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Friday, September 28, 2012

"Horsing Around" with Trills

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Greetings,

This week a young student was playing an etude in her lesson which had lots of trills and nachschläge. She was having the usual difficulty with placing the nachschlag in graceful relationship to the resolution.

This student is a visual learner, and an image popped into my mind! I went to the computer and found a video to show her what I had thought of—a video of the famous Lipizzaner Stallions performing.

The ease of predicting when the hoof will reach the ground while the horse is in motion provided the perfect model for this student to understand the graceful placement of the nachschlag while her breath sustained the ending of the trill. Check out the clip at 3:00-3:07 and 4:52-4:54. Simply beautiful.
The results: natural, elegant musical gesture, delighted student, and joyful teacher. Smiles all around.

Hope you find this analogy helpful!

Best,
Catherine