Serpent at the 1995 Amherst Early Brass Symposium

The concert descriptions are from an article I originally wrote for the "Boston Early Music News", XIII/1, which was subsequently reprinted in "The Serpent Newsletter", April 1996, and "The Thames Valley Early Music News". The description of the serpent lesson was originally written for "The Serpent Newsletter".

Early Brass Symposium

This year the early brass weekend which usually precedes the Amherst Early Music workshop was expanded into a five day symposium. The Serpent playing was the biggest surprise to most fo the audience. There are two French players who have become authentic virtuosos on this very difficult instrument. Bernard Fourtet played Bassano divisions on serpent better than most professional recorder players can play them on recorder. Michel Godard played with Ensemble La Fenice, which also featured some of the best cornetto playing of the week, in the tightest and most exciting renaissance improvisation I have ever heard. He also demonstrated the use of the serpent in contemporary music. He was a jazz player before he took up baroque and renaissance music, and it shows in his ability tolisten to his colleagues instead of merely playing his own licks.

Baroque Bass line is Heard in Concert

One of the most exciting sets of the week was thanks to a medical emergeny. The Zephyr's Choice Baroque Wind Band, which normally plays with two oboes, two naatural horns, and a baroque bassoon, was missing the bassoon player. So they asked both Marilyn Boenau (on baroque bassoon) and Bernard Fourtet (on Serpent) to play the bass line. They blended beautifully, and it was almost the first time all week when there was enough bass in a baroque piece.

Laura Takes a Serpent Lesson

In addition to going to two concerts and several lectures a day, and practicing and doing informal playing with other serpent players, I alco found time to take a lesson from Bernard Fourtet. I had planned that when I heard a Serpent player who made me say "I wish I could do that", I would see if I could get a lesson from that person. Bernard's performances certainly made me say that, so I talked to hime and told him I was a beginner. He seemed interested in my progress, so I asked him to give me a lesson.

He started by correcting the way I held the instrument and making me sit in a more relaxed position. Then we spent a while making sure I was covering the holes with my fingers. (I have small hands, and the fourth hole on my instrument is at the edge of what I can handle.) He stressed that I should try to relax my hand and drop my fingers onto the holes. Finally, after about 20 minutes, we had changed enough things about the way I had been doing things that playing even one note was surprisingly difficult. When I was finally making A, G, and D come out pretty regularly, we decided on practising only those three notes for a while. Then we played a piece, from a serpent method he had with him. The chant-like top line was to be played by the student while the more decorated second line was for the instructor.

All music lessons are the same

What chiefly surprised me about this experience was how exactly like my first recorder lesson the Serpent lesson was. Common to both:

Other memorable quotes from the serpent lesson:
The instrument isn't making the note -- you are making the note.
You aren't playing the instrument; you're playing the acoustics of the room.

The moral of the story is that you don't take a music lesson because you aregoing to be told surprising things about how to play an instrument. You take it because there are things you know intellectually but don't believe quite enough to be acting on them as well as you should. Having someone whose playing you respect tell them to you while watching you play does make it easier to act on them in subsequent practise.

Last modified: 2002-09-13 09:31, 2007
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