These are passages from J.S. Bach's St. John Passion. We often have to play in flat keys in this piece, and should you have problems with the high Bb that it's too sharp, especially when you want to accent it, try using a kind of tonguing that's further back in the mouth to minimize the "explosion". Use a "D" and experiment with how far back you'd tongue and compare the effects. Also, a very slight nudge or "pump" of air would suffice and imagine using "warm" air rather than just sheer blowing "cold" air (the point is to decrease unnecessary pressure). There's no need to make this huge and it's more fun to be in tune with your oboe colleague.👌
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Another option might be even using A#, which will be lower in pitch. It'll probably be less useful here, but keep it in mind in other places and find out what works for YOU. Everyone and every flute is different, but knowing your options and finding your solutions is what makes baroque flute playing so exciting!🥳

So after my last post talking about Wilbert Hazelzet's idea of "don't play", I thought to follow up with this list of common issues we encounter when playing the baroque flute. Just off the top of my head, these are movements or tendencies that are unnecessary and prevent us from playing in an efficient way. The more we can reduce, the easier and more enjoyable playing becomes. Go through this checklist as you play - maybe you'll discover more and I'd love to hear from you! 
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✅ 1. The baroque flute takes less air and slower air compared to the modern flute.
 
✅ 2. When moving upwards to the mid and higher register, keep using the slowest air possible and avoid overshooting.
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✅ 3. You can influence intonation by adjusting angle of air and/or the airspeed. Sometimes you'll need to do both, but sometimes adjusting air speed is enough and also a better choice than adjusting angle. Adjusting air speed is the more subtle way and there are times when that's all you'd need. 

✅ 4. Lips should remain stable when doing staccato or accents. Refrain from air kissing! 

✅ ​5. In an ensemble (starting with a duo), you'll often have plenty of time to prepare yourself for an upcoming passage. Take advantage of that. You have to check your air, lips, tongue, and also maybe cueing in your fellow musician(s) - that's A LOT that needs to happen! Is it a high note that needs to be soft? Is it a note like F natural or Gb that requires attention in terms of intonation and/or focus? Start taking in air way in advance and don't wait until right before you play to breathe. You can still take a kind of small, "symbolic" inhale to help you be in the movement of your cue (or even none at all but just cue with your flute), but keep your movement simple and precise. 

✅ 6. Avoid breathing right before your entry with your mouth open. Breathe through your nose so that your embouchure is ready for the coming passage. 

✅ 7. Watch out if you're approaching a rather high note, say like F#3 or G3  (or any note that feels unfamiliar to you) to not tense up in the body and literally "shrink" with your flute. Instead stand steady and tall, imagine to release the sound from your hands rather than clamping down on the flute.

✅ ​8. Watch out to not squeeze with your lips to produce high notes. If you're feeling tension in the lips for high notes (signs include when you feel the outer edge of your lips, or when they tremble or produce buzzing), that means they're not quite strong enough yet to handle the slightly faster airstream needed. 

✅ 9. We achieve brilliance and strength with forked fingering notes like F natural, G#, Bb etc. by being able to play them with a focused tone and in tune. They don't gain strength by us blowing more (too much too fast air), although it's very easy to do so, especially due to stress.

✅ 10. Tonguing is more about precision than tonguing hard. Use less tongue surface but back the note with air to create accentuations when needed. 

✅ 11. Explore more the softer dynamics, creating more diminuendo/lightening effects to create contrast. The baroque flute is not known as a loud instrument, but you'll have much more success in creating a rich dynamic range by widening your middle to soft dynamics. And in this way, a beautiful resonance is achieved which shows off the instrument at its best.

Less is more, achieve the maximum with the minimum.

Imagine to have all sorts of textures, shades, and energy levels within your playing. Even in a "smooth" passage, there will still be fine details and nuances, just like this waterfall. Can your articulation be prickly? Can they sound like drops of water? Little icicles? In this case, you'll want to work your breath, make it succinct, bouncy, and using very little air. Imagine a small puffs of air (huh, huh), use a deep sounding vowel and use a mirror to make sure that the lips don't get involved and stay put. Working the breath with articulation is a way of engaging your whole "being" with the music, and not just simply using the tongue. On the baroque flute, a little goes a long way so try things little by little and observe their effects attentively. 

And sometimes there'll be passages where you'll use longer flows of air, but remember to always shape. Maybe the notes go a little upwards, try a crescendo with that. Maybe they'll go a little downwards, try a decrescendo. These can be minute differences and also, it's mostly about raising or decreasing an INTENTION, RATHER THAN PURELY VOLUME . Going up can be a sign of intensification, going down a relaxation. Remember that the word “dynamics” can also refer to a motion, a force, an energy. And there'll always be exceptions but these are good concepts to start with.

The long exposure in this image shows that the strands of water waver and are not even. So we see there's an overall form of the waterfall, but within it there are different shapes and details.  Music also hardly moves in a straight line and there are always nuances within a phrase, where different components make up an expression. The most interesting thing is always the path along the way towards the goal.

I've included here an earlier post plus an expanded section talking about the opening of Telemann's D major Fantasy: 

Wilbert Hazelzet often said, "Don't play." We train ourselves so that we "don't play" in the end.

​This sounds so cryptic at first! But in the context of music-making, he's referring to how we should internalize everything so that we no longer feel like we have to "do something". The sound, the music just flows, emanates out of us. It becomes a part of us and is not something external. In passages that are challenging technically, I have often found it's much better to have the intention of "backing off" as opposed to "I have to get this". It's about working with paradoxes. We train to do something only to let go again.

In this way, playing becomes more and more effortless and you expand your realm of expression. Also, you realize the difference between the notes you see on the page compared how they actually should sound. As an educator, I can't stress this enough, and I love seeing those "ah ha" moments with my learners when the light bulb goes on.
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For example, these dotted notes in the opening of Telemann's D major Fantasy all LOOK the same, but they certainly aren't. On a very basic level, we can say the notes on the main beats need more presence compared to the 16ths, but those main beats also have their nuances and not all beats are equal. We'll also have to temper our air on the low G#, for example, to accommodate the natural tendency of that note on the baroque flute, but at the same time still make it sound as a main beat. (this is a more complicated subject but to be continued!)
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In essence, try to get away from the notion that all notes need a full sound. Use historical articulation "türü" or "tüdü" which will bring out the gesture of that dotted rhythm much more musically. Not all notes will sound equally "clear", and that's just so beautiful.🩷🎶