Posted with permission.
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 09:52:44 +0100
From: Trevor Wye <tw@TREVORWYE.COM>
Subject: Sonorite-Tone-What singers have to say
Dear Friends,
David Tickton's quotes were bang on and exactly Moyse's vocal approach to his own tone exercises.
Adrianne's comments too.
<Was it genius to devolop such a concept as DLS? Not sure...but I have always thought it was genius to write it all down, bit by bit and then sell it :-)>
Perhaps I should clear up some points about DLS. He was the first to put
'tone' under close scrutiny.
When he taught the first exercise, his focus was on evenness of tone,
not tone quality particularly, especially those middle notes E, Eb, D
and C sharp. Then the spotlight was on the quality of the lower register
compared with the second octave. When the player, - as many still do -
tried to sound more like an oboe, he would ask, 'Why bite your flute?'
But his tonal comparison was with the human voice.
He sold all his books to Leduc for an fixed sum. As he told me, ' I wrote one book each year to get a little money for my annual vacation'. (This was taken usually by motor cycle with a side car, traveling from Paris to Saint Amour in the Jura.) He never received royalties from his books, to his regret. I am sure some will be shocked by this, imagining he made a fortune from them. Not so.
The 24 and 25 Little Melodious Studies, together with his technical exercise books and de la Sonorite, were prompted by his frequently deputising for Philippe Gaubert at the Conservatoire when Gaubert was away, between 1920 and 1930. Gaubert also suggested to students who asked him about problems and difficulties, 'Go see Moyse. He is good at solving technical matters'. Moyse wrote example exercises to help the students. He also wrote exercises to solve his own technical problems too.
More about this extraordinary man in An Extraordinary Man (Winzer Press)
Trevor
www.trevorwye.com
General Editor: The Flute Ark Encyclopedia
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