Scale Game
Michel Debost · 2002
Abstract The Scale Game has been devised out of exercise no. 4 in Dix-sept grands exercices journaliers de mécanisme de flûte by Paul Taffanel and Philippe Gaubert. Paul Taffanel taught them at the Conservatoire National de Paris at the turn of the twentieth century. They were formalized by Gaubert and published in 1923.2 Scales are the essential part of daily instrumental practice, as much as or more than tone exercises, because tone is always present in them. For greatest profit, they should be considered as music, which, in truth, they are. The transition that concludes each scale and introduces the new one through modulation serves as relaxation, as reassessment of the sound, as an ever more refined intonation and flavor of the various keys’ color. Therefore, regardless of the tempo of the previous articulation, or of the next, this beautiful transition should always be played slowly and freely, slurred, phrased with the fingers as much as with the tone, with no precise reference to tempo. Structural breaths are mandatory and are placed after each low and high tonic. The tempo can then be suspended to perform noiselessly a good inhalation with the “hhaah” sound. This is the time to open your tone and reposition your instrumental playing. The tonic of the new key should be repeated. Emergency breaths are optional and caused by necessity. They can be taken at any time, provided that they are quick (without suspension of the tempo) and barely audible, and that the sound is balanced with the same dynamic on either side of the interruption. I prefer to place these “911 breaths” after the first note of a group of four, or after a strong beat instead of before.