Nicole Okeson and Dr. Kirt Saville, Music
The flute is one of the oldest musical instruments in history. Flutes can be found in civilizations across the globe throughout time. While basic similarities exist between all flutes, including similar fingerings and embouchure, musical style and notation differ widely. China is one of the oldest continuous civilizations on earth. Much of traditional Chinese music dates back to the time of Confucius and much earlier.
In this project I studied the art of playing traditional Chinese flutes with Professor Wang Jianxin of the Tianjin Conservatory of Music. For one month I studied with Professor Wang; in that time I worked to understand how traditional Chinese flute music works and the aesthetic of the genre. The final culmination will be performing tow of the pieces I learned on my Senior Flute Recital. I will be serving a mission in Phoenix Arizona for the next year and a half, so my Senior Recital will take place the year I return.
Chinese flutes, like flutes from across the world, share many characteristics with the modern Western flute. Most fingerings are the same, with the exception of the open fingerings, and the embouchure is also the same. The biggest difference between studying the Western flute and Chinese flutes is the notation system. Ancient Chinese notation uses Chinese characters for the notes, however about 100 years ago a new French notation system was adopted that used numbers representing the scale degrees. The rhythmic notation remained fundamentally the same as in traditional western notation; however, it looks incredibly different because the note heads are replaced with numbers. The notation system works like reading solfége, and I spent the majority of the first half of my time in Tianjin acquainting myself with the notation style and learning to quickly read it.
I have also put together a packet describing how to read the Chinese notation for my faculty mentor, Kurt Saville, to use in teaching other students to read this notation. I was the first student he has taken over to study at the conservatory in Tianjin, but he hopes to be able to take more students in the future. Having this guide for reading the notation will help future students learn faster and perhaps already read the notation before arriving in China. This will allow them to learn more music instead of having to spend time at the conservatory studying the notation like I did.
The final part to learning Chinese flutes was learning about the ornamentation. Most musical styles across the world include improvised ornamentation in their music. It allows the performer some freedom to show off virtuosity and to add a unique touch to the piece. China has many different styles of flute music; however, on a large scale it can be divided into the Northern and Southern style. I had the opportunity to study both styles and to learn how to distinguish between the two.
The first big difference between the two styles is the instruments. Northern flutes are much smaller and higher pitch, almost comparable to a piccolo. Southern flutes are larger and lower, and Southern flute music is far slower and more lyrical. The ornamentation is often very scalar and smooth. Northern flute music is often very fast. There are more flash ornaments that can be added and extended techniques like flutter tonguing (rolling the tongue while playing) and pitch bending are used regularly.
While in Tianjin I also had many opportunities to learn about other genres of traditional Chinese music, including erhu and qin music, and various opera styles. I attended a class taught by an opera singer in the Tianjin area where she teaches the students about the singing style and also some of the stage aesthetic. In traditional Chinese opera every movement down to how you hold your hands is choreographed with traditional movements to express a variety of emotions. Dependent upon how the singer is holding her hands you can tell how she is feeling, without even understanding a word of the opera itself. Like opera, traditional flute music is incredibly expressive and there are many little nuances that can completely change the character of the piece. It was also interesting to study a little about Chinese opera, because the flute is a prominent opera instrument, and many famous flute pieces are transcribed from opera music over to the flute. Getting to know opera itself helped immensely in trying to tackle the flute pieces.
In attending an erhu and a qin concert I also learned a lot about playing Chinese music. I got a better idea of how ornamentation works and the style of expressivity that is appropriate in Chinese music. The qin concert was also incredibly informative as I got to see how pitch bending is meant to work on an instrument that has so many options available for bending and moving the pitch in a single note. Concerts were where I was able to see the performance aesthetic that I was studying put into practice.
In studying at the Tianjin Conservatory with Professor Wang Jianxin I came to love and appreciate Chinese music. I hope to have opportunity to study in China once again, and at my last lesson Professor Wang gave me an open invitation to come back and study with him again. He told me his studio is always open to me and that he would be happy to teach me again, and I hope to be able to have that opportunity as I continue to pursue a career in music