Last Stop, Carnegie Hall: New York Philharmonic Trumpeter William Vacchiano

Chapter 4: Vacchiano’s Rules of Orchestral Performance

59 Chapter four Vacchiano’s Rules of Orchestral Performance F a significant part of Vacchiano’s pedagogy was teaching the student to play with the correct style. These rules were imparted to Vacchiano through his contact with many famous conductors and most importantly his teacher,Max schlossberg.Vacchiano estimated the number of these rules to exceed two hundred.The rules found below, which i compiled and summarized as i worked with Mr. Vacchiano, are intended as a starting place for interpretation. Articulation The last note of a slur must match the articulation of the note that follows it. For example, if you have four sixteenth notes with the first two notes slurred and the third and fourth notes short, then the second note of the slur is short (fig. 4.1). Fig. 4.1 60 Last stop, Carnegie HaLL in addition to the previous rule, the second two notes after the slur are not to be rushed. all slurs are played with a feminine ending.1 When notes are slurred in pairs, as in the ascending and descending arpeggio in the “Ballerina’s Dance”from Petrouchka (fig.4.2),the second note is long if the first note is on the beat. if the slurred groupings start off the beat, the second note of the slur is short (even if not marked as a staccato). Fig. 4.2 if two eighth notes are tied together and the first eighth note starts on a downbeat, the stress is on the beat (i.e. one-and tWo-and tHree-and, etc.). Those slurs must be long and played as smoothly as possible. if the eighth note gets turned around and the eighth note is on the “and” of beat two and then tied to the down beat, that is a short slur (fig. 4.3). Fig. 4.3 61 VaCCHiano’s rULes oF orCHestraL perForManCe “i have a question that’s always asked: ‘When the value of a note gets shorter (quarter, eighth, sixteenth, etc.), how is the length of each note treated?’i ask them in return,‘if you’re going ten miles an hour and the note is one inch long, how long is the note if you are going twenty miles per hour?’They will all say a half-inch.This is wrong. if you’re going twenty miles per hour it’s twice as long.The faster you go the longer the notes will be, otherwise it will disappear. Consequently, when you double and triple tongue the double tongue has to be twice as long as the single tongue. The triple tongue is twice as long as the double tongue to counteract for the speed in the air. “We always spread eighth-notes very short because the air could catch them very fast, but if you’re playing at a terrific speed and you continue to play the eighth-notes short, they’ll go by like a shot—you have to counteract it. in the old days we called this hammer tongue. They got the word from the piano. You put the pedal down in the piano and you hit the notes until you hear how they ring.They don’t stop, that was called hammer tonguing.”2 in a fast tempo: the quarter notes are long, eighth notes are short (played like a sixteenth note with a sixteenth rest) and the sixteenths are long, unless marked otherwise (fig. 4.4). Fig. 4.4 When playing a fanfare in the middle of an orchestral piece, the shorter valued notes are the most important. The shorter notes need to be played louder than the longer notes. The short notes are what Vacchiano called the “money notes”—he was always concerned with what was going to be audible in the concert hall. it is the same concept with pickup notes—the pickup is always stronger in weight, which emphasizes the downbeat. 62 Last stop, Carnegie HaLL according to Doug Lindsay,“Vacchiano had a unique concept of how to play two eighth notes.He related it to how a timpanist plays two eighth notes with one stick. He said, ‘When you play a single timpani with one stick, there has to be separation in those two eighth notes, because you hit it twice and lift.That is the way a trumpet player should play eighth notes.’ He was not talking about a long lyric solo, but rather a Haydn...