Editorial

Many of you, especially those of you who are students, have asked that we publish more articles on instrumental technique, on the “trade secrets”... We will therefore try to start a series of succinct but stimulating articles on the various subjects that interest us: lips, breathing, mouth cavity, holding the instrument etc. The aim of these articles is not to supply the definitive answer (does one exist, anyway?) but rather to encourage debate and individual reflection. The “human condition” of the artist is linked with the fact that we are never in the same place at the same time, not with our knowledge, or our abilities, or our consciousness, or our sensations, or our hopes, or with anything at all. We work alone, with our teachers, our sources of interest and our intelligence for guides.

Thus each one of us must walk the road of “artistic culture” by clearing the path which will free our intimate personality. No easy task!

We do not all speak the same language; we do not all like the same things. Words do not mean the same thing to all of us (a word means something in our mind according to the resonance we have given it: “water”, for example, would not mean the same if we were in the desert and had none or if we were rowing on a lake in Finland).

So let us help one another! Let us explain, write and think in as many ways as we can about the same subjects, the same problems. That is the best way to pass on, at some crossroads, the knowledge that will enable one or other of us to go a little further. Curiosity has led us to see these things.

It is in this spirit that, for 1986, my wish for you is that you may successfully complete new stages towards reaching your destiny and I hope that your reflections will bring you the revelations essential to you lives as artists.

Influences are immeasurable, vital and innumerable. The essential thing for a musician to know is that Mozart, Monteverdi and Maurice Ravel are before him for music, under him for earthly life, elsewhere for emotional life and in him for the energy to take flight.