Understanding Phrasing in Couperin's Courantes - Essential Style Tip for Baroque Flutists

May thanks to my workshop participants for some wonderfully insightful discussions about the Courante/Corrente! 🥳 Despite the overtime😅, I really had fun explaining to people why I think the Courante is such an intriguing dance to play. Never forget the "play" in flute playing.

The above is an example from François Couperin's "Courante a L'italiene" - which shows sneaky Couperin combining the best of French and Italian tastes with these wonderful metric shifts. A middle line is sandwiched between the outer lines which are both in hemiola, and yet this middle line is also "metrically off" since it's accentuating the 2nd beat as opposed to the first, which is what we'd normally expect in 3/4 time. Rich textures, subtle details, never simply black or white = very French!🇫🇷

From the same Quatrième Concert of Couperin's Concert Royaux, this is a very neat passage from the "Courante Françoise". Besides the possibilities of creating rhythmic ambiguity in compound time, Couperin blurs the boundaries even more by adding slurs and ornaments. Should we play it in 2 groups of 3 or 3 groups of 2? I'll let you decide.😉

Whatever you choose to do though, be sure to always diminuendo, lighten up the sound at the end of a group, and stop the sound gently with the tongue to shape and define your phrasing.