Shallow Breathing
From Arnold Jacobs: Song and Wind*
Jacobs has never had a large lung capacity. Contrary to legend, he has two lungs but with diminished capacity. Early in his career he had a capacity of nearly five liters but after cancer surgery in the 1980s, his capacity diminished to approximately 2.75 liters. With time he was able to get it back to 3.8 to 4.4 liters—his normal capacity during the latter part of his career.
For wind players with small lung capacities, Jacobs is an inspiration. During his tenure with the Chicago Symphony, his capacity at its best was only four to five liters and he played the tuba—an instrument that requires large volumes of air to play!
The most obvious question is, “How does Jacobs do it?” A valid question but impossible to completely answer. “If I play soft, I can hold a phrase longer. I can sometimes hold as long as seventeen to twenty seconds or longer. I have students who have double my lung capacity that can obviously go twice as long. If a very large person with a seven-liter lung capacity plays softly using a fifteen-liter-per-minute flow rate, he has considerable phrase length. The potential for longer phrases is there.”
Professionals from orchestras throughout the world travel to Chicago to see Jacobs for one of his finest specialties, dealing with the body’s natural aging process. Many come to him with their career in jeopardy.
“Usually the life of a brass player in a symphony orchestra is not as long as a string player. They used to have a pension arrangement in the Chicago Symphony where a brass player would be eligible for a pension at the age of fifty-five, because so many brass players break down by that age.”
Many say, “I would not be playing now if it were not for Arnold Jacobs.”
Lung capacity decreases due to the calcification of the costal cartilages and the loss of elasticity, which becomes noticeable in the middle forty age bracket. With illness, lung capacity can also be dramatically changed. Additionally, pressure in the throat and difficulty with the tongue increases with age. Due to the physiological changes, psychological changes follow.
Jacobs advises, “When you get older, your body changes. The time comes when you must learn to use your body differently. It’s like learning to play a new instrument. If you become frightened about loss of air, your muscles will tense and you will cut off even more air. For a singer or a wind player, you must have confidence in your capacity to properly use air or you are lost. It is a lot like driving a car. Some cars need to be filled up when they get down to one quarter of a tank. The human body is like that too. As you get older, you must change the way you breathe to correspond with your needs.
“One’s vital capacity lowers without the individual realizing it. If he is using limited amounts of air—say he is used to taking half a breath, the air that he may draw from that fuel supply may be adequate to play his instrument at the age of twenty, but not at forty-five or fifty or fifty-five. When the fuel supply lowers, the half that he gets is a smaller quantity than it was at twenty, and one can run into very severe problems.”
Nature is unkind to us with deterioration of the body due to the aging process. For many, the biggest problem is to condition themselves for the natural changes within the body. Players must compensate when this happens but it is beneficial to form habits of using a full breath when young. “It is much better to have too much air than to have too little. As you grow older, this becomes more important.”
*Arnold Jacobs: Song and Wind, Copyright 1996 Windsong Press, Ltd., All rights reserved.