In playing mouth-blown wind instruments, the technique used for beginning (and sometimes ending) notes, except those which are slurred. With reed instruments the tip of the tongue is placed against the reed, then drawn quickly back to release the air stream. In playing cup-mouthpiece instruments and members of the flute family the tip of the tongue is generally placed against the palate behind the upper teeth, then drawn back as if forming the consonant ‘T’ or ‘D’ with some suitable vowel. Such a movement is often termed a ‘tongue stroke’ (Fr. coup de langue; Ger. Zungenstoss). For playing rapid notes, pairs of syllables are generally employed, alternating an articulation of the air stream near the teeth (‘te’) with one created by the back of the tongue on the soft palate as in pronouncing ‘ke’ or ‘ge’; this gives the pattern te-ke te-ke (known as ‘double tonguing’). For triplets the patterns te-te-ke te-te-ke or te-ke-te te-ke-te are normally used (‘triple tonguing’). Flutter-tonguing, a common device in 20th-century music, is essentially a protracted rolling of the tip of the tongue, as in an Italian ‘R’.
The representation of tonguing patterns as combinations of syllables has a long history with important implications for both instrumental technique and performance practice. The earliest extant written sources on tonguing, dating from the 16th century, reveal an already highly developed system, presumably continuing a rich oral tradition. Until the mid-17th century, most sources on tonguing were instruction books on the art of improvising diminutions, since the technique of diminunition (the ultimate expression of instrumental virtuosity) created the greatest need for rapid tonguing. The tonguing tradition as described in 16th- and 17th-century sources (notably Italian ones) demonstrated great variety and subtlety. Types of double tonguing were employed not only for speed but for expression, and also in imitation of vocal gorgie, the characteristic throat articulation used by singers to execute rapid diminutions. Most theorists, including Ganassi (Opera intitulata Fontegara, 1535), Girolamo Cardano (De musica, c1546), Girolamo Dalla Casa ( Il vero modo di diminuir, 1584), Riccardo Rognoni (Passaggi per potersi essercitare nel diminuire, 1592), and Francesco Rognoni Taeggio (Selva di varii passaggi, 1620), distinguished between single tonguing (te te te or de de de), to be used for notes slower than quavers, and three kinds of double or compound tonguings, called lingue, to be used for faster notes. These lingue were classified according to their articulative and expressive qualities: hard and sharp (te-che te-che); intermediate (te-re te-re); and smooth (le-re le-re). (Note that the pronunciation of consonants in the original languages of the sources is important for understanding how the syllables were executed. The r in these sources was a single stroke of a rolled ‘R’ in which the tip of the tongue brushes quickly against the ridge of the teeth, also known as the ‘alveolar ridge’; the ch is equivalent to the English ‘K’.) Of these compound tonguings the third type, le-re le-re, was considered the best for diminutions, since it most closely imitated the human voice, and was thus known as the lingua di gorgia. It was also termed lingua roversa (reversed tonguing), indicating that, when executed rapidly, it was somehow transformed or ‘reversed’. The exact nature of this ‘reversal’ is unclear but may have involved shifting the l from the first syllable of the pair le-re to the second syllable, a similar movement to Quantz's double tongue of the 18th century (see below). The tonguing considered the least suitable for diminutions was the first one, te-che te-che, since it was considered too ‘harsh’ and ‘crude’ to be ‘vocal’. The intermediate tonguing, te-re te-re, was deemed to be good for diminutions of moderate speed, as it was moderate in character and easy to control. These compound tonguings were applied to all notes faster than crotchets. In the case of quavers, while the use of compound tonguings was not strictly necessary for speed, they aided in producing a slight inequality of stress considered desirable for tasteful playing. This is presumably why an alternation of hard and soft consonants (te-re te-re) was preferred to two hard ones (te-che te-che).
Until the 18th century, nearly all notes in wind playing were tongued, the only important exception being the two alternating notes of a type of trill called the tremolo. Even cadential trills (groppi) were still generally tongued in the early 17th century. Rognoni Taeggio (1620) gave the first indication that groppi could sometimes be slurred as well. His brief musical example with tonguing syllables below the notes is virtually the only example from before 1700 of syllables applied to actual music rather than mere tonguing exercises. It reveals that, although string players had begun to slur passages of up to 12 semiquavers, wind players continued to articulate them using compound tonguings, particularly the lingua roversa. The decline of the diminution tradition is represented in the work of the cornettist Bartolomeo Bismantova (Compendio musicale, MS, 1677, I-REm Reggiani E.41). He mentioned only two types of compound tonguings, of which the ‘hard’ tonguing, te-che, was ‘no longer in use’ although, curiously, sometimes used to ‘good effect … in the stile cantabile’. To these traditional tonguings he added three-letter syllables, ter-ler and der-ler, without relating them to the lingua roversa, as well as slurred notes (note legate). Finally, he considered that the cornett required a sharper basic tonguing (te) than did the recorder (de).
The French woodwind methods of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, such as Etienne Loulié's Méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la flûte douce (MS, c1685, F-Pn fr.n.a.6355), J.-P. Freillon Poncein's La véritable manière d'apprendre à jouer en perfection du haut-bois, de la flûte et du flageolet (1700), and Jacques Hotteterre's Principes de la flûte traversière (1707), used only two tonguing syllables, tu and ru, in which the t is pronounced behind the upper front teeth and the r rolled from the teeth up to the alveolar ridge (see Ranum, 1998). Ranum (1993) proposed that these syllables helped players mimic French song, which in turn was influenced by poetic structure. Hotteterre recommended tu for longer notes and most quavers; conjunct quavers and all semiquavers intermixed ru in three ways (interpretation due to Ranum, 1993): tu | ru for notes inégales (ex.1(a)); tu ru | tu for dotted notes and crotchet-quaver-quaver-crotchet or quaver-semiquaver-semiquaver-quaver patterns (ex.1(b)) and tu ru tu / tu (ex.1(a)) to conclude a phrase. He considered slurring (coulez) to be an ornament; yet 12 years later, the preludes and traits (capricious exercises) in his L'art de préluder sur la flûte traversière (1719), influenced by the Italian violin style, featured a great deal of slurring over long groups of smaller note-values. Although the slurring of trills was by then universal, he still allowed the two-note termination to be tongued. As the Italian style made further inroads into French music, tu and ru were abandoned; Michel Corrette (Méthode pour apprendre aisément à jouer de la flûte traversière, c1739) considered them ‘an absurdity which serves only to perplex the student’.
Subsequent 18th-century flute methods advocated two different approaches to tonguing. The first approach retained the use of syllables. The influential German flautist Quantz (Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen, 1752) varied the single tongue stroke, giving a choice of two syllables, ti and di: with ti, for playing leaping quavers, ‘the tongue immediately springs back to the palate’; with di, for playing conjunct quavers and longer notes, the air stream ‘is not kept from sustaining the tone’. For dotted notes and moderately quick passage work, he changed the subtle French mixture of tu and ru into ‘the word tiri’ and its legato counterpart diri, thus varying the consonant, bringing the tongue higher in the mouth, and creating regular patterns of syllables. He also introduced the double tongue did'll for ‘the very quickest passage work’. Tromlitz (Ausführlicher und gründlicher Unterricht die Flöte zu spielen, 1791) modified the vowel to a; he also incorporated a into patterns that would otherwise have been shown by slurs: ta-a-ra-a-da-a-ra-a, ta-a-da-ra-a-da, tad-llad'l-lad'llad'll, tad'llda-rad'llda, etc. The second method, which eventually dominated in the 19th and 20th centuries, rejected the use of syllables except in double tonguing. Antoine Mahaut (Nieuwe manier om binnen korten tijd op de dwarsfluit te leeren speelen/Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre en peu de temps à jouer de la flûte traversière, 2/c1759) followed Corrette's example in freely intermixing tongued and slurred notes along with accent marks and staccato dots and wedges. Mahaut's musical example featured what was to become the standard Classical two-slurred-two-tongued pattern alongside slurred pairs of notes both on and across the beat. For double tonguing he used the Quantzian di-del. De Lusse (L'art de la flûte traversière, c1760) advocated a new double tongue, loul-loul. François Devienne (Nouvelle méthode théorique et pratique pour la flûte, 1794) mentioned something similar, ‘beating the tongue on the palate’, but preferred a further pattern, dougue dougue, similar to the old Italian compound tonguing te-che te-che, rejecting tourou or turu as ‘mumbling’. A similar tonguing to dougue had been an apparently continuous tradition among trumpeters, from Fantini's teghe (Modo per imparare a sonare di tromba, 1638) through Speer's dikedank and dikedikedank (Ungarischer oder dacianischer Simplicissimus, 1683) to Altenburg's kitikiton and tikitikiton (Versuch einer Anleitung zur heroisch-musikalischen Trompeter- und Pauker-Kunst, 1795) and beyond. John Gunn (The Art of Playing the German-Flute on New Principles, c1793) noted the Quantzian diddle, but for evenness of articulation preferred a new ‘staccato’ double tonguing, teddy or tiddy (which he considered a development of Quantz's tiri).
Even in the 19th century the modern double tongue did not take precedence immediately. Louis Drouet (Drouët's Method of Flute Playing, London, 1830) reported that he was still encountering tutel, tatel (the Netherlands), tetel, titel, totel, tutel, take, teke, etc. (northern Europe), and dougue (France), but no double tongue in Italy, Spain and southern France; he himself preferred deureu or doru. The Quantzian double tongue was mentioned as late as 1844 by A.B. Fürstenau (Die Kunst des Flöten-Spiels, pubd Leipzig, 1909), who himself used exclusively single tonguing.
M. Castellani and E. Durante: Del portar della lingua negli instrumenti di fiato (Florence, 1979)
P. Ranum: ‘Tu-ru-tu and tu-ru-tu-tu: Toward an Understanding of Hotteterre's Tonguing Syllables’, The Recorder in the Seventeenth Century: Utrecht 1993, 217–54
P. Ranum: ‘French Articulations: a Mirror of French Song’, Traverso, xx/3 (1998), 1–3
BRUCE DICKEY, DAVID LASOCKI