The Vibrato Thread

[jochanaan]

Vibrato has gotten a lot of discussion recently in various contexts, but a search didn't turn up a thread specifically on vibrato (except for one dedicated to violin and viola vibrato).  So I'm starting one.

What kind of vibrato do you like?  (I'm not even going to try to reduce this to a poll question; I want specifics.)  If you're a performer, how much, if any, do you use?  And if your instrument traditionally doesn't do vibrato (I'm thinking horn and clarinet here), under what circumstances might you try introducing it?

As for me, it's currently considered a necessity for my principal instrument, the oboe.  (This was not always true.  Oboists in German and East European orchestras until about the 1950s used no vibrato, and Marcel Tabuteau, principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1913 to 1956, used virtually none.)  It's one of the ways I make music expressive.  For solos or loud playing I use more vibrato; for blending or soft playing I use less; for extreme pianissimos I use none.  I produce it from the diaphragm, but I've seen oboists use lip or throat vibrato.  (That usually makes either an uncontrolled bleat or something you can't hear from two paces away. )

I usually prefer a slower, more expressive, consciously controlled vibrato.  Like many, I cannot stand an uncontrolled wobble or tremolo.

[Cato]

Russian orchestras, as a general statement, especially in the trumpets, to my ear have used too much vibrato in the past.

But this seems to be changing: e.g. I have a new recording of the Taneyev Symphonies 1 and 3 under Polyansky and was pleased to hear a modicum of vibrato.

[12tone.]

I'm thinking about someone writing a symphony just for vibrato and how much vibrato can actually happen.

Something like...this perhaps:

Karl is at it again with his new Naxos release!

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Talk about too many notes!!

[12tone.]

Talk about too many notes!!

You aren't supposed to listen to each note individualistically.  The liner notes indicate that you're supposed to listen to the work while "thinking of the larger whole which encapulates roughly 1 second in time".  The work is basically what one second sounds like.  It's like Steve Reich all over again except that this is GOOD MUSIC!

[Dancing Divertimentian]

You aren't supposed to listen to each note individualistically.  The liner notes indicate that you're supposed to listen to the work while "thinking of the larger whole which encapulates roughly 1 second in time".  The work is basically what one second sounds like.  It's like Steve Reich all over again except that this is GOOD MUSIC!

That's assuming a soloist doesn't take too many liberties with the score. Get one who values his/her own vibrato over the printed page and we're in for trouble...

[12tone.]

That's assuming a soloist doesn't take too many liberties with the score. Get one who values his/her own vibrato over the printed page and we're in for trouble...

And that's where the oscillators come in.  The title doesn't say, but two oscillators are used and put out tones at a warbling 180 hz and 190 hz.  The orchestra is expected to keep up with that.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

I take it you're Karl's technical adviser...

[12tone.]

I take it you're Karl's technical adviser...

I'm his Tonmeister.

[Brahmsian]

Is vibrato usually indicated on the score?

[Cato]

Is vibrato usually indicated on the score?

"Usually" not: I have seen scores, however, where "molto vibrato" and also non vibrato are written.

And some avant-garde scores will indicate vibrato expanding into quarter-tones or glissandos.

[Superhorn]

  Sometimes it depends on the music ; for example, horn players in France and Russia have tended to use a kind of vibrato which makes the instrument sound ,as some have said "like a cross between a nanny goat and a saxophone". 
  To play Wagner like this would be a grotesque travesty .  But in Russian and French music , it's not problematical . 
  Czech horn players use some vibrato, but in such a tasteful and artistic way that it doesn't sound offesnive at all.
  Years ago, I heard an LP of the Brahms horn trio played by Russian horn player whose name I don't remember and a famous Russian pianist and violinist whose names I can't remember either. It sounded truly weird .

[jochanaan]

Is vibrato usually indicated on the score?

"Usually" not: I have seen scores, however, where "molto vibrato" and also non vibrato are written.

And some avant-garde scores will indicate vibrato expanding into quarter-tones or glissandos.

One of the sets in my repertoire, Cinq pièces pour le hautbois by Antal Dorati, specifically calls for lip vibrato at one point.