Klarinet Archive - Posting 000551.txt from 2005/03

From: "Vann Joe Turner" <medpen@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] that nice dark sound
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 10:52:20 -0500

What skywinkle writes is true: "Terms like bright and dark take on a limited
degree of usefulness only in a relative context."

There are many adjectives that have no meaning whatsoever, except in
context, as skywinkle pointed out. What is *big*? a 6 foot man, the Empire
State Building, or the queen bee in the hive? Strictly a matter of context.
Same for loud and soft, high and low, etc.

The words we use to describe music have mostly been appropriated from other
fields. This is the nature of language itself. When you need to describe
something in a "new field", you don't create a new word like H.P. Lovecraft
or science fiction writers, rather you borrow existing words, appling to
them a new definition which is understood in context.

For example, what does *run* mean?..
I'm sorry, I was referring to a defect in a woman's hose.
Or if I were out hunting, it'd mean the track in the forest which deer have
made.
Language applies existing words to new contexts to denote specific things,
and in the context they are widely understood.

Our words high and low referring to notes are a just widely accepted means
of description. There is nothing literally higher in C3 than in C1. *High*
and *low* are spacial words, and are merely conventions used to describe
relationships between notes. It would have been just as fine had the
convention arisen to describe such as smaller and bigger, or righter or
lefter. What matters is the convention sticks, and becomes widely used.

"Dark and rich" are such words describing something real, something many
recognize, and so use.

That some pooh-pooh the words do not negate them, or negate that to which
they refer. They are "metaphors" extrapolated from the language and applied
to a new context. That is not to suggest that "Dark and rich" are the best
words there are to describe it. But in the silence from the pooh-poohers in
offering an alternative, I guess they'll continue to be around for long
time.

Perhaps if we could document the use of such terms by such muscial statures
as Pablo Casals, or Toscanini, perhaps the pooh-poohers would consider what
such greats have thought on the matter, and compare their thinking on it,
with that of the heights of muscianship.

Best wishes,
Vann Joe Turner

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