Lesson 83: Virtuoso Studies, Part 3 — Breath Control

Plan breath points across a 32-bar slow phrase so each finishes unhurried.
Drill the long-tone exercise that builds abdominal control.
Apply the result to a Telemann fantasia where the phrases run past one lungful.

Lesson 38 — musical phrasing and expression.
Lesson 70 (optional) — circular breathing.

Long-tone abdominal control.
Iterative breath planning.
Crescendo distribution.

The performance is what survives the breath. Plan the breath.

The recorder uses less air than any other modern wind instrument. This is not the same as needing no breath plan: a sustained slow movement at quiet dynamic can outlast a lungful without difficulty, but the long Baroque phrase that climbs to a climax and resolves over twelve bars cannot. Breath control on the recorder is mostly distribution — not having more air, but using it more deliberately.

The long-tone drill

Hold a low D for thirty seconds at pianissimo. Then a low D for twenty seconds at mezzo-forte. Then a low D for fifteen seconds at forte. The exercise teaches the abdominal control that lets you sustain a tone with steady dynamics, not pulsing in time with the breath.

Four whole notes on low D — held continuously, with deliberate dynamic shape.

Planning a 32-bar phrase

Pick any 32-bar slow movement (or section of a movement). Without playing, identify:

Phrase boundaries. Where does the melodic line breathe? Mark each.
Subphrase boundaries. Within each phrase, where can a small breath sit without breaking the line?
Climax. Where does the section's dynamic peak? You will need more air there.
Required breaths. Mark them in pencil — not aspirational, real. Where will you breathe?

Then practise. If a planned breath turns out to be too late (the previous phrase has run out before you reach it), move the breath earlier and re-mark. The plan is iterative; the iteration is the work.

The crescendo drill

The hardest breath case: a long crescendo. The dynamic grows; the air demand grows; the available air shrinks. Without planning, the crescendo collapses at the top. With planning, it crowns.

Play a slow ascending C major scale from low C to high C, crescendoing from pianissimo to fortissimo. Mark a planned breath after the high G (the halfway-up point) so you start the last four notes with full lungs.

The high G is the planned breath point. Mark it in your score.

The daily warm-up

Ten minutes per session:

Four minutes of the long-tone drill at three dynamics.
Three minutes of the crescendo-scale drill.
Three minutes of breath-planning practice on any movement from your current repertoire — mark breaths in the score before playing.

Now play these

Telemann: Twelve Fantasias, TWV 40:103: The third fantasia, with long-breathed slow passages. Plan the breath points before practising.
Handel: Sonata in C major, HWV 365 — Larghetto: The phrase from Lesson 70. Apply the breath plan, with or without circular breathing.

When the long-tone drill sustains low D at pianissimo for thirty seconds with steady dynamic, the crescendo scale completes without running out at the top, and a planned breath chart for one slow movement lets every phrase finish unhurried in recording, move on to Lesson 84.