Fluteland.com Flute Message Board

Hi Everyone,
Just thought I'd poke your collective minds and get some feedback here.

I've recently returned to flute playing after not touching it for 15-20 years and have been having a lot of fun (I also play guitar and tenor/alto sax and was concentrating on those during most of my flute vacation). I never took the classical repertoire too seriously when I took lessons ages ago, but now I am having a lot of fun building up a nice collection of classical tunes I can play.

I started working on Telemann Fantasia #10 a few days ago and it's coming along wonderfully. I'm using a transcription I obtained from flutetunes.com (love that site by the way!!!). The marked tempo is quarter note = 126 (if I remember correctly). I can play it comfortably with the metronome at 95, so I'm looking at quite a bit of work to get it up to 126 - but that's OK, I love doing metronome/tempo work.

I also looked at a few performances of it on Youtube, and it looks like most players are playing this very rubato and overall not really near 126. I tried to mimic the phrasing of some of the players I watched and it sounds great and it's actually a lot easier to play it loosely that way.

My question is...if you were a teacher and were assigning this piece to a student. Would you have them play it strictly with the metronome at first, get it mastered at a certain speed and then afterwards have them solidify their interpretation and let them play more loosely. Or would you let them jump immediately to playing it rubato? I'm a little torn on how to approach it, because I actually see advantages to both ways right now for me personally.

I think you just gave the answer yourself. It's common sense that when you face a peace for the first time and whilst you get acquainted to it, the normal way to do the job is playing slow and at a regular tempo, preferably without the ornaments. With time and maturity (it may vary from student to student), one may add speed and ornaments and begin to findout where would rubatos fit without getting the peace out of the style.
I've heard recordings of Telemann Fantasias, with original instruments (or copies), in which the flutist simply altered completely the tempo! I wouldn't do that, because it would sound strange and ridiculous with my modern metal made flute. But the whole idea of rubatos is quite interesting when you hear an antique instrument player trying to reproduce what would the flautists of that era have done.