Flute teaching and methods ancient and modern

Dear Friends,

I thought I should pass my thoughts on modern flute methods.

First let me say that I am a disciple of the French school with a direct link to Marcel Moyse who I consider my best teacher after Geoffrey Gilbert who was also French trained. You may gather from this that I am rather traditional in my thinking on flute teaching.

I would like to say that I think flute teaching should be first and foremost about making music. It should be about making music and through learning to make music you slowly learn the technique of how it is done. Scales and Arpeggios along with a good tone development are most necessary to the interpretation of music.

Each school has an apex and I believe the French school reached theirs with the teaching of Marcel Moyse. Many players and teachers have a method to which they adhere, in my case it is the French school. Many others are searching for the way. In the search they seem to loose sight of the real objective, making beautiful music.

Some teachers look to making or discovering gadgets and gizmos to help. Why they do this I don't know. It could be to attract students to a studio. There is nothing wrong in building up a good studio and having a success with your method if you can show by example that it works.

It is a studio where music and the interpretation of music where the most success is found. This is a well establishes fact. From the studio of Marcel Moyse and Gaston Crunelle, who was my teacher in the Paris Conservatoire, emerged many fine players. Maxence Larrieu, Alan Marion, Emmanuel Pahud, Andrea Griminelli, Rafaelle Trevisani, Sophie Cherrier, the current teacher in the Conservatoire, Michel Debost, and the legend Jean-Pierre Rampal. All of these people learned without gadgets and gizmos and they all had contracts with major record companies. All of them came from the French school of flute playing.

I think if you lean toward the extended techniques and the gadget school you are not going to attract the attention of a major recording company or be in a position to truly charm an audience.

We are of course all different. Some people embrace the French school and swear by it. Others embrace the G&G school and swear by that. In the end it depends what you want to do. I myself have chosen the hardworking French school. There is no doubt abut it that you have to work hard to succeed in this well proven school of flute playing. I still practice my scales and arpeggios every day and I think you can hear this in my playing. I still practice the first book of Moyse I ever had, Daily Exercises for the flute, by Marcel Moyse.

Today, like yesterday, I played through the ABCD section like and tomorrow when I arrive in my home in Switzerland I shall practice EFGH.

I have looked at all these new ways of playing the flute but have come to see they are not for me. I somehow feel that if a whole horde of flute players learned successfully from the basic French school it is not really necessary to go after other ways where the art of beautiful flute playing is lost in a plethora of G&G's.

You have of course freedom of choice.

Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. St. Paul. 1st Corinthians 10:3.

I feel I have made the right choice and it continues to be most beneficial.

Sir James,
New York
USA

26 March 2008