Hi all,

This is something that I've wondered about for years...is tonguing normally used throughout this piece? It's played so fast on recordings that it's difficult to tell...surely you'd have to be SuperFlautist to tongue it?! OR is there a tonguing method used?
Best regards,
Lucy-Jane
X

in the music, i thought it was slurred...

Not in my copies! But v. encouraging if it's slurred elsewhere...

Most editions will show slurs, I believe. Of course, there is some tonguing involved, but it's unusual that the sheetmusic would show everything as being tongued. Should you choose to tongue it, you'll almost certainly need to be quite capable with double tonguing to get it up to tempo. It's not a terribly difficult piece (most chromatics), so if you can get your fingers working without you needing to think about them too much, I suppose you could throw some double tonguing in on top as a bit of a gimmick.

Thanks for the info! That's quite a relief; it really seemed impossible to tongue it all the way through...wonder why my versions have it tongued? Guess it seemed too much like stating the obvious to mark in the slurs! Now I can get cracking with it!

it is slurred, even in the original orchestral version, but a great idea to practice it staccatto, especially double tongued

it is slurred, even in the original orchestral version, but a great idea to practice it staccatto, especially double tongued

Got a question, what instrument/s was it written for originally?

I believe it was originally written for orchestra as part of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Since then it's been transcribed for almost any instrument imagineable.

Yes, it is originally for the whole orchestra. The melody is passed around the different instruments.
See this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y41DykcpgRg


I believe that the flutist in the above version is Andreas Blau.

I've just seen that and I admit that is better than the version that is widely heard today for just solo instrument and piano. Thanks for that.

There is tonguing in this piece. But not very much. you know when you do the chromatic "e" through "c" the "e" is tongued. every 8 16th note is tongued. at least in my peice of music. but it is very light.

There is a recording called "Dragon's Tongue" where the first piece is the Flight of the Bumblebee and the clarinetist does it all tongued.

You should hear it.

I can do it, but I try not to show off too much because people feel humiliated when they hear it.