I do not have the exact words to describe what today’s practice session was/is, and for that reason, I have decided to document the process and jot down my feelings and observations.
I have been a huge fan and proponent of Kalevi Aho’s music for quite some time, but even from my first experiences listening to his catalog, his behemoth of an oboe sonata scared me. There, I said it. This piece scared me.
Emphasis on the past tense, however.
I am not very good at sitting still. Anyone who knows me in roughly any capacity knows this to be true. While I do not consider myself to always have the most astonishing degree of introspection, I can admit to this. I stay in motion. My wife calls it being a workaholic, but when you have a fair bit of ADD coupled with a career-space such as music, I choose to call it my superpower. Why is this necessary or even a part of a post entitled Aho Oboe Sonata, Day 1? Because today (day 1!) was the first time I started exploring the techniques and sounds of this piece with my instrument in hand. For all of my inability to not have a project front and center in my life, I have been putting off this project since the notion of giving the North American premiere of this piece first bubbled to the surface of my psyche roughly two years ago. For the record, I had plenty of other ‘things’ on my plate, and to be quite honest, I still do. But I found myself needing a new long-term oboe-project. No time like the present.
In the spirit of honesty, today is not the first day I have spent a considerable amount of time practicing this piece. I purchased the music back in August, and have been listening to it very regularly at least since the beginning of July. It is not the type of music which can easily be hummed or sung, but this is where my practice of it started. Once I committed to learning and living with this music, I sketched out a sort of ‘plan of attack’. Listening was most important for a time, but only for a time.
A few weeks back, I finally scanned the music onto my iPad. Wow - groundbreaking, right?
Actually it is - because now it entered my ‘To Be Learned’ setlist in ForScore. The setlist had been emptied as I finished my last recital for the semester in early October, and each time I opened the app, the empty setlist was just sitting there glaring at me. I knew what I needed to learn, but the Aho still scared me!
Call it ripping off the bandage or simply having nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon, but today I added it to the setlist, soaked a reed-shaped-object, got out the piano score, and got to work.
I have never learned something of this scale or type in my musical life thusfar. Rhythmically it is demanding, but the real kicker is the microtonal-nature of the work. By my estimation, the addition of microtones (quarter sharps, quarter flats, three quarter sharps, and three quarter flats) mutliplies the range by about four time the standard. Additionally, the written range extends well into the third octave, and not in an exulted or ‘arrived’ way, just in a casual play-the-highest-note-you-have-been-asked-to-play type of way. To learn this piece, and I really mean learn this piece, I need to develop new methods of practicing and new methods of organizing the information, and new methods of retaining the information. For heaven’s sake, I am literally learning new notes. I guess that I will have to rethink the line I tell my middle school students, “Once you learn all of your scales, you know all the notes…” I am eating those words for dinner this evening.
So here I am writing down these thoughts and sharing the process. That is really all this is meant to be.
Today I found conisistent working fingerings for top line f quarter sharp, third octave f quarter sharp, third octave e quarter sharp, first line e quarter sharp, fourth line d three fourths flat, and first line e flat quarter sharp. I spent quite a bit of time with the tuner, just for consistency’s sake, as I need to be able to replicate these pitches thorughout the duration of the entire piece consistently, clearly, and cleanly. This work, realistically, took about half of my practice session. After this, I needed to play some ‘normal notes’ and moved into the third page of the first movement when the texture change and the microntones disappear for about a full page worth of music.
Onwards and upwards! (or downwards, depending on the notated microtone lol)
Isaac
