Marcel Tabuteau is perhaps the most influential oboist to date. Not only did he change the expectations for what good oboe playing sounded like, but he influenced musicians of every instrument with musical ideas that are still the standard for good musicianship today. Tabuteau was born in 1887 in Compeigne, France. There, he started with voice and violin lessons and eventually joined the town’s youth band on oboe at nine years old. He began studying with Georges Gillet at thirteen and two years later entered the Paris Conservatory where Gillet taught. Tabuteau considered Gillet the greatest musician he had ever known and credited him with his ideas of phrasing that were so transformative at the time. At eighteen years old, Tabuteau came to America to play in the New York Symphony Orchestra. He later played with the Metropolitan Opera (a position that likely greatly influenced his musicality and career), and he played the most of his career with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 1924, Tabuteau began teaching at the Curtis Institute of Music where he taught for thirty years and influenced musicians such as John de Lancie, Charles Gilbert, John Mack, Louis Rosenblatt, and many others. In 1966, he died back in France at 78 years old from a heart attack.
Although Tabuteau’s personality and vigor was often abrasive and frightening to his students, he was frequently sought out as a teacher, even by those who played something other than oboe. The most valuable concept that he taught and made popular was that expression is measurable and teachable. It was not just a matter of having the knack or not, but he developed a system of teaching and breaking down concepts of musicality that even many professional musicians at the time did not play with.
These concepts included ideas such as intensity is not the same as volume, rhythmic groupings are not the same as expressive groupings, and that expression is created by motion. A visual that he very often used was that of up and down bows for stringed instruments. The closer you are to the frog, or the heavier part of the bow, the heavier your sound is, and the closer you are to the tip of the bow, the lighter your sound is. When doing an up bow, the string is moving closer to the frog and growing in intensity and a down bow is the opposite, starting at the highest intensity. This is true even when trying to play evenly. Tabuteau mimicked this on his oboe and said that every note is either and up or down note. This referred to the intensity or inflection of his air and not necessarily dynamic changes. Intensity is created by a higher speed of air and a more focused embouchure and a good exercise is to play with increasing intensity while doing a decrescendo to keep these concepts separate.
Another main element of Tabuteau’s instruction was that of note groupings. He wanted every note he played to be planned out and to know with what other notes it relates in the piece. This involved things like the upbeat always leads to the down beat and the nature or your upbeat directly affects that of your downbeat. Where you placed your breath was also crucial and one of the most important rules was to never breathe between an up and its down note. Just like walking, when you lift up if you hesitate instead of smoothly moving back down in one conjoined motion you will trip over yourself, or at the very least look very awkward! This is a basic concept that can very greatly influence your playing for the better. Where you breathe determines what lines you are making and is a huge part of musical expression.
The concept of note grouping even went so far as to have a number system. He used numbers in multiple ways representing ideas such as dynamics, intensity, or phrasing. The basic idea was that 1 is the lowest and they grew from there. His students would usually start with 5 as the highest and progress to 9 or 13 as the highest to develop an even more nuanced ability of expression using long tones or scales. He also counted rhythms in an offset manner to avoid overly accented beats. For example, instead of thinking of 16ths as 1234 1234 1234, he would count 1123 4123 4123. This kept the first partial of each group from being overly harsh and helped to shaped the inner notes toward the next beat so that they have the motion Tabuteau was always looking for. This can be applied to any rhythms.
If you want more reading on Marcel Tabuteau and his huge musical impact, first listed here is THE book on Tabuteau that I based most of this post on, as well as a graduate work applying Tabuteau’s methodology to a horn concerto that explains his teaching very well and shows how well his musicality could be applied to all instruments. Also, last on the list is a book that I have not actually read yet (it’s on my wish list!) that is considered the best source for studying Tabuteau’s ideas and is referenced frequently in the document previously mentioned.
Marcel Tabuteau: How Do You Expect to Play the Oboe If You Can’t Peel a Mushroom! by Laila Storch
“The Expressive Phrasing Concepts of Marcel Tabuteau Applied to Concerto in Eb Major for Horn and Orchestra, K. 417 by W. A. Mozart” by Joshua P. Michal.
Sound in Motion: A Performer’s Guide to Greater Musical Expression by David McGill
Have you come across these ideas in your own lessons? What sounded new to you? I have really enjoyed using some of these ideas to change how I teach and even how I think about my own playing.
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