DYNAMICS AND YOU
That ticking sound
you hear, it sounds like when you've turned your car off and it's
cooling down, right? Well, that is the players of the KSO
collectively quenching, after an intense run of performances going
back to September's Masterworks concerts. The Q Series, Unstaged,
and Meet the Musicians slates were full, then the Chamber Classics
season started up with a bang on Oct. 1. The Concertmaster and
Friends recital at the KMA brought a new star into Knoxville's
classical sky in William Shaub, and as if to dot the “ı,”
the KSO performed John Williams' dynamic
soundtrack to accompany the first Harry
Potter
film just this past
weekend.
I
called
the Williams score “dynamic,” which is a word that has many
meanings in music. It can be a noun or an adjective. As
an
adjective, it
means “vigorous,” “vivid,”
or
even “vibrant.”
The noun version can refer to the “vibe” or the “chemistry”
of the group-- e.g., group dynamics. Specific
to
music, however, the notation of volume at which a player or ensemble should
play, the
size
of the sound,
is called the “dynamics.” This
is notated with
the letters f
and p,
which are the abbreviations for the Italian words forte
(loud)
and piano
(soft).
Multiples
of these letters indicate extremes; I have seen as many as five in
either direction, but
usually only up
to
two.
After
three it just gets to be kind of a joke; I mean, we don't have little
dials that louden us decibel by decibel, we have pieces of wood and
metal, operated by our breath and
hands.
An
increase in volume is called a crescendo,
and a decrease a diminuendo
(or a decrescendo,
they are synonymous). These words can also be replaced with
symbols, elongated
“>'s”
or “<'s” with
which
the wider, the louder. The
usual term for these signs is “hairpin;”
I
guess “tweezers” would sound a little weird, but it's exactly
that shape. A
crescendo
over
several measures will
usually just employ the abbreviation cresc.,
since the converging lines of the symbols would be visual pollution
on the page. It's
easy to overlook
a 5 letter word in italics, however, so a player may boost his
chances at correct execution by drawing a symbol in.
Slide…
This
is the cello part to Beethoven's Violin Concerto, last movement. You
can see on the second line down where every other note has a swell on
it. In measure 150, a typical Beethoven feature is found; the
“crescendo to nothing.” (Not all crescendos result
in a f).
In measure 158 notice the word dimin.
printed, and you'll
agree that the dynamic symbol, if used here, would get in the way of
other musical indications.
The
effect of a composition's dynamics is dependent on each player's
adherence to their parts' dynamic markings. A sudden (or
subito)
piano
in the midst of a forte
phrase is a lot more embarrassing
to miss than the
other
way around. A sharply attacked note
might
have the letters sfz
or
just sf
on
it; this stands for sforzando and means “with sudden emphasis.”
A
similar notation is fp,
meaning fortepiano,
which is just a loud start to a note rather than a sharp attack. The
distinction between these two markings can be enigmatic. As if all
this wasn't enough, let's throw in accents. They're little “>'s”
on a single note, meaning yet another attack scenario. Whatever the
indication, the
uniformity
and force
of each players' attack on that note must be worked out precisely;
one can't just blat or scrape indiscriminately. Slide…
Here
is the opening of Mahler's 4th
Symphony. The whole spectrum of dynamic indications is here, as is
typical with Mahler's persnickety (yet beautiful) music. Every
measure has some sort of “diacritical marks”-- accents, accents
under slurs, sforzandos,
sforzandos
under slurs, fortepianos…
All of these must be unified and coordinated across the orchestra--
this is why we rehearse.
So if I said, “the ensemble's
attention to dynamics made for an impressive group dynamic that
resulted in a dynamic performance,” it appears that I have used the
same word three times in one sentence, but I am really just pointing
out that the word “dynamic” is a many-splendored thing.
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