The " je ne sais quoi"

Here are some extra-musical concepts for French baroque music, which perhaps some players may find useful.  One of my favorite ideas from Wilbert Hazelzet is that he said playing French music is like “walking on eggshells”. Take a moment to imagine if you had to do that....you'll think about how to shift your center and weight so that you'd avoid breaking the eggshells. (or as few as possible!) You couldn't just put your weight all on one foot. That's the same kind of feeling in French baroque music – we're always playing with a bit of reservation, but there are still ways to bring movement and liveliness to the music. Finding that balance is what challenges people of course, it's so much easier to just kind of “pour your heart out” (that's like putting all weight on one foot), but a NUANCED APPROACH to articulation and sound production will help tremendously. It's walking on a fine line and that's what makes this music so exciting.

Another way to think of this is look at French cuisine. In the end, the highest bar to achieve is that the food just tastes simply amazing without necessarily being able to attribute to just one source. Everything works together to make the food (your interpretation) delightful. Your listeners are then just left with pure enjoyment and that's a great sign of artistry!

Two pieces that immediately come to mind (although there are countless ones besides these!) are these two movements from Couperin's 2nd Concert Royaux. Graceful, a bit playful, with depth but not too serious, never sounding "rude", charming with occasionally just slightly hinting an edge....all this expressed through the delicate handling of articulation and breath work. A lot of tapering in the sound, listening to what's happening BETWEEN the notes.