(1925-2024)
Flutist Walfrid Kujala passed away in November at the age of 99. A towering figure in the flute world, he will long be remembered for his distinguished tenure in the Chicago Symphony from 1954-2001, 50 years on the faculty at Northwestern, and his prolific writing on the flute.
Kujala was a graduate of the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Joseph Mariano with additional studies with William Kincaid, principal flute of the Philadelphia Orchestra and flute professor at The Curtis Institute. Many of the major orchestras in the United States are proud to have a former Kujala student in their flute and piccolo sections.
Through the years, he had a close relationship with The Instrumentalist and Flute Talk magazines. His first article, Jawboning and the Flute Embouchure, was split into three parts and published in the September, November, and December 1971 issues of The Instrumentalist. His article on Embellishment, Italian Style: Ornamenting the Largo movement of Vivaldi’s C Major Piccolo Concerto is the most requested article by flutist scholars. We have collected a few memorable excerpts from his interviews and articles
The CSO Audition
How drastically things have changed since my audition for the Chicago Symphony 66 years ago. Nowadays we take it for granted that virtually all current vacancies in American and Canadian professional symphony orchestras are listed in the International Musician, which is the monthly journal of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). However, that did not become standard policy until about 1965. Before then all of us aspiring musicians had to keep our detective skills highly polished to find out about possible vacancies.
Conductors of the so-called Big Five orchestras, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia, and Cleveland Orchestras, were very much in demand as guest conductors for lower-tier orchestras. They would often look upon these orchestras like farm teams where they could spot talented up-and-coming players for future recruitment. They also relied on well-known contractors like Joe Fabbroni, who was Fritz Reiner’s agent in New York, for recommendations.
Conductors of many lower-tier orchestras would visit conservatories like Juilliard, Curtis, New England, Cleveland Institute, Peabody, and Eastman to hold auditions. For instance, in the spring of 1943, Hans Kindler, conductor of the National Symphony, visited Eastman to hold auditions for the NSO. I auditioned just for the experience and was pleasantly surprised to receive in the mail a contract for second flute, which I had to turn down because of my impending military draft. This whole scenario should give one a clearer appreciation of the dilemma facing aspiring symphony players in the thirties, forties and fifties.
In 1954, my direct knowledge of a vacancy in the Chicago Symphony came about by sheer chance because the CSO’s new music director Fritz Reiner had offered Mariano the principal flute position. Mariano, much to everyone’s surprise, turned it down. Mariano told me that it was highly probable that there would be two more vacancies in the flute section and that I should apply.
Here was the frustrating thing. The auditions for all eleven of the CSO’s vacancies (almost all of them due to firings!) were to be held in New York in January during Reiner’s mid-season break. (His home was in Westport, Connecticut, within commuting distance of New York.) The CSO’s regular personnel manager had very little to do with audition arrangements. Instead, all of the auditions were set up by Joe Fabbroni, Reiner’s New York agent. I was advised to call him, and he turned me down flatly.
I then asked Erich Leinsdorf, the Rochester Philharmonic’s music director (and my boss), to call Fabbroni to recommend me. (Leinsdorf had known Fabbroni quite well during Leinsdorf’s previous years as music director of the Metropolitan Opera.) Leinsdorf asked me to listen in while he phoned Fabbroni, and I was totally surprised to hear his effusive compliments to Fabbroni about my beautiful playing.
That did it! Fabbroni called me back to set an audition time for the afternoon of January 11, 1954 at the New York City Center Theatre on 55th Street. Reiner was surprisingly friendly, and the audition went well. I began with my solo piece, the Bach B Minor Suite, after which Reiner proceeded to pull out some first flute parts from his briefcase for me to play. They were all standard works. No surprises. (He was famous for pulling out unexpected, tricky excerpts in auditions, and of course, there were no pre-announced audition repertoire lists in those antediluvian days.)
After I finished my audition, much to my surprise, Reiner immediately began talking about contract terms. He offered me a choice of either assistant principal flute or principal piccolo. Having already garnered much piccolo experience in the Rochester Phil, I felt it was the opportune time to widen my horizons, so I opted for the assistant principal flute position. Reiner subsequently engaged Ben Gaskins as principal piccolo. Ben had already built a distinguished career as the former piccoloist of the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony. For the next three years the CSO flute section consisted of Ernest Liegl, principal flute, Ralph Johnson, second flute, Ben Gaskins, principal piccolo, and me as assistant principal flute. (February 2020)
Preparing for College Auditions
Evaluating flute applicants for admission to my studio involves a number of aspects to determine which students are best suited for a long-term working relationship with our department and its performance opportunities. In 20 minutes or so of audition, I try to measure the scope of an applicant’s repertoire, musicianship, technical facility, and overall approach to flute playing.
Entering freshmen should be able to play one of the Bach sonatas, typically the Eb Major (BWV 1031), the Hindemith Sonata, a French concours piece by Enesco, Faure, Chaminade, or Gaubert, and possibly a movement of a Mozart concerto. I do not stress orchestral excerpts during the first year because students have such diverse backgrounds. Some have good high school training, especially if they come from a large metropolitan area with a youth orchestra; others have deficiencies. I work hard to bring freshmen flutists to a more uniform level before moving the class into a formal curriculum of orchestral excerpts.
Entrance auditions help to identify a prospective student’s ability, promise, and problems to be addressed. I have learned that students can pay more attention to playing musically after they have organized the fundamental elements of playing: good breath control, scales, studies, fingering accuracy, good balance and support of the flute for optimum firmness of the lip plate on the lower lip, and the more subtle aspects of embouchure control.
In an audition, a student should demonstrate good tone and dynamic range, knowledge of scales and arpeggios, good rhythm, and the ability to shape a musical phrase. Accurate rhythm is a good indicator of musical talent; if I point out an incorrect rhythm, I want to hear the correction to be sure that the student is properly sensitive to the underlying pulse. (November 1991)
Approach to Teaching
I was never good at expressing myself abstractly and am more concerned with specifics, analyzing the physics of playing – not only fingerings but also tone production: what happens with the embouchure and the breath. Mariano was concerned with the end result: the phrasing and the style of the piece. Through his own demonstrations – and with which he was generous – he would illustrate what he was trying to describe.”
Kujala cautions, “Anyone studying with him had to be very careful to remember these similes and metaphors and the result produced during the lesson so that in the subsequent week of practice, he would be able to nail them down. Mariano’s teaching was very inspirational; one could be transported by the chemistry that developed during the lesson. Away from him, however, one could flounder while in search of the magical way in which a phrase developed. What did he say that made it click? How could I recreate that? One would have to be aware of abstracts as well as those feelings of air production in order to pinpoint what he said that helped. That is perhaps how I got into my style of teaching through analyzing what Mariano was doing, trying to get a better handle on his concepts.” (October 1988)
On Undergraduate Curriculum:
Kujala commented, I always tried to strike a good balance between traditional repertoire and new music. Back in 1973, I constructed a basic curriculum design that was divided into four parts. List A was the standard list of 34 flute solos, List B had 38 solos (including piccolo) that a student was encouraged to explore, and List C contained 51 more solos (including piccolo) that could be considered for adding on to post-graduate recital programs. By 2013 I had added 3 and subtracted 2 solos from List A. For List B, I added 20 solos and subtracted 3, and for List C I added 18 and subtracted 6.
There is not enough room here to post a detailed list of all these solos, but I would like to share my preferences for etudes (which constituted my list D): Andersen (mainly op. 33 and 15), Karg-Elert 30 Caprices, Genzmer Neuzeitlich Etuden (2 vol.), Casterede 12 Etudes, Bonsel 8 Concert Etudes, Bitsch 12 Etudes, and selected Marcel Moyse and Robert Dick volumes.
By the way, I am a strong believer in the importance of recording students’ lessons so that they have the immediate opportunity of reviewing their performances and my comments. This tradition goes all the way back to the days of cassette tapes, around 1987, and through the CD era to 2012, when I retired from Northwestern. I would always hand over the recording to the student at the end of each lesson. (February 2020)
