The story told by Robert Levin involved snickering Italian waiters. Bob asked quite a few Italian speakers, "What does sfogato mean?" (An Italian-English dictionary will say something like “letting loose.”) The motivation for Levin's particular curiosity was the use of the term in the score of Chopin's Barcarolle (m. 78). It's a word that doesn't appear in (earlier) piano music. Frédéric Chopin: Barcarolle In this written music, "sfogato" … [Read more...]
Amphora
In earlier museum practice, shards of ancient decorated pottery were pieced back together with missing sections reconstructed and plausible designs painted in. Missing parts of an image were supplied by restorers. As exhibited, those restored vessels had complete surface decoration. Some fragments were antique; the rest, the painted-in parts, made a whole pot look as it might have before it was broken. Today, it's more likely that the missing … [Read more...]