A Minute with Miles

For performers, just about everything the composer writes, with the exception of the notes themselves, is a matter of interpretation

The body length of a full-size violin is about 14 inches, give or take a very small fraction. This is a standard length, and an optimum length, arrived at by trial and error over many years by the great violin makers of history.

If I told you about a letter from a famous composer to his employers, a letter in which the composer complained that he needed a higher salary because he’d been making less money freelancing playing the organ at funerals, because there hadn’t been nearly enough disease going around – could you guess who the composer was?

The other day, a friend asked me if orchestral musicians really look at the conductor when they’re playing. It’s an interesting question, because after all, how can you look at your music and play all the right notes if you’re also looking up at the person waving the baton?

I’m guessing you haven’t thought much about this, but one of the things we musicians have to put up with is calluses. Not feeling sympathetic? But what if the calluses are peeling, or bleeding, or have bruises under or around them, or make you look like you’ve been attacked by a vampire?

In music, the terms “high” and “low,” as in “high notes” and “low notes,” “high pitched” and “low pitched,” are metaphors.

It wasn’t until the late 1700s and early 1800s that the brilliant operatic tenor as we know him today came into his own.

Under the heading “Real Musical Understanding,” here’s something that Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote in 1910...

If there are such things as “good pieces” or “great pieces,” then there must also be such things as bad pieces.

Good composers write coherent pieces, not collections of interesting materials.