pages, and the Barnett Sonata has now been reissued in a modern edition so I am evidently not the only person to think so!  Edward de Jong was the first principal flute of the Hallé Orchestra, giving at least 13 solos at Hallé concerts between 1858 and 1865, several of which were his own compositions.  This caprice is very well written and sounds much harder than it is!  Edward German, best remembered today for Merrie England, wrote his Suite for the Welsh flautist Frederick Griffith, perhaps the most sought-after flautist in 1890s London.  Griffith premiered it in Steinway Hall in 1892, with German accompanying.  The Romance by Dora Bright was also composed for Griffith, with whom she had a close friendship.  Finally, as it was nearly December when we gave this recital, we concluded with a rather wonderful set of variations on ‘Adeste Fidelis’ by Dipple, a contemporary of Charles Nicholson.  All these pieces have met with a warm reception from our audiences.

W. N. James                                            Jack Redburn’s description (in music) of a horse race (1840)

Charles Nicholson (1795-1837)       Au Clair de la Lune: Introduction, Theme & Variations

Ebenezer Prout (1835-1909)             Sonata Op. 17 (1883)

                                                                                1: Allegro con anima

                                                                                2: Romanza

John F Barnett (1837-1916)                Grand Sonata

                                                                                1: Allegro

W. A. Macfarren (1813-1887)             Recitative and Air (1883)

Edward de Jong (1837-1920)              Caprice “Will o’ the Wisp” (1899)

Edward German (1862-1936)            Suite for Flute and Piano (1892)

1: Valse Gracieuse

Dora Bright (1862-1951)                      Romance and Seguidilla (1891)

T. J. Dipple                                              Variations on “Adeste Fideles”

 

St Martin-in-the-Fields 17.2.17

On the 17th of February this year Jemima and I gave a recital in St Martin-in-the-Fields. This was long anticipated – we applied and were accepted to their series in 2014, were given a date in August 2015 but I ended up being in hospital then so we had to postpone. By that stage 2016 was all organised, so early 2017 it was – a mere three years from proposal to performance!

We chose to base our programme around Reinecke’s Undine sonata, consequently finding pieces with a ‘myths and legends’ theme.  We were both keen to play something new and the wonderful Lucy Armstrong, a Manchester-based composer I have known for years since an orchestral summer school, agreed to compose for us.  After much deliberation we added Jolivet’s Chant de Linos – this is seriously difficult for both flute and piano and we wondered if we were mad to include it in such a prestigious event with the associated nerves!  All that remained was to find an opening piece which was not too scary – I spent much time on YouTube and Naxos Music Library and found a little gem by Eugene Lacroix called Invocation.  Having decided it complemented the rest of the programme perfectly, I discovered it was out of print and spent rather too much money acquiring it from a French second-hand music seller via Ebay.  The challenges we unwittingly take on!

Concert day dawned beautifully sunny.  We made our way to the church and when I played my first few notes my heart sang – I can understand why it is such a popular concert venue, the acoustic is something very special.  We ended up playing our full programme as a warm up because we were enjoying ourselves so much!  For the concert itself the church was full and we were received very warmly.  I had an unusually large number of friends and family attending which made me more nervous in the preparation – I am used to playing to audiences of strangers I never have to see again if it all goes wrong! – but during the actual recital I was remarkably calm and managed to enjoy performing, even the Jolivet!  We had time to sneak in Gerladine Green’s Nocturne as an encore and sent everyone out into the sun with a smile.

I still can’t quite believe we have performed here, and that it went so well. At the point I finished my Masters in 2010 I could have not dared to imagine playing this programme in this space.  Now to use the impetus gained from St Martin’s to plan the next couple of years of recitals!

Flutes & Babies Part 1: Flute Playing and Pregnancy

When my husband and I were thinking about starting a family, then again when I found out I was pregnant, I spent a lot of time googling for advice and other people’s experiences.  I found lots of blogs about doing a PhD or being an academic while pregnant or with a baby, likewise for my various sports and activities, but nothing about playing the flute while pregnant or managing work as a flautist and instrumental teacher with a baby and beyond.

At first I was surprised and a bit irritated, but upon reflection I should have anticipated this silence.  Babies and playing still feels a taboo subject.  There is a perceived stigma around it all (how much it is true in reality is impossible to say as no one talks about it!) – a genuine fear that if I told anyone I was expecting they would not book me for work and if I took any sort of maternity leave from playing I would never work again – I know this sounds extreme but it is the way us freelancers think!

In the earliest days of my pregnancy I wrote a list of questions in my journal:

• how might pregnancy affect my playing?
• how and when to tell people?
• how much time off to take?
• what to do about my hard-won teaching?
• how long after birth before I can play?
• how to get back into playing shape?
• babies and practicing??
• hearing damage to baby?
• juggling irregular schedules and last-minute work with a baby?
• feeding issues?
• making things work with and/or without my husband’s support?
• trips away and touring?
• does taking maternity leave and / or having a baby affect employability?

My son is now 17 months old, so for anyone else asking similar questions I will share some of what I have discovered along the way.  Obviously everyone’s pregnancy is different and everyone’s baby will have its own idiosyncracies, but overall my experience has been pretty positive and hopefully will be reassuring!

Before getting pregnant I will admit I was quite negative about the whole thing, worried about what it would mean for my future life and career.  I was relieved to find once I was pregnant that a positive mindset prevailed – I dealt with things as they came along and found ways to make them work.

Physically, playing while pregnant was easier than I feared.  I had issues with breathlessness from the start (a problem I didn’t expect to arise until much later), but my need to take more breaths was mostly covered by doing so musically.  The tiredness of early pregnancy did also affect rehearsals on occasion – I find once I pass a certain point of exhaustion my brain no longer communicates with my fingers and they start doing something entirely different to what the music says!

Orchestral work, recitals and outreach engagements all continued much the same as normal.  I was aware nerves were affecting me more severely – manageable in everyday work but I did mess up an audition when I was about 8-weeks gone as a result of being much more jittery than usual.  I completely avoided the question of when to tell people – my piano Duo partner found out straight away as we had a recital booked around my due date so needed to discuss options, but I didn’t tell anyone else until they needed to know or until it was obvious.

This was precipitated to a certain extent by my pregnancy becoming spectacularly complicated in its 18th week when my waters broke.  I discovered I was bleeding when I turned up for a rehearsal an hour before a recital and had to go immediately to hospital, leaving my poor pianist to find a friend prepared to come and join her to give a concert with half an hour’s notice (she did it, treating the audience to a fabulous vocal concert!).  From that point on I was in and out of hospital, mostly on bedrest at home, then admitted permanently from week 30.  I was honest with all my booked work and everyone was wonderful – recital venues were happy to postpone or were prepared for me to cancel last-minute if necessary, and having a couple of concerts to continue to prepare for gave me some treasured memories during a very worrying time.  My waters going had coincided with the moment I began to feel my baby move, you see.  Playing music was a very immediate way of communicating with him – when I practiced he would stop moving (and in fact when I played the same music once he was born he used to fall asleep), apart from some of the more unusual modern music I was rehearsing (e.g. Ian Clarke’s Hatching Aliens) which made him kick vigorously!

I only really had one negative playing experience while pregnant as a result of people making assumptions about what I could and could not do, and this was for an orchestral concert about a month after everything became uncertain.  I wanted to play still – I wanted to see what baby’s reaction to orchestral sound was, and I knew it might be the only opportunity I would ever have to share orchestral music with him – so I was lining up cover just in case I could not attend while continuing to prepare the music, when I got an email from the orchestral fixer to say they had heard via another flautist who had heard from a mutual friend that I was experiencing complications so they had replaced me, so I didn’t have to worry about it.  I know they had the best of intentions but I would have preferred to be asked first!

My hospital admission meant no playing from week 30, then after my son was born we had time in the neonatal unit, so the question of how long after the birth until I was able to play was decided for me.  All the medical aspects of my story are outside the scope of this post, but the pertinent part is that whatever plans I was trying to make were interrupted and entirely out of my control, and we were told we were going to lose our baby, which does change one’s perspective on life somewhat.  I learnt very quickly to live in the moment and to find what joy I could along the way, an important part of which for me was playing my flute, sharing my music with my unborn child.

Flute and Babies Part 2: Flute Playing with a Newborn

 

Embracing the maxi-dresses for a recital at 6-months pregnant