I clearly remember the moment when I first got my hands on the score of the sonatas per fagotto solo (1645) by Giovanni Antonio Bertoli. I was studying the baroque bassoon at the conservatoire and had just picked up the dulcian. There was no dulcian teacher, so I was on my own. I remember thinking after having studied the score: “This is impossible to play!”

After having studied the recorder for years, I had imprinted in my head: “One should tongue fast notes in music from the early baroque. Ganassi and Dalla Casa say so.” I brought the score to my recorder teacher, and she agreed with me that the early sources urge us not to slur fast notes. When I confronted my bassoon teacher with my problem, she recommended to stop thinking about it and to just add slurs.

I settled on trying my utmost to learn to attack all notes, thinking that I was lacking technique. Although even after a great deal of practicing and a bleeding tongue, I could still not attack the fastest passages. It was a mystery to me.

Since I was very eager to play these pieces, I finally decided to add some slurs, using my musical instinct as to the length of them. Slurring two-by two, over four notes or over larger amounts of notes. But it never felt quite comfortable thinking that I was using techniques that were not right.

 After having played and performed this repertoire for years now, and having spent a lot of time on helping students with articulation issues, I came to the conclusion that, years ago, I made a mistake in my reasoning. The truth is that Ganassi and Dalla Casa did not have the music of Bertoli in mind when they wrote their recommendations on articulation. They were talking about sixteenth century diminution repertoire for recorder or cornetto, and not seventeenth century repertoire for fagotto solo. But having come to this conclusion, I realized that I had opened a big can of worms.

What information, from which sources, from what era, can, or should, one apply to what kind of repertoire?

After having pondered over this for a while, I started to ask students simple questions about articulation. Questions like: ”When you play this piece with these fast passages without articulation indications, what historical sources could you use to find out more about how to articulate it?” After having done this for quite some time, I have come to the conclusion that many baroque bassoon (and baroque oboe) students ask themselves few questions about articulation.

This is why I thought it is time to try to shed some light on the issue of how to play Fast Notes! on the bassoon.

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Prior to 1787, the year in which the bassoon virtuoso Etienne Ozi published his first edition Nouvelle Méthode de Basson, there are no sources that we know of, that specifically discuss articulation on double-reed bass instruments.  Dulcian players and bassoonists interpreting music from before this year can follow markings given by the composer if they are there, or will have to make decisions concerning articulation for themselves.

What we do have though, are treatises discussing articulation on other instruments, such as the recorder, the cornetto and the traverso, but also string instruments, keyboard instruments and vocal treatises. In different periods in music history and countries, we find that the sources handed down to us, give us different rules and suggestions as on how to approach articulation.

 Rather then adding a profusion of long slurs, or playing everything with a hard double-tongue staccato, I would like to invite bassoonists to make conscious choices between paired single-tonguing, double-tonguing and/or slurring in a variety of different manners, based on musical expression. A subtle use of articulation, also in fast passages, can be an important mean to express one self.  Some choices of articulation can, and should be made by the performer, from a personal, aesthetic point of view; other decisions might have technical reasons. More about these considerations later.

In this paper I will discuss different historical sources that deal with articulation, and the way we can use this information in repertoire for the bassoon. Furthermore, I will compare compositions either for dulcian or bassoon that are handed down to us without articulation markings, with treatises or repertoire written for other wind instruments of the relevant era, with articulation markings added by the composer.

In the musical examples and in the complete pieces with articulation markings, which are included in the appendices, the syllables used are not meant to be rigid. They have the following meaning:

tu               strong, in front of the mouth

du              weak, farther back on the palate

gu              in the back of the mouth as in gorgonzola

It is impossible to grasp the relative nuances of harshness or weakness of the above-mentioned syllables on paper.

I hope this research will challenge the interested bassoonist to question the way of articulating fast passages in bassoon literature, and encourage them to make choices regarding articulation in a more informed way.