Despite it being a part of the symphonic orchestra family, the flute, with its modern construction particularities, is a relatively new instrument, thanks to Theobald Boehm's technical upgrades in the XIXth century. The impressive interpretative capabilities that this new flute model offered considerably popularised the instrument, modern composers being incentivised to use it in solo and ensemble situations and, thus, pushing musical expressivity boundaries through the introduction of extended techniques.
Flautist and composer Theobald Boehm opened the first instrument repair shop in 1828 and constructed his first wooden flute in the same year, using Joachim Quantz's spring mechanism system. Constantly concerned with improving intonation, Boehm devised different machines that allowed him to drill the pitch holes at a constant distance along the instrument's tube. He invented two other flute models, in 1831 and 1832 that significantly advanced the instrument's capabilities through the introduction of different types of keys and the adjustment of their position on the body for the optimisation of agility and intonation. It is his patent from 1847 though, that carries his name to this day, that is credited with the "new era" of flute playing due to the many improvements that included, amongst others, switching the construction material from wood to metal and giving the flute a cylindrical form, as opposed to the then-established conical one.
E.L. Þorsteinsdóttir, Theobald Boehm – The Reinventation of the Flute - (Reykjavík: University of Iceland Press, 2010), 7 – 14.
In the past, I very rarely used extended techniques in my regular performances, in part due to the fact that modern/contemporary repertoire made up a smaller percentage of the required pieces as it pertained to institutional curriculum, competition requirements or orchestral scheduling, despite the fact that these types of effects had been available to modern flautists since the 1800s. In my metal and rock projects I was mostly relying on external processors such as pedals and loop stations to achieve the desired effects. Despite all of the above, I was familiar and comfortable with the usual fluttertongue, slaptongue, beatboxing, multiphonics, harmonics, singing and playing and so on.
While working on one of the projects for the Academy, I decided to challenge myself with not using electronic processors and instead trying to get the same sounds with the flute and/or my voice. This opened up a completely new world of sound exploration and significantly expanded my artistic soundscape. Thus, even though the sounding palate that I use is based upon pre-existing techniques, I allow myself the freedom to bend the sound depending on what I feel the music needs.
Even though I mentally sort these sounds into "with pitch" or "without pitch", I no longer think about the things that I play in terms of melody and effects but simply as music.
Bellow, in Demonstration Video 1, you can see a demonstration of the types of sounds that I employ on a regular basis and how I think about them in terms of musical expression.
When I think about voice in my artistic practice, I see two different iterations based upon who is singing: someone else or myself.
Since words are an important part of storytelling, I insisted on having vocals in most of my works, but never thought about singing myself. The reason I make a distinction between the two is because they represent either the voice as an instrument capable of rendering beautiful melodies and lyrics or the raw emotion that I feel the need to express from my own soul (which is more of an effect rather than a melodic component). In the first instance, the vocals serve the role of narrator and the natural liaison to the audience while in the second one, my own voice is a character in the storyline, presented as its own fragile and vulnerable entity, completely cut off from the outside world.
Regardless of the context though, I tend to compose vocal parts in the style of Romanian folk singing, alternating between melodic narrative, contemplative parts based upon specific pentatonic scales or triads and onomatopoeia.
My own singing in the context of this artistic research came naturally, as a direct result of working with folk elements. The more I listened to ancient, field collected songs from different parts of Romania (ritual songs, ballads), the more I felt connected to that style of singing as it brought up many happy childhood memories. At the same time, if helped me immerse myself into the story.
In the beginning I was not very comfortable singing, using my voice more to convey text than actual music. This changed when dr. Andra Pătraș, lecturer in ethnomusicology and traditional singing at the "Gheorghe Dima" National Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca helped me select traditional wedding and bridal songs from a specific area of Romania for a project that I was working on by sending me field recordings. Initially I wanted to transcribe it for the vocalist in my ensemble to sing but, in the process, I became moved by the meaning behind the words and attempted to reproduce the style of singing that Andra explained to me in more detail (as revealed in Video 2, below). In that moment, something clicked! Between my childhood memories of singing in this style, the raw emotion that was conveyed and the pure message of the songs, I found my literal voice and have not been able to stop using it in my performances since.
When I use my voice, there is no barrier between me and the emotions that I strive to convey (as is the case of the flute, which is a conduit in a sense) and I feel freer than ever before. It is worth mentioning that this is likely also due to the fact that I have little formal training so there is no worry about "proper technique" getting in the way.
