Playing side-by-side with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century was one of the more cool things I got to do during my training.
I remember commenting to the lady next to me that it was interesting that the same verb, ‘stemmen’, referred to tuning, but it also meant ‘to vote’. I said that I couldn’t see a connection. My colleague for the moment said that there was: ‘It’s what you go for.’
I thought about this for a while, and I’m still thinking about it some years later. Inspired by her comment, I’m consciously conceptualising good intonation as directly and unfussily going for something.
Slow practice, both with a metronome for steady pattern-making, and without so that I can freely explore sounds and pitch-shapes, is an important part of my routine. Learning a difficult passage, I like to pick whichever slow speed will enable me honestly to know that I am hitting each note absolutely accurately, with every interval relationship exactly right. (And to get to this point, I’ll probably first play around with chords and overtones, layering up the notes I’m tackling and getting them to talk to one another).
Yes, intonation has been described as a process of making micro-adjustments: having good intonation means being good at noticing problems and moving your finger to the right place before anyone else realises.
But I like the discipline in the idea of aiming for, and hitting, a target. Of getting it right and moving on.
That’s why I practise slowly.