Circumaspiration

[Rick Vosper]

You're right about circular breathing not being part of the classical
corpus of wind techinque. Several observations, however:

1: Oboes (or Hautbois-- an oboe-playing friend even has a license-plate,
"Hot Boy", but I digress) seldom if ever have a need to circular-breathe,
owing to the fact that the instrument has such a low air throughput. More
often, the oboist feels like s/he is engaged in a breath-holding exercise
and comes up for air more from oxygen starvation than from lack of lung
contents.

2: At least some orchestral brass players -- especially low brass --
circular-breathe. Try making it through some of the Russian warhorses (like
Overture 1812) without it. I keep promising myself I'll learn.

3: Bagpipes auto-ciruculate. The player just has to keep the bladder (the
"bag") filled, so it's not really circular breathing there, either.

4: The circular-breathing technique itself may come to Western music via
the Australian didgeridoo. Anyone know more about this?

--rick (a recovering Tubist)

At 08:52 AM 6/2/97 PDT, you wrote:
>Euphrenia describes being "oblig'd to keep Starvation off my Sill, by
>pretending to be an Automaton Oboe player."  The technique she used
>is clearly "circular breathing" as employed by numerous jazz horn
>players -- a few who come to mind are Harry Carney, Clark Terry, Phil
>Woods, Roland Kirk, and Bruce Fowler.  It's not used by "classical"
>wind instrument players, to my knowledge, and was certainly unknown
>in the days of Euphrenia and her beloved Hautbois.
>
>-- 
>Alan Westrope