by Johanna Bartz
Trills, or shakes, are one of the most characteristic, and sometimes challenging, ornaments of Baroque music.
According to Quantz “Shakes add great distinction to one’s playing, and, like appoggiaturas, are quite indispensable”, to the extent that, he also says, the lack of the ability of playing confident trills would make the art of a good musician incomplete.
According to Quantz “Shakes add great distinction to one’s playing, and, like appoggiaturas, are quite indispensable”, to the extent that, he also says, the lack of the ability of playing confident trills would make the art of a good musician incomplete.
|
While practicing, I often use trills to warm up and « activate » my fingers through their quick and repetitive movement, or I simply want to repeat and memorize their fingerings. I like to take a sharp and a flat tonality on the same day and simply play their trills within one or two octaves, for example D major and then E flat major.
|
|
If I have a complicated trill fingering, I first break it down into its components:
Often I practice by playing the trill backward, i.e. start with the final note, then I add the resolution, the trill itself and finally the appoggiatura, and then again the other way around, going forward, in both slow and faster speed.
|
I also try to imagine a shape for both dynamics and acceleration and decrease of the speed of the trill movements before I start playing.
|
For some trills it takes more detailed practicing than for other, for example with the more unusual fingering combinations that also pose a challenge for the sound quality.
Often I repeat tricky trill fingerings outside of their musical context: during a practicing session I stop what I am doing, pick some trills (for example the ones from Bach’s second movement of his Trio Sonata of the Musical Offering, BWV 1079), imagine them before playing and then play them at a slower and a faster speed.
This “spaced repetition” helps me to automate the fingerings of challenging trills.
Often I repeat tricky trill fingerings outside of their musical context: during a practicing session I stop what I am doing, pick some trills (for example the ones from Bach’s second movement of his Trio Sonata of the Musical Offering, BWV 1079), imagine them before playing and then play them at a slower and a faster speed.
This “spaced repetition” helps me to automate the fingerings of challenging trills.
Despite having played baroque repertoire for many years now, I still like to always take with me a fingering chart and the explanations by Quantz or Hotteterre (depending on the repertoire and the instrument), to double check some of the more unusual fingerings for trills:
|
- Quantz, ‘On Playing the flute: Chapter IX. Of shakes'
Examples Tab. VII, Fig. 22 – 24 (trill fingerings, where the numbers below the notes indicate which finger must be used for each note), and §12 in the above mentioned chapter. |
|
- Hotteterre, ‘Principes de la flute traversiere', Chapter IV (Trills on natural tones) & VI (Trills), plus trill fingering charts in this treatise.
|
And another great additional resource, a very handy place to find many possible trill fingerings, is Rick Wilson's Historical Flutes Page.
|
|
