Klarinet Archive - Posting 000834.txt from 1998/10

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] I've started, so I'll finish
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 19:32:47 -0400

On Wed, 14 Oct 1998 00:02:28 +0200, notestaff@-----.ch said:

> Tony Pay wrote:

> > So, even if we are doing a diminuendo, and giving therefore less
> > energy to the note or phrase we are playing, we are more clearly
> > perceived than if we stayed at the same dynamic.
>
> Then why is it sooooo annoying when someone holds on to a long, too
> loud note drowning out, say an eighth note/quaver passage of more
> importance? According to this theory, it wouldn't be noticed as much
> as a gradual diminuendo would be...This must be the exception which
> proves the rule?...

Well, of course, this does occur, you're right. Louder sounds tend to
dominate quieter ones in our perception. And good conductors do
organise this sort of balance to make more audible the important bits.
But sounds that don't change, loud or soft, aren't attended to, after a
bit. So paradoxically, you're not *paying attention* to the long, too
loud note, even though it's obscuring the eighth notes you want to hear.

The more you go into it, the more complicated it gets, actually.
Because, when you have two speech-like things going on at the same time,
you listen to bits of them in turn, like the two conversations at a
party. In music, you don't want to reduce polyphony to figure/ground,
or tune/accompaniment; you want the *possibility* to hear all of it,
even though (I suspect) you actually switch very fast between the
separate lines. But I might be wrong about that -- I'll try to find out
what experiments have been done.

In other music, where there is a figure/ground relationship, it's
actually wrong to make the accompaniments too interesting, sometimes. I
recently heard a performance of Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 1, where there
was much too much audible detail. And of course, if you're playing a
solo, 'speaking' it more may affect its 'register' in a way that you
don't want. In these cases, the only solution may be to stick your hand
up and ask the conductor to get the others to play quieter.

Anyway, it all comes down to the idea that it's modulation *as well as
dynamic* that gets things heard. Classical music doesn't use changes of
dynamics between parts to ensure audibility (see the scores) so it seems
likely that modulation was the more important device (see the careful
non-synchronous slurs that *do* appear in individual parts in the
scores).

Tony
--
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