Klarinet Archive - Posting 000468.txt from 2002/11

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Dark Sound
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 23:54:56 -0500

Tony Pay wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 14:04:18 -0800, timr@-----.com said:
>
>
>>No, we don't! That's the ENTIRE point of this very long discussion.
>>There is no concensus on what "dark" means. One man's "dark" is
>>another man's "warm", one man's "velvet" is another man's "bright".
>>These are completely subjective terms. What is the opposite of
>>"dark" playing? Is it "bright"? Is it "white"? What makes it so?
>
>
> I think that if we were to look at a very small part of someone's
> playing, we would achieve a consensus.
>
> For example, I think we would all agree that an appoggiatura should
> almost always be 'bright', and its resolution 'dark'.
>
> On the other hand, I've sometimes thought, particularly while teaching,
> that if only we could get people to recognise what an appoggiatura is,
> why it resolves, and what bright and dark mean psychologically in that
> resolution, we'd have gone quite a long way down the road of explaining
> what musicality consists of.
>
> So perhaps it's not so simple after all.
>
> Tony

Thank you Tony, I've never heard that before; that is, the assertion
that an appogiature is bright while its resolution is dark. But is it
possible to interpret that in terms of the emotion achieved by the
presence of a dissonance (the appogiature) followed by a consonance (the
resolution)? And if that is a viable interpretation, how does that
notion apply to sound character?

In other words, I can understand a dark mood (or an even more somber
one, a "black" mood, or its opposite, the bright mood), while still
being unable to transfer that knowledge to a dark or bright sound character.

I can write a sentence and make its mood very dark by the inclusion of
descriptive passages dealing with some fairly morose things. How can I
do that with a sound character?

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**Dan Leeson **
**leeson0@-----.net **
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