Re: Wohlfahrt Viola Etudes Pdf 39
Pilato Hull
Enter Rachel Barton Pine, who professed her love of etudes earlier this fall in an article she wrote for The Strad magazine. Rachel is in the process of re-editing and recording the Wohlfahrt etudes, and her first book and DVD on the subject, published by Carl Fischer, is due for release later this fall. (Editor's note: the link for the book and DVD, now available, is here: Wohlfahrt Foundation Studies for the Violin)
Rachel: I thought they were great -- and actually, my teachers -- Roland and Almita Vamos -- were very savvy. They said to me, 'Don't let your studio-mates know how much you like etudes. They might not understand, and it might be harder to make friends with them!' (laughing) In other words, don't let them know you're so weird! But now, of course, it says right on the cover of the September issue of The Strad magazine, 'Rachel Barton Pine: Why I Love Etudes!'
Laurie: I find that my students like the Wohlfahrt etudes. Whoever they are, whether they're extremely serious about the violin or not, they tend to do their assignment when it comes to the Wohlfahrt etudes.
Rachel: This is a Carl Fischer compilation, and there will be two volumes. One volume is first position only, then the second volume moves through the positions. It draws from Wohlfahrt's Opuses 45, 54, and 74, covering most of the etudes, leaving a few odd ones left out.
Basically, these etudes were compiled at the beginning of the 20th century by a guy named K.H. Aiqouni. Carl Fischer themselves have no idea who the heck he is. They don't know whether he was one of their in-house editors, using a pen name, or whether that was his real name but nobody can find him any more. It's completely mysterious. Anyway, he took took the best of the etudes from those three opuses and put them in a very logical sequence, organized by skill level, by key, and so on. I think teachers have really appreciated the graded series of the etudes. However, his editing is a little outdated, in terms of some fingering choices, when to hold fingers down or not -- it just feels not-quite-current.
Rachel: What happened was that Carl Fischer invited me to record the etudes. I'm such an etude geek that I was super-excited! Not quite as excited as for my concerto recordings, but pretty darn close. People might think that's a silly attitude to have, but really, they're like old friends, not only from having played them, but from having taught them when I had a studio in the mid-90s. They're very appealing little tunes. I thought, this is a great thing to leave for posterity.
Rachel: Wohlfahrt's etudes are almost entirely blank, unlike Kayser, for example, who has very detailed dynamic schemes for each of his etudes. The question became, do I play them very straightforward, in a basic kind of way, or do I give them an interpretation?
A couple of things controlled my decision. First, Wohlfahrt lived in the 1800s, when individuality was so prized among artists. It was common practice for artists to take great compositions and change the dynamics or do their own thing -- they had no qualms about that. There was nothing like an urtext mentality; it was all about bringing the music to life. Perhaps Wohlfahrt might have even left the page a little bare in order to give his students the extra element of crafting their interpretations. Obviously, in exercises like Schradieck and Ševcík, you don't add dynamics. But these Wohlfahrt etudes are little pieces; they have harmonic and structural development. How can you, as a musician, ignore what's underlying these pieces?
Thinking back to my student days, studying these etudes with Roland Vamos, he would actually go over to the piano and show me the chords. I was supposed to come each week with at least one new etude fully memorized and interpreted. He wanted me to know things like: When does the key change, especially between major and minor? Where are the echos, or the same phrases repeating more than once? Where does the recapitulation begin? He made sure that I understood the architecture and the chordal structure of every one of these little etudes I was practicing, in addition to whatever I was supposed to be thinking about my left and right hands, technically, for the etude.
It makes a lot of sense. As I was working on the technique, I was also thinking about the character of the music: whether there were strong parts, light parts, extroverted parts, introverted parts. However the music was ebbing and flowing would directly translate into my articulation, my amount of vibrato, bow distribution and everything else. As I was studying technique, it was intrinsically tied in with musicality. That's the whole point of technique: to serve the music. I think that's the most real-world way to study these etudes.
I felt that not every teacher might be able to go over to the piano and play the chords like Roland Vamos did, and not every student might not be home-schooled like I was and have the time to do the amount of experimentation that it takes to try to craft their own interpretation for every single etude. So I decided to add dynamics to all these etudes. Certainly, they are suggestions only. My hope is that students will not just blindly follow the fortes and mezzo-fortes and pianos, but that they'll listen carefully and try to understand why the dynamic is changing -- if it's based on the harmony or if it's based on the architecture -- and really start to understand the way the music is put together and relate that to their technique.
So that was quite a big project, adding all of that to all of these etudes, but I think it's really going to bring them to life, and hopefully make them that much more enjoyable for anyone who studies them. They're not just boring, straightforward notes, but they're actual little pieces of music.
The question I had to ask myself was: What about this recording I'm making? I don't want students to use it like a Suzuki recording and listen to all the etudes 100 times before they ever study any of them. That was not the point. In my forward to the book, which I hope people will read, I actually say that I think it's valuable to do this sight reading practice and that I would encourage people to listen to the DVD track of a particular etude only after they've practiced and learned it. It's not my intention for students to use this recording as a shortcut, or for learning by ear.
Rachel: Wohlfahrt includes bowing variations for a number of his etudes, the ones with notes in groups of six notes and in groups of eight notes. I took all of his bowing variation suggestions from all of his etudes and collated them into one big compilation at the front of the book. Then I say that every etude with groups of notes in eight or six can be played with all of the bowings for each of those rhythmic combinations. Certainly kids would go crazy if they had to play every single variation for every single etude -- you'd never finish the book! But the point is that teachers can pick and choose. Every kid is different; some might need more work on certain bowing patterns than others and the teachers might want to use those for multiple etudes, and then other ones that they seem to get pretty quickly they might skip and not bother to do them with most of the etudes.
And teachers can decide, for each student, what they want to do. If there's 50 possible bowings for etudes with notes in groups of eight, they might do five bowings for each etude, every etude with different ones. Or they might stick on the same etude for a long time and go through most of the bowings and then decide which ones need extra attention and do only those ones with subsequent etudes. I thought by compiling and collating all these bowings, it would give people more options to personally design how they wanted to assign the different bowings to the different etudes to which they could apply.
We, as violinists, are very fortunate to have people like Rachel Barton Pine around. It's so great that these foundational studies are finally getting a tune-up! So many of the pieces and etudes we study are so outdated, this is a fantastic start!
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jean dubuissonSeptember 19, 2017, 1:59 PM hi Ronda, most method books contain etudes, the very first etudes in such a method book will be what you want.
Adrian HeathSeptember 19, 2017, 2:22 PM E.g. Doflein: includes his own studies that are short, musical (unlike Wohlfahrt..) and to the point.
Mary Ellen GoreeSeptember 19, 2017, 2:37 PM There is also a book of "Easiest Wohlfahrt" (that's what it's called) that are suitable for beginners.
Erik WilliamsSeptember 19, 2017, 3:26 PM I usually just make up etudes for these types of students, depending on the specific situation. What specific characteristics are you trying to develop in them? "Etudes," thrown around as a sort of "cure all" tend not to work very well. Each etude generally has a purpose - or several purposes - that it's designed for. Let's say a student has trouble with clean slurred string-crossings.You could give them the following made-up etude: D-A D-A D1-A D1-A D2-A D2-A D3-A D3-A (then back down.... the dash represents a slur... afterwards, repeat on the different strings).This is a very simple thing, and we almost can't call it an "etude." But, that's what it is: an exercise designed to solve a specific problem.
Paul DeckEdited: September 19, 2017, 4:03 PM There's one that I had as a kid called "Elementary Scales and Bowings." It is in the Whistler series. (I did the Whistler books so I pretty much have them all.)I just looked at my old book and I think it's just the thing. The first assignment date in the book was March 1972 which means I would have been 6 years old. I think your pre-Wohlfahrt student should be able to handle it.
Pavel SpacekSeptember 20, 2017, 1:20 AM Franz Wohlfahrt composed several sets of etudes, the most frequently used 60 Studies for the Violin, Op. 45. Mentioned above Easiest Elementary Method For Beginners on the Violin, Op. 38 are probably what you are looking for, easily available. There are also 40 Elementary Studies for the Violin, Op. 54 and 70 Easy Melodic Studies, Op. 74, ranging in difficulty with Op. 45.
Carmen TanzioSeptember 21, 2017, 9:25 AM It does note get much easier than Wohlfahrt Opus 38. It starts with open string studies and adds etudes a finger at a time. The main focus of Opus 38 is the practice of scales, tempos, dynamics and articulations through the use of musical motifs.You might be thinking about other works, like Opus 43 or 45, which are more traditional repetitive exercises that are meant to be played by the student at various speeds, slurring and articulations to develop strength and ease of movement.
Adrian HeathEdited: September 22, 2017, 12:12 PM I share Erik's approach, basics and sequential exercises trather than "études", but some older students, and especially the parents of young ones, are reassured by a bag full of études.But an étude is a musical composition: it may well have no expressive "message", but it must be coherent, with a strong sense of key, harmonic progression, period, cadence, modulations that go somewhere, etc. otherwise we are giving the student a degraded music, which is not our mission!E.g. Kayser and Mazas are more "musical", and Wohlfarht distinctly mediocre, in my not-specially-humble opinion.. (But then I am also an unrepentant Seitz-basher: our children deserve the best we can offer!) googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1445120547957-0'); ); This discussion has been archived and is no longer accepting responses.