Winds of Yore - Instant Harmony

Winds of Yore:
What's new with Old Woodwinds?
Penelope Mathiesen
WOODWINDS AND RESEARCH: AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID LASOCKI From his beginnings as a peiformer,
David Lasocki's interests have evolved
to include editing, writing, and a
career in music Itbrarianship. His
editions forflute, recorder, and other
woodwind instruments have been
published in Austria, England, Ger­
many, Japan, and the U.S.A. His ar­
ticles and bibliograph ies on baroque
Jlute- and recorder-related tOPics
have appeared in such publications
as American Recorder, Continuo,
Early Music, Galpin Society Journal,
Recorder and Music, and Tibia. His
books, including several practical
guides to baroque peiformance prac­
tice co-authored with Betty Bang
Mather, have pointed the way for
.many an aspiring early musician.
David Lasocki is currently an As­
sociate Librarian and Head of Public
Services at Indiana University's Music
Library. Here he talks about his for­
mative musical experiences, unan­
ticipated turns in the early music
career path, the role of librarianship,
.and the meaning of authenticity.
PM: How did you get started on the
recorder and the baroque flute, and
how did this lead to an interest in
,research and librarianship?
DL: Librarianship came very much
later. As a child in England, I learned
to play the piano and the violin and
sang in the church choir, but I didn't
get very interested in music until my
early teens. My mother had to rent out
rooms in order to make ends meet,
8JUNE 1991
the early sixties. So I bought a
soprano recorder-a descant, we
called it in England-and a little
book, went on vacation, and started
to play, not knowing how far I would
get. I got quite far, actually, and really
enjoyed playing the recorder. But I
still had aspirations to play a "real"
instrument. I liked the flutelike
sounds the recorder was making, so I
bought myself a very cheap modern
flute and began to play that. Because
I'd started with the recorder, I was
interested in earlier music. When I
came to play the modern flute, I
played baroque repertoire. It was
partly because I didn't have enough
technique for the modern repertoire.
Anyway, somehow the earlier reper­
toire transferred to the modern flute,
and then-again, I don't quite know
how it happened-I realized there
were such things as historical flutes.
We took a trip from Manchester,
where we lived, down to London,
and in the window of Musica Rara­
later famous as a music publisher­
there was a late-eighteenth-century
flute. I dragged my mother in and
said, "You have to buy me this." So
we bought a six-keyed flute by Potter,
and that was my introduction to his­
torical instruments. My mother was
quite startled by this request. We
didn't have much money, and it cost
six pounds, which was a lot in those
days for our family. The very first job
I had in England paid six pounds a
week, so it was a whole week's
David Lasocki in front of the Music salary. My interest in early music and
Library, Indiana University. performance practice came from
these instruments. I learned to play
PM: A "real" instrument? them by reading Edgar Hunt's re­
DL: Well, he was a flute player and corder book, Thurston Dart's book
the recorder wasn't a "real" instru­
on performance practice, and
ment back in those days-this was Quantz's flute treatise when it ap­
and all of a sudden we had three
students in the house who were very
keen on music. They sang and played
the piano and violin. There was lots
of music-making in the house for the
first time ever. One day we went to
visit a family friend who was a flutist,
and I found myself saying I was inter­
ested in playing a woodwind instru­
ment. He said, "Well, which one?"
And I said, "I haven't the faintest idea!
I don't know what they sound like."
So he said, "Well, if you don't know,
then you should start on the recorder,
because that's a good beginning in­
strument. You can move on to a 'real'
instrument later."
peared in English translation. I
developed a thirst for performance
practice. I started buying and listen­
ing to recordings; it just took over my
life.
PM: Were you able to study music in
school?
DL: In the British equivalent of high
school, you could be on the science
side or the arts side. I'd originally
asked to be put on the science side,
but I just got less and less interested
in science. Because of the inflexibility
of the British educational system, I
couldn't switch into studying music.
In the end, I pursued a degree in
chemistry at the University of Lon­
don, but I also did music. I went to
concerts and met people. I took les­
sons from Edgar Hunt, first on baro­
que flute and then on recorder, and
so on. Eventually I made contacts
with publishers. For example, my
translation of Jacques Hotteterre Ie
Romain's 1707 treatise, Principles of
the Flute, Recorder and Oboe, was
started during my first year in Lon­
don. I did it for my own amusement
and education, eventually found con­
tacts, and later published it. I spent a
lot of my spare time in the British
Museum, in what is now the British
Library-sneaking in without permis­
sion two years before I reached the
age at which you are su pposed to be
admitted-looking at treatises and
music and making copies of un­
published pieces. At that stage, I had
ambitions to be a performer. I was
interested in research and writing be­
cause they were useful for perfor­
mance.
PM: How did you end up pursuing a
~raduate music degree in the U.S.?
DL: When I'd finished my chemistry
degree, I went back to Manchester. I
didn't know quite what to do, or
where I could go to study music. I'd
been in contact with Betty Bang, now
Betty Bang Mather. She was teaching
at the University of Iowa and we'd
corresponded on some points of re­
search. I thought, "She's so
knowledgeable about music, and she
plays baroque flute. So I applied to
the University of Iowa, and on the
strength of my Hotteterre translation,
which had come out in 1968, I was
accepted as a graduate student in
music. Six months after I finished my
bachelor's degree in England, I set off
II
for America and the next phase of my
life. At Iowa, I was appointed a re­
search assistant to Himie Voxman,
from whom I developed a very keen
sense of the woodwind literature. My
idea was to study the modern flute
and gain the technique I needed for
the baroque flute. I took lessons on
the modern flute from Betty Bang,
and I played recorder and crumhorn
in the Collegium Musicum, but some­
how I lost interest in the baroque
flute. Doing the baroque flute had
been my great passion. I first heard
Betty Bang play the baroque flute in
Germany, the summer before I went
to college. I liked what she did with
the sound, and I thought that was
what I wanted to do. But later on,
when I started playing the modern
flute more and the baroque flute less,
I didn't take to the modern flute as
well, and some of that carried over to
the baroque flute. My interest in the
recorder increased, but my interest in
the baroque flute-the thing I'd had
the most passion for-declined.
h)
I'\c\Qrci(r
d--=::::-c-t.: _f"-d:t':­
..,
e
f!:-f:. f!:­
<IJ
fA..
-fA
I
/I
...
r
.~
..
~
..
_
__
~:::f
(Q~t,,, .. o
woodwind literature. My degree in
musicology qualified me to teach,
and I taught music history and ap­
preciation at Lake Forest College for
a year. And then my whole life came
to a complete stop. I couldn't find any
new teaching jobs, performing wasn't
pOSSible, and what was I to do?
,PM: What did you do?
OL: I had very fast typing skills, so I
spent the next seven years working at
hack jobs outside of music, first of all
in America for two years and then
back in England for five years. For the
whole time, though, I edited and
wrote about early music, which con­
tinued to be a very passionate hobby.
I wasn't playing much, but I was
doing a lot of editing, and many of my
editions of eighteenth-century wood­
wind music were published during
this period. Eventually I came back to
America, finished a PhO in musicol­
ogy at the University of Iowa, and ran
into the same situation I'd run into
with my master's degree: it was very
difficult to find a job teaching music.
~_____.+.
r
­
.....
___-'"­
(l)
Viail"
(' Q"d,,,, .. o
Example 1: (a) Mm. 1-4 of Sonata No.2, fourth movement, in A minor for
recorder; and (b) mm. 1-4 of an early version of Sonata No.2, fourth
movement, in C minor for violin. "Copyright (c) 1979 Faber Music Ltd
London. Reproduced from G. F. Handel, The Complete Sonatas for Treble
(alto) Recorder and Basso Continuo, edited by David Lasocki and Walter
Bergmann, by permission of the publishers."
PM: How did you get involved in
.musicology?
DL: When it came to deciding, "It's
fine studying music, but how are you
going to make a living?" I didn't feel I
was ready to go out into the world as
a performer. I began to concentrate
more and more on musicology and
ended up with a master's degree in
musicology and woodwind literature,
although I'd never formally studied
So after a brief period of unemploy­
?lent, I went to library school.
PM: How did you decide on library
school?
OL: That was completely unplanned,
actually. When I was unemployed in
Iowa City, one of the places the wel­
fare people sent me was the public
library. I hadn't the faintest idea what
went on behind the scenes in a
library, but once I got there I thought,
CON11NU09
"Oh, this is interesting-I could do
this!" I saw a use for my bibliographic
and research skills in music librarian­
ship. I tried to find out beforehand if
there were jobs around. I was told,
"Yes, there are lots of jobs." So it
seemed a reasonable gamble. I com­
pleted a master's degree at the
University of Iowa, and sure enough,
it was a good gamble. I was offered
three separate jobs, straight out of
library school. My first job was at the
University of North Carolina in
Chapel Hill, and then I came to In­
,diana University three years ago.
PM: It's amazing where our interests
~ventually lead us.
DL: Well, I've often reflected on how
impossible it would have been to
predict my course of action. There
was no way I could have been in­
formed enough at the beginning to
know where my interests might lead.
You start off with something and
then, 10 and behold, you go off on a
tangent! Actually, I really like work­
ing as a music librarian, because I can
use my knowledge to help people. I
can continue to develop my skill in
writing, and I've learned about ad­
ministration. There's a lot of variety
involved. It's also a nice, steady
And although it's not exactly highly
paid, the pay increases as you move
up the ladder. I think it's worked out
pretty well. I regret that I don't have
more time for doing research, but I
manage to fit a fair amount into the
cracks. In fact, I go around giving
talks on how to do research with a
limited amount of time.
PM: I saw one of those in your bibli­
ography: "Writing Well When You
Have No Time."
pL: Yes, I did publish that talk.
PM: I think it's amazing how bits of
research done over a long period can
eventually come together. Sometimes
it's better than focusing totally on a
project until its completion, although
you usually need a block of time at
some point to work out all the details.
DL: I've had the same experience.
Being forced to do things this way,
I've found it has some advantages. If
you stop working on something be­
cause you're too busy, your subcon­
scious mind continues to pursue it.
When you come back to it, you have
all these new ideas! It continues to
develop organically. On the other
10jUNE 1991
hand, there are stages where a finite
amount of time is necessary. I'm
working on a book now with another
recorder-playing music librarian,
Richard Griscom. If I could only have
palf a day, I could do so much!
PM: What's that?
DL: Research and Information Guide
for the Recorder. I just need to sit
down, make up my mind to do it, and
,not get off on tangents.
PM: Have computer applications for
research influenced your work in the
music field?
DL: The information explosion hasn't
happened in music as it has in other
disciplines. The Music Index is only
now becoming available in a
machine-readable format.RILM
Abstracts has been available online
but is several years behind. OCLC has
a CD-ROM product for LPs that was
the first one in music, whereas other
fields have had several products
available for a few years. My own
research has been very old­
fashioned. I do research by looking at
everything that's published on my
subject. One of the advantages of
working in a big music library is
seeing everything as it comes in,
without buying it myself or searching
the shelves. The latest books and pe­
riodicals in my field are brought to my
office-I don't have to go somewhere
else to check on them. Because of
this, I see a lot more material than I
used to.
PM: Don't you subscribe to a number
of obscure woodwind journals your­
self?
DL: Well, I subscribe to the ones the
library doesn't take. I try to look at all
the recorder and early music peri­
odicals in English, French, Spanish,
Italian, German, and Dutch. There
are a lot out there! Being a librarian
has changed not so much my own
research as my ability to help other
people. The recorder research guide
and the articles I write come from my
theory that people often don't know
what's available in their field or how
to find it. My idea is to provide a
service, to make the material acces­
sible. For example, over one hundred
articles on the recorder came out over
the last two years! Most people don't
have the training or the opportunity
to see as mu ch as I do.
PM: Performers with research inter­
ests must find your publications quite
useful.
DL: I receive very little feedback on
my writing, but what I do get suggests
that people find the articles interest­
ing. I'm surprised when I meet some
performers, especially very famous
ones, by how little they actually read.
When they know me, at least nine
times out of ten it's because they've
seen my editions. "Oh, yes, you're the
man who did the Handel sonatas."
But when I talk to them about some­
thing I've written, it's "Oh, I only read
original treatises. Why would I want
to read modern articles or books?"
PM: Original sources are valuable,
but we can also learn from current
scholarship. After all, theorists like
Quantz were codifying the thinking
of their own time, just as we are doing
,today.
DL: We're really talking about the
same thing. And you know, I sym­
pathize with performers who don't
want to do their own research, but it's
a little self-defeating not wanting to
keep up with what's going on. These
modern performers are saying "What
could you possibly tell me about the
original sources that I can't figure out
for myself?" The answer is, "My back­
ground comes from studying music
history, doing research, and learning
how to use a music library, while your
experience is limited to the practice
room." Not everybody's like that, and
perhaps ifI had more feedback, I'd be
less biased. I had a very nice ex­
perience last fall when I went to an
Australian workshop for amateur,
professional, and semi-professional
recorder teachers and players from all
over the world. It was wonderful, be­
cause for the first time I met people
who'd heard of my editions and read
my articles. They liked my lectures,
and I felt my work could actually be
as helpful as I'd planned. It was
rewarding to make this scholarly in­
formation available to both profes­
sionals and amateurs at the same
time. Eva Legene and I gave a re­
corder performance practice
workshop together. In general I
talked and she played, but there was
a lot of interchange, which was good
for us as well as the audience.
PM: Tell me about some of your pub­
lications.
DL: I do a survey of recent recorder
research every couple of years for
AmericanRecorder. Tibia, the impor­
tant German woodwind journal, has
also published those surveys in Ger­
man translation. The Htstoric Brass
Society journal is publishing my bib­
liography of historic brass writings,
1988-89, the first of a series. Eva
Legene and I collaborated on a series
of articles about ornamenting
Handel's sonatas for American Re­
corder in 1989. I had an earlier,
similar collaboration with Betty Bang
Mather.
PM: Yes, I know those books on
woodwind ornamentation, cadenzas,
and preludes. They were very helpful
to me when I was studying baroque
performance practice, and I also used
them in my teaching of modern flute
students who wanted to learn to play
in baroque style. What are your cur­
rent research interests?
accidental and sporadic survivaL
Without a broad perspective,
treatises are almost useless. So for ten
years, I've been working on what the
history of performance can teach us.
My article on the Bassano family of
performers and instrument makers in
the Galpin Society journal reflects
this interest.
PM: Is there anything else you'd like
to mention?
DL: For the last three or four years,
I've been thinking very carefully
about Richard Taruskin's ideas on
authenticity. There are other writers
as well, but his ideas are very strong
and very hard to refute. The gist of his
argument is that it's all very well to
have the revival of period instru­
ments and performance practice, but
it's only one possible way to go. The
"authentic" approach to early music
today has less to do with historical
Oboe ?relude in A minor.
A11••
''''0
L'"
~."",,_t_3
€M
I ~
I J7
J~
!IE ·5 6fF) 1.4
IJ~if$g;=itt:dEa:!
,
,fig
Example 2: Mm. 1-9 of Oboe Prelude in A minor by Joseph-Francois Garnier
(Paris, ca. 1800), with vertical marks indicating "neat" or "dry" tongue
strokes. From The Art of preluding. 1700-1830 by Betty Bang Mather and
David Lasocki. Copyright (c) 1984 by McGinnis & Marx Music Publishers.
Used by permission.
DL: Well, I've moved from treatises
and performance practice to the his­
tory of performance and what it can
teach us about music. My dissertation
was on professional recorder players
in England during the Baroque. If we
use individual performers and en­
sembles as a starting point for study­
ing music history, suddenly every­
thing begins to fit together. Which
styles did they play, where did they
get their music and their instruments,
what was their influence with instru­
ment makers and publishers, who
were their teachers and pupils?
You're not just studying a piece in
isolation, you're fitting it into a whole
background. It extends performance
practice beyond the treatises, which
are only the tip of the iceberg. They
can be misleading, because of their
performance practice than with an
avant-garde performing style of our
own invention! It combines the his­
torical elements that appeal to our
sensibilities with those modern ele­
ments we prefer. One of the lectures
I gave in Australia was called "The
Great Authenticity Debate," in which
I talked about Taruskin's con­
clusions. The Australian magazine,
The Recorder, plans to publish my
article based on that lecture.
PM: It's more fruitful to approach
these issues from the standpoint of
the history of performance, where
there is a wealth of unexplored
material in libraries, rather than per­
formance practice, which requires
specific information that often
doesn't survive.
DL: Yes. When you're performing a
piece of music, you have to make
immediate decisions, and your re­
search becomes focused in that direc­
tion. One of the reasons I stopped
doing work on performance practice
was because I thought, "What have I
been doing? Have I been wasting my
time?" The authenticity debate has
called into question the work I've
been doing for twenty years. I did it
because it was fun and exciting and
absorbing, and because I thought it
was useful to performers. I'm now
trying to come to terms with what
authenticity means, and what im­
plications it has for research. I won't
say I've completely reconciled my
thinking, but I've come closer.
SOURCES CITED
Dart, Thurston. The Interpretation of
Music. New York: Harper & Row,
1963.
Hotteterre Ie Romain, Jacques. Prin­
ciples of the Flute, Recorder and
Oboe, trans. and ed. by Da vid
Lasocki. New York: Praeger, 1968.
Hunt, Edgar. The Recorder and Its
Music. Rev. ed. London: Eulenburg
Books, 1977.
Lasocki, David. "The Anglo-Venetian
Bassano Family as Instrument Makers
and Repairers." Galpin Society jour­
nalXXXVIII (1985): 112-32.
_ _ _ _' George Frideric Handel'
The Complete Sonatas for Flute and
Basso Continuo. London: Faber
Music, 1983.
_ _ _ _. George Frideric Handel:
The Three Authentic Sonatas for Oboe
and Basso Continuo, London [now
Hove, Sussex}: Nova Music, 1979,
"Professional Recorder
Players in England, 1540-1740." PhD
dissertation, University of Iowa,
1983.
"The Recorder in Print:
1987 88." A merican Recorder
XXVIII/4 (November 1987): 145-56.
_ _ _ _. "A Review of Research on
the Recorder, 1985-1986," American
Recorder XXIX!l (February 1988):
145-56.
Lasocki, David, and Walter
Bergmann. George Frideric Handel:
The Complete Sonatas for Treble
(Alto) Recorder and Basso Continuo.
London: Faber Music, 1982.
Lasocki, David, and Eva Legene.
CONl1NUO 11
"Learning to Ornament Handel's
Sonatas Through the Composer's
Ears. Parts 1-3." The American Re­
corderXXX/l (February 1989): 9-14;
XXX/3 (August 1989): 102-6; XXX/4
(November 1989): 137-41.
Lasocki, David, and Betty Bang Math­
er. The Classical Woodwind Caden­
za: A Workbook. New York: Mc­
Ginnis & Marx, 1978.
Mather, Betty Bang, and David
Lasocki. The A rt of Preluding, 1 700­
1830, for Fluttsts, Obotsts, Clarinet­
tists and Other Performers. New
York: McGinnis & Marx, 1984.
_ _ _ _. Free Ornamentation for
Woodwind Instruments, 1 700-1 775.
New York: McGinnis & Marx, 1976.
Quantz, Johann Joachim. On Playing
the Flute. Translated by Edward R.
Reilly. 2d ed. New York: Schirmer
Books, 1985.
Taruskin, Richard. "The Pastness of
the Present and the Presence of the
Past." In Authenticity and Early
MUSiC, edited by Nicholas Kenyon,
pp. 137-207. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988.
_________ . "The Spin Doctors of
Early Music." The New York Times
(Sunday, July 29, 1990): Section 2,
1-2.
ANNA BON UPDATE
In my last column, I promised more
information on a possible Danish edi­
tion of Anna Bon's VI Sonate per
Jlauto traversiere e basso (1756). Al­
though several bibliographic sources
mention Edition Egtved as a publish­
er of these sonatas, my letter of in­
quiry produced a reply to the con­
trary. Egtved does, however, publish
a catalogue of the Gieddes Music Col­
lection in the Royal Library of Copen­
hagen, compiled by Inge Bittmann
(Denmark: 1976), in which Bon's
sonatas are listed.
NU
HWAET! Impressions of a Medieval Workshop at San Rafael, CA July 29 - August 4 1990
Carolyn Woolston (Felton, CA):
I've been a recorder player for about
12 years, and I credit much of my
progress from raw beginner to semi­
advanced to the music workshops
held each summer at Dominican Col­
lege in San Rafael, California. The
workshops are sponsored by the San
Francisco Early Music Society, with
hel p from the California Arts Council.
About 4 years ago, I attended my first
-the Recorder Workshop - and I
learned more about technique and
ensemble playing in one week than I
had in all the preceding years. It was
~normously satisfying.
I now play in a 4-member ensemble
of very skilled recorder players, but
lately we've been going a little stale.
What to do? Another Dominican
Music Workshop!
Our selection was the Medieval
Workshop, and what an inspired
choice this turned out to be! Aside
from the music, just being at
Dominican College is special. The
food is excellent: great salad bar,
fresh fruit at every meal, platters of
brownies and chocolate chip cookies
,to ferret away for late-night snacks.
The Medieval program is anchored by
the presence, as faculty in residence,
of Ensemble A1catraz - Cheryl Ann
Fulton, Shira Kammen, Susan Rode
Morris, Kit Higginson, Peter Maund ­
and augmented by such special ex­
tras as reed-making and instrument
building/repair. The workshop cur­
riculum is superbly conceived and
administrated by recorderist Robert
Dawson. Singer John Fleagle, David
Hogan-Smith of The King's Trumpetts
NEWS ITEMS
If you have an item of interest con­
cerning old woodwinds, please send
it to Penelope Mathiesen, 1800 Valley
View Drive, Ellettsville, IN 47429;
(812) 876-3592.0
Kit Higginson (right) leads his psaltery technique students through a saltarello at
the SFEMS Medieval Workshop.
12JUNE 1991