In performing Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," some singers deliver the subtle, and possibly difficult to pronounce word combination "distingué traces" as "distant gay traces." A British lawyer or Harold Bloom might call this a "misprision." We may willfully twist a text to achieve a particular meaning. Or perhaps we are always getting it wrong. Bloom writes definitively: "Every poem is the misreading of a parent poem... There are no … [Read more...]
All feet
The patterns of stress inform everything. More, less. Less, more. Our languages (our speech) inform our music, our thought, our designs, and concepts -- our emotions? I am -- iamb! In Western European music, the falling inflection predominates, strong, then weak. That's the two-part poetic foot, the "trochee." "Iambs" (weak - strong) are rarer in music and (?) in French, German, Italian (so rare as to need a marking -- città). In these languages, … [Read more...]