Lesson 38: Musical Phrasing and Expression
- Find the phrase boundaries of an unfamiliar piece on first reading.
- Shape each phrase from beginning to end with breath and articulation.
- Lesson 9 — dynamics.
- Lesson 30 — listening discipline.
- Musical phrasing.
- Breath as expression.
- Phrase contour and resolution.
A phrase is a musical sentence. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
A phrase is the unit of musical thought between two natural breath points. In well-written music, phrase boundaries usually fall every four or eight bars, and they coincide with cadences, rests, or the longest notes. Find them. Mark them. Play each as a single arc — rising in the middle, settling at the end — not as a series of equal-weighted notes.
Finding phrases
The melody below is in four-bar phrases. Read it once and mark where each phrase ends — you will hear three natural pauses.
Shaping a phrase
Each phrase is an arch — growing toward the middle, settling toward the end. Apply that shape with breath: more support through the middle of the phrase, less at the start and end. The articulation should follow: forward at the start, lighter at the close.
Play once flat, then once with arch shape on each four-bar phrase. The notes are identical; the music is not.
Now play these
- Greensleeves
- Eight-bar phrases. Each one its own small arc.
- Danny Boy
- Long, vocal phrases. One breath per line of text.
- Vivaldi: Concerto RV 443 (Largo)
- The slow movement's phrasing is the entire performance.
When a recording of you playing a phrase-rich melody has audible shape on every phrase, move on to Lesson 39.