Flute Vibrato

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Flute Vibrato

I've read quite a few books on flute history and

technique. Unfortunately, most of them have little to
say about vibrato, other than how to develop it. This
reflects a basic lack in modern musical pedagogy.
Students are taught nothing about historical
performance styles—because most of the teachers
know nothing about the subject either. There is an
exception, however: Nancy Toff's excellent The
Flute Book. (The second edition of this book is now
in print.) Although it deals mainly with the modern
Böhm flute, it is a comprehensive work filled with all
sorts of flute-related information, including the
history of performance techniques. The following
discussion is drawn from that source.

Apparently she has asked some people who put uncredited pieces of her book on the Web to remove them.
However, I believe that the citations below (which are properly credited) fall under the "fair use" provision
for the purpose of academic discussion. Since the time when I initially created this page, some other sources
have appeared dealing with this topic, and I have added those in as well.

Contrary to popular legend, vibrato is not a modern invention. It began as an ornament—usually produced by
the fingers, only occasionally by the breath. The more continuous form did not emerge until the late
nineteenth century. Modern flutists should consider the roots of the technique.

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In his Musica instrumentalis deudch (1528), Agricola lists "trembling breath" as a "special grace."
Praetorius (1619) discusses vibrato created by diaphragm action. Mersenne (1636) talks of "certain tremolos
which intoxicate the soul" and specifies that organ tremolo has a frequency of four vibrations per second,
which he suggests as a model for wind players. Hotteterre, in his Principes de la Flute (1707), discusses a
finger vibrato, called a flattement, which also appears in the methods of Corrette (about 1735) and Mahaut
(1759). Quantz's Versuch (1752) discusses a messa di voce, a swelling and diminishing of volume within a
single note, produced by a finger flattement on the nearest open hole. (Because this procedure also lowers the
pitch, Quantz advised flutists to compensate with the embouchure.) Delusse (about 1761) speaks of a breath
vibrato, used in imitation of the organ tremulant, as a measured expression of "solemnity and terror." And
Tromlitz (1791) discusses the Bebung, a finger vibrato.

Nancy Toff
The Flute Book: A Complete Guide for Students and Performers
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985
p. 109

Agricola is the first to discuss a consort of "Schweizerpfeiffen'. Here he gives fingering charts for a bass in D,
tenor/alto in A, and descant in e … The range of each instrument is said to be three octaves, greater than that
mentioned by any other author.

He also writes that one should play with vibrato: 'If you want to have a fundament, learn to pipe with
trembling breath, for it greatly embellishes the melody'. He is alone in mentioning the use of a
diagphragmatic vibrato, as opposed to finger vibrato, in the sixteenth century. It is not referred to again in
flute tutors until the second half of the eighteenth century.

John Solum
The Early Flute
Oxford University Press, 1992
p. 17

Auch sey im Pfeiffen darauff gsind When playing remember that you know
Das du blest mit zitterdem wind Into the flute with trembling breath to
Dann gleich wie hernach wird blow
gelart As shortly we shall learn awhile
Von der Polischen Geigen art Of Polish violins and their style
Das zittern den gesang zirt That trembling ornaments the song
Also wirds auch alhie gespürt. Thus must we sense it all along.

Raymond Meylan
The Flute
translated from the German by Alfred
Clayton
Amadeus Press, Portland, Oregon,
1988
p. 77

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Vibrato on the modern flute is used lavishly, in many cases virtually continuously, by contemporary players.
It is regarded as essential for giving the flute the brilliance and projection needed for it to be heard in our
modern symphony orchestras and in our stadium-sized concert halls. A tone without vibrato is considered to
be lifeless and dull.

Although there was undoubtedly a great deal of variation in the amount and use of vibrato by different
players on the traverso in the baroque and classical ages, the taste of the time obliged performers to regard
vibrato as an ornament. It was generally used only on longer notes as an expressive device, certainly not
continuously. Continuous vibrato reduces the opportunity to be expressive in other ways, such as shaping
minute gradation of dynamics. Sometimes the use of vibrato was notated in printed music by a wavy line …

Modern vibrato is usually produced by a pulsation of the windstream controlled by muscles in the throat and
diaphragm. Vibrato on the transverso is not usually made in this manner. Instead, the player's finger
fluctuates at the edge of an open finger-hole on the instrument or sometimes opening and closing an entire
hole. The French call this vibration flattement, a name which reminds us that the effect actually involves
flattening a given note and then returning it to the correct pitch in a fast fluctuation. Not until De Lusse's
treatise of about 1760 was vibrato referred to as involving the pulsation of the wind stream, blowing the
syllables, hou, hou, hou, and doing it as often as possible.

John Solum, op. cit., p. 138-139

Today's modern Boehm-system flutist is accustomed to using a throat/diaphragm vibrato as a nearly constant,
integral part of the sound. Contrarily, careful study of representative tutors tells us that the tone most
recommended for eighteenth and early nineteenth-century players was probably produced without vibrato.
Quantz (1752, p. 162) and others required instead a "clear and sustained execution of the air."

I recommend that the one-keyed flute be played without any vibrato. Because vibrato has become such an
inegral part of our modern flute technique, some flutists have difficulty playing historical instruments without
it. Eliminating the vibrato at first seems cold and lifeless to some. Yet the ear soon accepts the clarity and
purity of tone of the one-keyed flute, and eventually the player does not feel the need to rely on vibrato as an
important means of expression. Ask what you might do instead. Explore ways to shape and color individual
notes. It will become immediately apparent that playing with a straight tone demands good intonation; vibrato
cannot be used to cover intonation difficulties, as frequently happens with the modern flute.

An ornament the French called flattement (a vibrato-like effect produced with the finger) most closely
resembles our modern vibrato. The flattement is a wavering of the tone which is slower than that of a trill and
produces an interval narrower than a semitone. Instead of fluctuating both above and below the tone (as the
modern breath vibrato appears to do), the flattement produces a fluctuation with a pitch lower than the given
tone.

Unlike, modern vibrato, the flattement was used sparingly and reserved for long notes.

...

Tromlitz (1791) said it could be applied to long notes, fermatas, and to the note before a cadence, but that it
was used infrequently. Two years later, Gunn (c. 1793, p. 18) expressed a real dislike of the ornament, saying
it is "inconsistent with just intonation, and not unlike that extravagant trembling of the voice which the
French call chevrotter, to make a goat-like noise, for which the singers of the Opera at Paris have been so

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often ridiculed." By the time Gunn published his tutor, the flattement was just one of many ornaments falling
out of use.

...

The French tutor by Delusse (c. 1760, p. 9) is the only eighteenth-century flute tutor of nearly one hundred I
examined which recommends producing vibrato with the breath. ...

Tromlitz (1791, p. 214) states firmly that vibrato is not done with the breath and claims it "makes a wailing
sound, and anyone who does it spoils his chest and ruins his playing altogether."

I refer you to Catherine Parsons Smith, Characteristics of Transverse Flute Performance in Selected Flute
Methods (1969) for a study of vibrato in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Janice Dockendorff Boland

Method for the One-Keyed Flute: Baroque and Classical
University of California Press, 1998
ISBN 0-520-21447-1
pp. 31-34

J. Harrington Young, in his 1892 method, … cautioned that

it should only be used in very pathetic movements—such as Adagios, Andantes &c. where great
pathos is desired; but, if too frequently used, this effect becomes vulgarized and unpleasant. Some
players produce the effect by a tremulous motion of the breath, which is inadvisable, as by its frequent
use it endangers the production of a steady tone, which is far more desirable than any artificial effect.

Vibration should, therefore, be produced only by finger movement.

Keep in mind that at the time vibration was a ornament, not an omnipresent element of tone. This was equally
true of violin playing. A possibly apocryphal story is illustrative: the great Fritz Kreisler auditioned for the
Royal Opera House orchestra in Vienna, but was turned down because of his "restaurant vibrato." Yet later,
his "Golden Tone" became the ideal to be copied by all other violinists. And so taste changes.

Vibrato as we know it today—a more or less continuous pulsation or shimmer in the tone—originated in the
late nineteenth century in Paris. Paul Taffanel and oboist Fernand Gillet were two of the instigators. This may
seem surprising in view of the statement in the Taffanel-Gaubert method:

There should be no vibrato or any form of quaver, an artifice used by inferior instrumentalists and
musicians [an interesting distinction!] It is with the tone that the player conveys the music to the
listener. Vibrato distorts the natural character of the instrument and spoils the interpretation, fatiguing
quickly the sensitive ear. It is a serious error and show unpardonable lack of taste to use these vulgar
methods to interpret the great composers.

Nancy Toff, op. cit., p. 110-111

Vibrato: It wasn't used. Well, there was a certain amount of finger vibrato used in England in the first
half of the century, especially by certain performers, and a much smaller amount in Germany. Most

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19C woodwind tutors don't mention vibrato at all--not one word. In exception are several bassoon
tutors, which dismiss or ignore breath vibrato and allow finger vibrato in selected and few instances.
Finger vibrato has a different quality, it allows more control of speed and intensity, in my opinion.

An appraisal of 19th century flute playing practices.

The advent of vibrato in

France, around 1905, was
the fuel for a great debate.
Because it was new, it was
often not done very well
and was used
indiscriminately, and so it
got a bad name.
Furthermore, "talented
instrumentalists had sought
for too long, not without
difficulty, to find good tone
in all registers that was
pure, stable and flexible, not
to conceive of this
perfection as the height of
their art." Or as Moyse
concluded, "Vibrato? It was
worse than cholera. Young
vibrato partisans were referred to as criminals. Judgments were final with no appeal. It was ruthless." Some
critics, Moyse continued, labelled vibrato "cache-misère (literally misery hider, something to hide behind
when faced with problems of intonation and tone quality)."

Woodwind vibrato was brought to the United States by Georges Barrère, Georges Laurent, and oboists
Marcel Tabuteau (longtime principal of the Philadelphia Orchestra) and Gillet (who joined the Boston
Symphony). By 1940 it had become an accepted part of American orchestral woodwind performance. At the
same time Moyse, newly arrived in the United States, despaired that, in France, "vibrato is used so
excessively that all music is distorted by its constant waver."

Elsewhere, however, vibrato was slower to catch on. Henry Welsh, for instance, wrote in the British
periodical Music and Letters in 1951:

As for the woodwinds, I fail to see any aesthetical or technical reason why they should trespass on the
noble and intimate qualities which belong so inseparably and essentially to the strings. A plea that
vibrato-playing enhances the quality of tone cannot therefore be upheld. Wind instruments should be
played with a tone that is steady as a rock and as pure as crystal.

This was the Viennese as well as the British ideal, and it perturbed foreign critics, who accused the English of
coldness and lack of feeling. More recently, vibrato has infiltrated British flute style, though the technique is

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nowhere as pervasive as in the United States and France.

The vibrato as first imported to the United States was, true to its roots, both rapid and naturally produced.
Barrère's was reportedly very rapid indeed. In a 1944 article Barrère explained: "It being settled that
expression in music must be a love message, music has to be performed with a quiver in the tone, much as the
histrionic lover's lines must be spoken with a tremolo in the voice." But Barrère qualified this typically Gallic
statement:

Vibrato!! That is the strong word, firmly established in reputation and popularity; recognized,
'patented,' and the only allowed designation for anything expressive … The notion has its starting-
point in that brand of instruction which teaches our future virtuosos to cater to the masses and to use
'sure-fire' means first … music with permanent vibrato is bound to win and hold a permanent business.
For the fifty years I had been tooting my instrument, my daily care was to avoid the vibrato. Once I
literally scared an audience by asserting that vibrato was produced by taking a pure tone and moving it
above and below correct pitch at a certain rate of speed, thus indulging in playing more or less out of
tune! Today … to declare that Expression might sometimes be achieved just by the absence of
vibrato, would, in most quarters, only earn an incredulous frown. Isn't it still possible to express
Beauty by pure lines, such as we find in ancient Greek marbles?

One of Barrère's last students, Pittsburgh Symphony principal Bernard Goldberg, quotes his teacher as
saying, "For three hundred years flutists tried to play in tune. Then they gave up and invented vibrato."

Nancy Toff, op. cit., p. 112-113

See my review of recordings by Barrère and his contemporaries.

What the modern-instrument player should not do, however, is to introduce anachronisms into the
performance of baroque music. The prime example is vibrato. We have seen that the baroque masters made
effective us of finger vibrato as an ornamental device, and a simulation of that technique is perfectly in order.
But a wide, Brahmsian, orchestral-style vibrato is categorically out of place. Staccatissimo articulation is
similarly inappropriate.

Nancy Toff, op. cit., p. 158-159

Note that Ms. Toff follows a commonly held error in associating a wide, constant vibrato with the music of
Brahms. Recordings of Brahms' close friend, the violin virtuoso Joachim, show that he used only a shallow
vibrato as an ornament at phrase endings. Since most of Brahms' violin pieces were written to be played by
Joachim, it seems very likely that Brahms himself intended them to be played this way.

● The Irish flute preserves elements of 19th century English classical flute technique.
● 19th century voice teacher Margaret Alverson discusses vocal vibrato.
● More discussion of vocal vibrato.

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