About MARIN MARAIS – LE BASQUE
Marin Marais was a French composer, born in Paris in 1656. He lived to be 72 years old, dying in the same city in 1728.
A composer and virtuoso of the viol (he is generally recognised as a major influence on popularising the instrument), Marais studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully and often conducted the maestro’s operas.
At the age of 20, he found employment as a musician in the royal court of the Palace of Versailles, where he was incredibly popular and his musical skills were much admired.
He composed numerous pieces for the viol, over nearly 40 years writing a selection of works for the instrument, published in his five books of ‘Pièces de Viole’. Other than the immensely joyful piece ‘Le Basque’, his other well-known work is the ‘Folies d’Espagne’.
Apart from his viol compositions, he also penned four operas and is considered to be one of the earliest experimentalists with program music, where a story or theme is implied, either in the title of a piece or in the music itself.
At the age of twenty he was married to Catherine d'Amicourt. Unimaginable today, they produced nineteen children together!
HOW TO WORK ON LE BASQUE
Whilst this is a joy to play and audiences around the world love it, this piece is not without its problems for flute players.
Firstly, articulation needs to be crisp and precise, in order to convey the bubbling stream of merriment and cheerfulness that runs throughout. If the tongue is too slow or heavy (as it more often than not appears to be in the various languages that we all speak), then the work loses the spring in its step and can become leaden, dull and uninteresting.
I find that ‘T’ is too explosive and strong an articulation in this work and a gentle ‘DAH’, backed up with good air support, works better.
To start with and without a flute on your lips, sing or pronounce the opening four bars with the following syllables…
HAH, HAAH HAH HAH HAH, HAAH HAH HAH HAH, HAH HAH HAH HAH, HAAAAAH!
In the process, make sure to push air out using the support muscles at the bottom part of the lungs (it should sound like stage laughter!). This area of your body I refer to as the engine room of your sound. Do this several times with a hand on the top of your stomach, just beneath your ribs.
Once this is established and it feels both comfortable and quite normal, then add a very gentle front end to the sound, in the form of ‘D’…
DAH, DAAH DAH DAH DAH, DAAH DAH DAH DAH, DAH DAH DAH DAH, DAAAAAH!
Backed up with good air support, you should now be able to articulate the opening runs of quavers (eighth notes) with a spring in your step!
Halfway through the work constant bars of semiquavers (sixteenth notes) appear and these will make demands on our fingers.
In particular, the fourth and fifth fingers in both hands (they would much prefer easier lives!) require our undivided attention if we are to meet the demands of the music we are playing.
Intially, from bar twenty six, where the runs of semiquavers (sixteenth notes) commence, play these passages slowly, keeping your fingers as close to the keywork as possible (you might like to observe your fingers in a mirror whilst doing this). Over time, gradually increase the tempo.
Greater security will also be achieved if you can learn each of the following four bar phrases from memory.
At the end of the piece, if you have an audience, remember to look happy! We often become too absorbed with everything that went wrong in our performance, rather than with what went right. If people are listening, they too will want to focus on the pleasure of this delightful work, which a scowling or miserable looking flute player after the final note, will not contribute to in a positive way!
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