Marcel Tabuteau First-Hand

MT era oboe

Marcel Tabuteau’s Lessons: Recommended Recordings

David McGill. Sound in Motion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Tabuteau review on pp. 341-342.

MARCEL TABUTEAU’S LESSONS (formerly The Art of the Oboe on LP) (1965-66). Boston Records.

During the last months of his life, Marcel Tabuteau concerned himself with recording his musical ideas. In fact, the last installment for this ongoing project was recorded only the day before he died (January 4, 1966). The previous August, Wayne Rapier, then professor of oboe at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, presented Tabuteau with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and asked him to record his teaching concepts. Home tape-recording was then in its infancy and Tabuteau, fascinated with Rapier’s gift, jumped into this project with his characteristic intensity. The resulting tapes were edited and released on LP as The Art of the Oboe. Now re-released on CD, one can easily select a particular lesson and study it many times in order to more fully grasp Tabuteau’s often hard-to-digest concepts.

In this priceless document, Tabuteau methodically outlines his methods for musical thinking. Through his colorful speaking and playing, Tabuteau explains not only how to play a few orchestral excerpts but also goes into great detail concerning the proper way to execute intervals and long tones, as well as many other basic techniques. By listening to this historic recording, it is possible to get a limited sense of what it may have been like to study with him—although here, as many of his students have noted, he seems much more affable than in his days at Curtis!

Marcel Tabuteau’s Lessons is his last word to posterity. In these homemade recordings, Tabuteau’s imagination and ceaseless search for an ever-expanding range of expression, even in his last days, is inspiring.

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What's New!

With the passing of Wilbur Isaac Hilles in August 2023 and now Martha Scherer-Alfee in February 2024, no oboe students of Marcel Tabuteau at the Curtis Institute are still living.

A letter sent to the Curtis Institute by Laila Storch’s mother about Tabuteau not teaching at Curtis–and the reply.

See the older model Lorée oboe now pictured on the website masthead.

An important video of Laila Storch speaking about Marcel Tabuteau at the 1996 IDRS conference.

New family information from Guy Baumier, Tabuteau’s grand nephew.