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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Getting Started with Myaskovsky
Post Subject: regarding speed and things - readingPosted by Dominic on: 2/18/2007
I've been attentive to all that ive found out about Furtwangler lately
and the strength of his readings seems to be borne across by how fast
things go. So the question was raised, reading the notes you
transcribed above, whether the validity of a quick reading of
Myaskovsky should be left judged by the writer of said. Having not ever
heard any Mya that i know of i'm really in no position to judge, but
unless it's very quiet when i'm listening, some vitality through speed
is welcome.
As far as colour goes are you refering to absolutes, or to say, nuance in colour?
Russian
culture seems to have an interesting relationship with colour, i mean
look at St Basil, and then to the washed out blue on an 'Aeroflot'
craft. But at the same time much of the colour in the
society seems to come in a sort of vulgar way, partly since the berlin
wall people have imported the shmaltiest crap. But maybe that's my own
perspective on colour. For a long time in my life i essentially
disowned colour and even dismissed speed outside of necessity, largely
as gross indecency of a society that was incincere and hence wholy
vulgar and bankrupt. Some of that has changed, i've learned much from
budhism and tao, and the deeper sides of mysticism (sorry if this
sounds cheesy) to forgive and even embrace society's faults, i still
have misgivings but i'm more open to colours, and bounciness, general
frivolty because sometimes they can be real. Sometimes bloated
solidstate bass can be real too. Anyway what i'd like to point towards
here is, oh wait this wasn't my point, but serves as a good background
for the idea so i'll leave it.
So back to nuance and things. i brought up a particular topic before in regards to colour and things.
I was talking about modern video reproduction and dynamic range but
soon after i started thinking about other parts of that. Colour has
many properties, the information can be thought of in terms of how pure
it is, how much light can be seen from it, importantly to me, one can
see and understand not only many tones and colours but visual
information that has nothing to do with other visula information, for
example: a sepia toned photograph displayed on my computer screen and
the (if i pay attention) the differences in colours on the bark of the
tree outside my window through the sheer curtain, and i can see and
understand both while holding a very brightly coloured pen. Next to
this is that our reproducing media cannot fully capture any one of
those accurately and in no way can mannage all at once. But that's not
really what i was getting at. What i've been getting at is that colour in sound has perhaps as many manifestations (ignoring audio) as in the visual realm.
And in a way i don't find the 17th C colour of a painting all that interesting, sure it's dramatic, but there is overall one kind of aproach to the colour. So perhaps there are different useful ways of injecting colour into a seemingly grayscale russian reading.
Actually i didn't provide an exampe of what i was talking about, in sound it is very difficult to describe, but visually i can do it by suggestiong you imagine a black and white photograph, then imagine it with glass over it, and then with a spotlight, and then with the sunlight on that glass. Now imagine a piece of music where you can hear the same changes.Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site