[ONLINE] Research Alive / Doctoral Colloquium | Using period instruments to guide your performance choices on the modern instrument in C.P.E. Bach's Sonata in A minor for solo flute

Nora Simard-St-Cyr, flute, 3rd Place Winner of the 2021-2022 Research Alive Student Prize

This event will take place online. Zoom URL: https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/82439650053

Abstract: During my undergraduate studies, I observed a confusion amongst my colleagues when they had to perform eighteenth-century music on modern instruments. Historically Informed Performance (HIP) movement shed light on how to perform this repertoire on period instruments. However, there is very little scholarship on the way to perform this music on modern instruments. In this presentation, I will use the first movement of C.P.E. Bach’s Sonata in A minor Wq.132to illustrate how affordances introduced by using a period flute and the HIP tradition can guide a modern flutist. The presentations will touch on important topics discussed by HIP like articulation.

Articulation is one of the biggest differences between baroque and a modern flute playing. Articulation is therefore the most interesting, as well as the most challenging, point of transfer between the two playing methods. This is complicated by the fact that articulation, for the eighteenth-century musician, was a topic that went far beyond the mere tonguing of a note. Articulation could define the expressive value of a phrase, and it was therefore of the utmost importance. Phrasing, dynamics, note lengths, tonguing patterns all fall under eighteenth-century articulation.

Classical musicians must be taught this topic because every instrumentalist, singer, conductor perform early music at some point in their life. This presentation might seem flute centred, but the method used, and the knowledge are transferrable to other instruments.

Biography: Nora Simard-Saint-Cyr completed her undergraduate studies at the Schulich School of Music in flute Performance and Music History, with Timothy Hutchins. She has participated in numerous masterclasses including Emmanuel Pahud, Mathieu Dufour, Denis Bouriakov, Jeanne Baxtresser, Philippe Bernold, Jennifer Gunn, Julien Beaudiment, Robert Aitken, and Sarah Jackson. As a flutist and piccolist, she performed with various orchestras throughout Montreal: OPMEM, Orchestre 21, Orchestre Intemporel, and Orchestre symphonique de la Côte-Nord.

She completed her Masters in Musicology at Université de Montreal with Sylvain Caron, her thesis supervisor. Her research observed general performance practices of the baroque flute repertoire in the second part of the 20th century. In the summer 2018, she travelled to Paris to participate in Rethinking Music in France during the Baroque Era, a symposium organized by Université Sorbonne, CNRS, and Centre de musique Baroque Versaille, where she presented a conference called “Chedeville’s Il Pastor Fido : an historical inspired performance proposition.”

As an extension of her research, Nora began playing the baroque flute, subsequently completing a Graduate diploma in early music performance in baroque flute at Schulich School of Music in 2019-2020 school year, where she studied with Lena Weman. Additionally, she participated in masterclasses for the Baroque flute with Claire Guimond, Alexis Kossenko, and Jan De Winne. She is currently a doctoral candidate in early music performance at McGill, where she studies baroque flute with Mika Putterman.