Playing in groups - chamber music

When you play chamber music, you have to take much more responsibility than when you are in an orchestra or band. There are fewer players and no conductor.

So, you have to work out together how you are going to play the piece, you have to decide collectively how you will interpret it. You don't have a conductor deciding on the style of playing and the structure that he wants to convey to the audience.

It is easier to do this as a group if you spend some time getting used to playing as a group. It may be that a leader naturally emerges, but it is rare for the leader to become as dominant as the conductor is by definition. So everybody has a right and even a duty to make their contribution.

The first and most obvious point is that since you don't have a conductor giving you a beat to look at, you have to look at each other to coordinate the beat. In orchestra, you should always have the conductor visible in the corner of your eye, but in a chamber group, you have to have all the other players within your field of view, so you can look at whoever is leading at any moment.

Even if an overall leader of the group emerges, individual players have the task of leading at different moments. This can be because they have the tune, or because they are in a position to control a rallentando, or to lead off after a pause. In small groups, everybody is a leader for some of the time.

If you are not the leader at a particular moment, you have to know who is and make sure you are looking at them and following. If you are the leader, you must make it entirely clear what you are doing, by gesture, by eye contact, and if necessary be describing your intention in rehearsal before running the passage.

Go to any concert involving a small group of professional musicians. It doesn't matter whether it is classical, jazz, folk, or anything else. Watch carefully and see how much they depend on eye contact with each other. See the interactions, see who is leading and when. See how quickly they move from one leader to the next. And see how much time they spend looking at each other rather than at the music.

That deals with coordination, but without a conductor, you also need to work out interpretation. What style are you going to adopt, what phrasing will you use? In preparing for a piece, you have to decide and agree on articulation and phrasing. You have to agree on balance, on style. You have to decide which line is prominent and who is accompanying. And you have to push your ego down and dedicate yourself to the music, to making sure that your collective performance is as good as you can achieve.

Even in chamber music, as a horn player you spend most of your time doing what you do in an orchestra. You fill in the middle of the harmonies and you blend. You have prominent solos more often than in an orchestra, but even so, you are solo far less often than the upper woodwinds. You'll get asked back to a group based on how well you blend with them, not on how prominent you can be.

Playing chamber music is hard work. It is physically hard. In orchestra you can expect to be resting for 2/3 of the time, but in chamber music you will be playing for at least 2/3 of the time. That means that in a chamber concert your lip will have to last for twice as many notes as in an orchestra concert.

Playing chamber music is mentally hard. If you have twice as many notes to play, that is twice as many notes to learn. And you have a far higher proportion of solos and exposed entries. So the proportion of the music that needs dedicated practice is far higher, because you should spend most of your practice time on the exposed bits, and especially the exposed difficult bits.

And finally playing chamber music is emotionally hard. If a chamber group is going to last, then you have to have a good deal of musical and personal respect for your fellow players. You have to allow them to take the lead at times. You have to accept them when they have an off day or an attack of the grumps. And you have to be appropriately grateful when they accept your off days as well. You have to come to common ideas on tuning, phrasing, balance and style. And most of all, you have to be able to communicate on an emotional level with your fellow players if you are going to bring out the full depth of the music you make together. All of this requires a degree of emotional maturity needed in few other professions.

Vikram Seth once wrote An Equal Music, a substantial novel about the musical and romantic travails of the second violin of a professional string quartet in London. Seth is very good at communicating the love of music that occasionally tips into obsession. But his string quartet are such prickly individual characters that they would never last a year together in real life, even though two of the four are brother and sister.

Playing in groups - interpreting dynamic markings

When you are playing a solo with piano, you do the written dynamics, scaled to whatever size of room or hall you are playing in. Fitting in isn't much of an issue.

But when you play in a band or orchestra, the temptation is always to play out a bit in order to be heard over everybody else. So everybody plays a good solid mf even in the soft passages, and when they notice even that doesn't get through, they play a bit louder still! As a result, all dynamic range for the group disappears, leaving no audible distinction between passages which are nominally soft and those which are supposed to be loud.

There are some general rules that you have to follow when playing in orchestra or band.

• If you are playing accompaniment, play two notches quieter than the written dynamic. So for instance if there is an instruction in the part to play mf, you play p.
• If you have a long held note as part of the accompaniment, start it 2 notches quieter than the written dynamic and then immediately drop one further notch. Long notes are boring. They are part of the texture, but absolutely must be lower in dynamic than the moving parts.
  
• If you are sharing the tune, play the written dynamic.
• Hairpin instructions for brief crescendos and diminuendos should be exaggerated. They are there for a reason, and so they have to be discernible to the audience. But an exaggerated crescendo has to be matched with an equally exaggerated diminuendo to return you to your original dynamic.
  
• If you aren't principal horn, make sure you aren't playing louder than the principal - match whatever he or she is doing if you are playing similar stuff in harmony together.
  
• If you are solo on the tune, play one or two notches louder than written, probably with a "projected" tone.

This is the basic balance for a large group. If everybody in the group gets into the habit of doing this, the sound texture suddenly acquires a beautiful clarity. Details become audible that couldn't be heard before. The conductor can then make individual adjustments - he can choose to ask individuals to bring out items of interest, e.g. countermelodies or rhythmic flourishes.

This is especially important in band rather than orchestra. With an orchestra, there is quite a bit of variation in tone colour available between the strings, the woodwind and the brass. With band, the string tone is unavailable and you just have wind sounds (plus percussion and perhaps string basses). So the range of tone colour variation is significantly reduced. All the more important to give the audience more variation in dynamic level, otherwise the performance becomes very boring and one-dimensional.

But this requires a degree of trust. There's no point playing accompaniment quietly unless everybody else is willing to do the same. So you are dependent for the effect on everybody agreeing and remembering to play the accompaniment softly. Until a group is used to doing this, it may mean that the conductor has to keep reminding you.

In both band and orchestra, the horn players spend most of their time blending into the middle of the harmony. That's the nature of being a tenor instrument. At one point you'll be joining with the woodwind, at another you'll be adding warmth to a cello tune, and at another you'll be with the brass for a chorale. But in many pieces, in the principal horn may be lucky to have 8 bars of solo. I've played plenty of pieces where the horns have less than that.

Blending is what horns mostly do. They form a tonal cement that glues together harmonies and provides an element in a wide variety of composite tone colours. It might not sound all that glamorous, but at least you have a separate part each. Have a thought for the second violins just in front of you in orchestra. 12 or 16 of them all playing the same notes, even less opportunity for individual expression. They rarely play the tune but are stuck in the middle of the harmony. And they have more notes they have to practice.

Playing in orchestra or band is about teamwork - and just as in a sports team each player has his or her own defined role, so it is in an orchestra. You can choose to be good at the role or not. If you want to become a professional, you have to understand and accept the role. If you are an amateur, you may surprise yourself how much pride you can gain from doing your bit as well as you know how.

Playing in groups - obvious starting points

I'll start with some obvious points - ones which ought to be self-evident, but often aren't.

Practice your part
You'll play better in a group if you've practiced your part at home. Practicing an orchestral part at home doesn't mean ploughing doggedly through all the notes. It means identifying the difficult bits and practicing those so that they don't cause you to panic in rehearsal or performance. For instance:

• Difficult entries
• Solos
• Awkward slurs
• Passages with breathing issues
• Complex rhythms

Ideally, have a listen to a recording before the first rehearsal, with a copy of your part in front of you. The purpose of that is to identify any exposed bits that will need practice, and to get an idea of the speed the conductor is likely to take it.

If you can't do that before the first rehearsal, then go over the part as soon as possible after it.

Take the example of Brahms 2, which I played with Hillingdon Philharmonic last month. You can take a look at the first horn part here. Things to practice here are as follows:

• The opening solo
• The forte passage before B, and the quavers after
• Getting the rhythm right and steady for the repeated syncopated notes between E and F
• The solo just after the 2nd time bar
• The high notes in the passage after K
• The exposed passage of the first 2 bars of L
• This big solo after M
• In the 2nd movement, the solo at A
• The solos at C, after D and after E
• In the third movement, the opening solo
• The entry before C
• In the fourth movement, the entry after I
• The passage at M
• The entries at O
• The last 17 bars

Depending on your level of achievement, there might be other passages you feel you need to practice as well. What I've mentioned above is all the exposed bits that absolutely must be right, plus any other awkward moments.

The proportion of a piece that needs detailed practise depends also on what it contains - how difficult the piece is overall, and what proportion of your part is exposed.

It is very useful to be able to efficiently prioritise your practice like this - you improve the most important things in the least possible time. If you're a professional (or want to become one) then this saves you a lot of time, given that you will get through a tremendous amount of music in your lifetime, and if you are an amateur, then you probably have a busy life to lead apart from your music and your practice time may be limited. Use it as efficiently as possible.

Be ready at rehearsal
Make sure you arrive before the rehearsal is due to start (ideally about 15 minutes before), and that you have your instrument, a pencil, and eraser, your music, your mouthpiece, a music stand, and a bottle of water if you need it. Also make sure that you have oils and (if your valves are string-coupled) spare strings available, just in case you find that have you to do some maintenance or running repairs.

If you are professional or a student, you should have warmed up at home beforehand. That's not always possible for amateurs who go straight from work to an evening rehearsal. If you are in that situation, develop an abbreviated 2-minute warmup that you can do in a corner before the rehearsal starts. My short warmup consists of a few long notes, followed by slurred arpeggios using all key combinations, just to get the lips moving. You will work out from experience what works for you as an effective short warmup.

Make sure you can see the conductor
In order to watch the conductor, you have to be able to see him. Make sure your seat position is such that your view of the conductor isn't blocked by the head of a tall person sitting in front of you. You need to have an uninterrupted view of the conductor's face and of his beat. Both are equally important.

Position your music stand and adjust the height of it so that with your normal playing position you can see the music comfortably and see the conductor over the top of the music with minimal movement of your eyes and without having to move your body. Ideally, you should be able to look at the notes and be able to see the beat with peripheral vision at the same time.

The common mistake is to position your stand too low. This has two adverse effects. First, it means that you tend to slouch in order to see the music properly, and second it increases the angle between the music and the conductor, making it much harder to see the conductor while you're reading the music.

I'll talk more on watching the conductor another time. But the first prerequisite is that you can see him comfortably.

Are you sitting comfortably?
Especially for amateur groups, rehearsal venues are often less than ideal, and that includes the seats. If you have a regular orchestra you play for and you know the seats are a problem, bring a cushion or something which will make the seat more comfortable and make it easier for you to maintain a good playing posture. Don't moan about the seats, do something.

Playing in groups

Looking back on my musical education, it seems to me that there is a very important aspect that was not taught me by any of my teachers, but which is vitally important to good music-making, whether as a professional or as an amateur.

This aspect is the art of playing in groups: in orchestra, in bands, in chamber groups, or as a soloist with a piano accompanist.

There are skills to be learned about playing in groups that are entirely independent of your technical capabilities on your chosen instrument.

In a way, I'm lucky, both my parents were fine amateur musicians (and one was a music teacher), and they involved me in amateur music making at quite an advanced level throughout my childhood, and I remember them offering ideas about playing in a group whenever I described problems. I suspect that I obtained a larger part of my musical education by that means than I previously realised.

Group technique is not something that is much taught. Looking back on it, it was something which the teachers at music college hoped that we would sort of pick up as a result of rehearsing pieces in orchestra, but rehearsal technique and group playing was not discussed as a separate discipline. I'm coming to think that it ought to be.

So in the interest of passing on whatever might be useful of what I've learned, I'm going to do some articles over the next few weeks on orchestral and group playing.