A Minute with Miles

Like it or not, performers can't help evaluating performance, especially in the cases of pieces we know or instruments we play.

It's often easier to say what classical music is not, than to say what it is.

Most of what brass players do is done with the lips, and it's invisible to us.

The tools and techniques of conducting have changed a great deal over the centuries.

Ears can be trained. Which is why every music school in the world offers ear-training courses. I suppose it should go without saying, but for musicians the ability to recognize fine distinctions among sounds is crucial.

In 1767 Franz Anton Mesmer moved to a magnificent estate in Vienna, and among the guests he entertained there were the composers Gluck and Haydn.

If you have a chance to attend an orchestra concert anytime soon and one of the pieces on the program calls for a harp, make sure to watch the harpist's feet. They'll be busy.

People's anxiety dreams tend to be tailored to their particular personalities, circumstances, and experiences, and often to their particular professions.

Ginastera was undoubtedly the most important Argentinean composer of the twentieth century.

Gabriel Fauré is often referred to as one of the greatest French composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But I wonder if that description goes far enough.

Many years ago there was a great string quartet that was famous for its members not getting along. I don't know if we can blame this particular quartet, but one theory that took hold was that the best results for chamber music groups are produced by conflict, and the resolution of conflict. I would like to on record as saying that I think this theory is a bunch of hooey.

Staccato is the Italian word for “separated,” or “detached.” Staccato notes are notes that are not sustained for their full rhythmic value: they come to a short stop, which separates them from notes that follow.

Today is January 27, and it's Mozart's birthday. I know I don't have to tell you how wonderful Mozart's music is to listen to… but if you're not a musician yourself you may find it interesting to know that Mozart's music is also wonderful to play. And it's not that it's easy—in fact it's usually pretty hard, and sometimes very hard.

I'm grateful for advances in neuroscience, and for many reasons glad that every day we know more about how the brain works. But for all the studies of left brains, right brains, and neuron networks, some things will remain mysteries, and there's no way around it.

The literal meaning of the Italian word spiccato is similar to that of staccato—“detached,” or “distinct.” In string playing, to play notes spiccato means to play them with a bouncing bow. With its stiff but flexible stick and tightened horsehair, the bow is like a long spring, so it wants to bounce. But spiccato involves a controlled bouncing. The bow comes off the string after each note, but the player has to find the balance between making the bow bounce and letting it bounce.

The strings of stringed instruments—violins, violas, cellos, basses, guitars, and harps—may be made of steel, nylon or other synthetics, or of gut. Often the steel, nylon, or gut serves as the core of the string, and around the core is a tight winding of very fine wire—wire of steel, aluminum, or silver.

The American composer Seymour Barab started out as a pianist and organist, but as a teenager he took up the cello, and as a cellist he became a highly successful orchestra musician, founder of important string quartets, top commercial free-lance player, champion of new music, and later, after mastering the viola da gamba, champion of old music.

Operetta is light opera...or opera light. Its goal is to amuse: to be witty, charming, funny, not serious either in style or substance.

I mentioned yesterday that by the mid-1700's the modern flute, technically called the transverse flute, had to a great extent replaced the recorder. The replacement wasn't complete, though: both Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel had continued to write for both instruments.

The flute is one of mankind's oldest instruments, and in one form or another it's been known to virtually every culture around the world.

Arias are the pieces for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment that are found in operas, oratorios, and cantatas. They're songs, in a sense, but they tend to be more musically elaborate and vocally demanding than the kinds of pieces we usually call songs.

Acoustics is the science of sound, but the word also refers to the qualities of a room—the qualities that determine and describe how things sound in that room.

When discussing acoustics it's important to remember that there's no absolute standard, and that different kinds of music may be better served by different acoustics.

Absolutely everything in the design and construction of a room, or concert hall, contributes to its acoustics… from the shape and size of the room, to the building and finishing materials, to the seating configuration and height of the stage, to the seemingly minor decorative details.

When we ask about the acoustics of a concert hall, or of any room, we're asking about qualities, about how things sound in that room.

Applied to music, acoustics is the basis for understanding all sorts of things.

“People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my [reviews] as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that a criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading."

“We know rather more now about the psychology of artists than we used [to], and so we no longer incline to the naïve belief that if a composer has quarreled with his wife his next symphony will be a Pathétique, or that if his liver happens to be functioning normally he will produce a Hymn to Joy at the next [Choral] Festival."

“Music is a medium through which certain unnamable experiences of life are exquisitely conveyed through equivalent sensations for the ear…"

"...today all [the] intelligent and sensitive souls, on whom his genius has shed its radiance, turned to him as toward a benefactor and a friend.”

“Real music goes beyond the intentions of its author for it nourishes itself from a much deeper and more mysterious source than mere intellect. It represents a synthesis of all the vital forces, of all the hidden instincts of an individual..."

Miles Hoffman concludes this week's discussion about popular overtures.

Miles Hoffman continues his musings about the history of the overture.

Miles Hoffman talks about the most popular types of overtures.

Miles Hoffman continues his discussion about the birth and evolution of the overture.

Miles Hoffman discusses where the word "Overture" comes from and the earliest iteration of the overture.

"Sonata” and “sonata form” are not the same thing, and that—in any kind of piece, not just sonatas—a movement composed in sonata form consists of three primary sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation.

“Sonata form” and the musical form known as the sonata are not the same thing. A sonata is a piece - usually for piano or for piano and one other instrument—that's composed of several distinct sections called movements.

Dmitri Shostakovich's political views have long been subjects of controversy. Was Shostakovich a loyal Communist, or was he a secret rebel who suffered for years under oppressive conditions and yet contrived time and again to encode powerful subversive messages into his music?

A wind instrument is any instrument whose sound is produced by a column of air vibrating inside some sort of tube, or pipe. But I'd like to clear up a common misconception: Wind players aren't blowing away to try to fill up their instruments with air —the air inside a wind instrument is already there.

Fantasy is the English translation of the Italian fantasia, a word that first appeared as a title for instrumental works in the 1500's. Since then, it's a title that's been used over and over.

Musical child prodigies have always fascinated the public. Far more rare than the child prodigy performer, though, is the child prodigy composer. The first name that comes to many people's minds when they think of child composers is Mozart, and it's true that Mozart started writing music at the age of four or five. But of all Mozart's great pieces, very few were written before his twentieth birthday. Felix Mendelssohn, on the other hand, composed works when he was fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen that are still considered masterpieces, and that far surpass anything Mozart wrote when he was a teenager.

It's popular, in some circles, to find links between creative genius and mental illness. Among composers, Robert Schumann is usually Exhibit A, but there are others who are regularly mentioned, as well. My own view is that the so-called link is no link at all.

Claude Debussy once referred to Bach's music as “pure musical arabesque.”

Antonio Vivaldi's life story could easily be the subject of a novel.

The word cello, believe it or not, comes from an Italian word meaning “little big viola.”

Modern scholars have found that Fasch's music represents an important transition between the style of the late Baroque period and the “classical” style of Haydn and Mozart.

So here's the famous riddle: Which came first, the chicken... or the violin? Or the piano? Or the valved horn?

Franz von Suppé could be the poster child for composers who were extremely prolific and very famous in their own time, but who, if they're now remembered at all, are only remembered for two or three pieces.

So where does the word "fiddle" come from?

In a lifetime of performing and teaching, I've never once witnessed an argument that had anything to do with where somebody was from, nor, for that matter, have I ever heard, among the musicians I've known, a single word of nationalist or racist invective.