Tuesday 14 February 2012

What does that Italian at the top of the music mean?

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


14 February

An example. Does striggio mean:

(a) Excitedly - a bit like a tremolo?

(b) The opposite of sforzando?

(c) There's a hole in the score here, where the composer dropped his or her cigarette on the manuscript original?

(d) Just for the strings, i.e. the players are encouraged to sound really stringy?

(e) He's that other composer of a choral work in forty parts?


And why Italian anyway? Not always, because some composers (e.g. Schumann, Dvorak) shun it, but is it really the language of music (or, even, Music)?

And, if you thought None of these in (a) to (e), above, then you're probably right, and 'that Itlian' is Carlo Maria Giulini, ready to conduct the piece...


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