During a presentation by James Parakilas concerning examples of ambiguous musical notation, I noticed something. Parakilas was discussing the metrical organization in Fauré's tenth barcarolle. A curious hovering syncopation pervades the music. Fauré: Tenth Barcarolle A detail of piano writing in measure 7 corresponds, in my opinion, to the practice of singing an audible final syllable for a French word like "rose." Normally spoken as one … [Read more...]
Connoisseurship
I was surprised when I mentioned James Rosenquist to a composer, a bright, musically informed musician. "Who's that?" the composer said. I'm skeptical of artists who don't know about their field. But what about other fields? Do musicians need to know about painting? Or dance? Or writing? Politics? Physics? A prospective doctoral student at Juilliard told the interviewing committee his favorite symphony by Beethoven was the Ninth. "Is … [Read more...]
Ascent
There's a certain pride associated with rising melodic lines -- in much nineteenth-century music. Singing soars, and in soaring affirms something very positive about being human. As pitch rises, we might get louder, more tonally intense, more emotional. In other music, high registers are thin. Earlier instruments and techniques may corroborate this thinness: no steel "E" strings on eighteenth-century violins, singing voices differently … [Read more...]