 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: wjk
Date: 2003-07-07 15:21
Which musical piece, in your opinion, would be the hardest to describe to someone in writing? (I ask this as I have resurrected an interest in writing). Want to try describing it here?
Post Edited (2003-07-07 15:24)
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Author: cloutist4
Date: 2003-07-08 19:38
definitely something slow and stupid like Im A Little Teapot because you cant use words like "fast" and "notey". stupid i know, but still, if you had a friend who had never heard it then you would have a heck of a time describing it too!!!!
shiney, like bigfatlyre112
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2003-07-08 20:14
Some of Wagner's excerpts from the Ring, slow, emotional, not sure what is happening, without action [slow] and settings!. Applies to more! Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2003-07-08 20:35
wjk,
I think I heard this attributed to Duke Ellington:
"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
'Nuff said?
Katrina
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2003-07-08 21:08
"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
What's wrong with dancing about architecture?
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Author: Micaela
Date: 2003-07-09 02:57
I wrote program notes for two years for my youth orchestra....I had the most trouble with the Symphony No. 2 by Howard Hanson. It's not a modern work compared to, say, Stravinsky, but it isn't really 19th century either. Hence the problem. Usually, when I had trouble writing about the music itself I'd find strange trivia about the composers that I thought the audience would find amusing. I wrote about Borodin's habit of adopting stray cats and Charles Ives's Yale football career...that kind of thing. I agree that Wagner is hard to describe (you can only say "lush" and "chromatic harmony" so many times) but he's easy to write program notes for- you can just give a little synopsis of the piece by describing the leitmotives and their relationship to the opera's (excuse me, "musical drama's") plot.
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2003-07-09 03:16
I'd have to say anything that I think is considered "contemporary". With all those glisses and (to me) wierd tunes and quartertones, I honestly have no idea what to describe them as. The few times that I listen to them (every now and then), I try to allow my brain to visualize what's going on in the music. With classical pieces, or operas, it's rather easy to envision. With the last one I heard, my brain was thinking somewhere along the lines of "a cat dying a slow death. And after it dies the body sizzles as though it were on a frying pan and then it decays so quickly that you can almost literally see the tendons thinning out and snapping as it reverts from what once was a cat, to a compost pile".
That's how I'd describe contemporary music.
Alexi
PS - no offense to those who love contemporary music, it just really ain't my thing. Right up there with country music in my book.
US Army Japan Band
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Author: Laurie
Date: 2003-07-09 04:16
I'd say some of John Cage's work has to be pretty hard to describe and explain...
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Author: wjk
Date: 2003-07-09 04:50
Thanks for the superb replies---sfalexi's writing in particular really sizzles---I'm finding that intense/offbeat works of fiction (try Nabokov's Pale Fire) inspire me musically (both in terms of composition and interpretation of musical pieces.)
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2003-07-09 16:30
Liquorice,
Nothing's wrong with dancing about architecture. It's just that the quote, to me, describes how difficult it is to precisely describe one art form with another. You can do either (i.e. writing about music or dancing about architecture) but neither will carry quite the same effect as the original. They won't necessarily be worse or less impacting, just different.
Alexi,
What's wrong with country music?  Don't you wanna say, "No offense to those who love country music," too?
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2003-07-09 16:47
Start with broad strokes:
"Nothing to whistle down the street here"
"Not for those who crave excitement"
"The structure is more important than melody or harmony"
"Lazy composer - lots of repetition"
"He's smarter than we are, otherwise we would like it better"
"Not a I, IV, or V to be found here"
Then move to the more specific:
"He left out the thirds on purpose"
"Melody stolen from the Who"
"Only the inner voices are important"
"The bats fly out of the cave at this point"
"This is where lack of modulation skills really shows through"
"Is this a great effect or mere bombast?"
"My Professor said this is the pivotal point of the piece"
Lastly, flesh it out with details:
"Wasn't that sneaky? My dad told me to watch out for this guy"
"The oboe lost his Philadelphia Orchestra audition on this passage"
"I don't care for this but my ex really liked it"
"Doesn't that sound muddy? Nobody else can play it either."
"My thesis was on this but I dropped out before finishing it"
"Good place to turn down your hearing aid"
"This isn't the original ornamentation"
"The New York Ballet did this on Ed Sullivan"
|-(8^)
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2003-07-09 18:38
No offense to those who like country music as well. I mean, it didn't become the number one listened to music in the USA for being "bad". But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And if country music was a person, I wouldn't even be able to look.
US Army Japan Band
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Author: David
Date: 2003-07-13 23:46
Come on, Sfalexi, surely you have to admit Blues Brothers' "Stand By Your Man" was very fine? (If only for the hail of beer bottles.)
"A. Good Country Key."
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