A Minute with Miles

The aria - a musical form that’s a kind of song, but more elaborate and vocally demanding than the pieces we usually call songs. The development of opera in Italy in the 1600's is what brought the aria to glory.

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. A piece for solo cello, for example, might sound wonderful in the richly reverberant acoustics of a cathedral, while a string quartet or piano in the same space would sound like mush.

“A” is for African Americans. The first African Americans to live in what is now South Carolina were enslaved persons in the sixteenth century Spanish settlements of San Miguel de Gualdape and Santa Elena. English settlers created an agricultural economy based upon enslaved labor. Some twenty-five West African ethnicities have been identified among the enslaved population. By 1708 African Americans comprised a majority of the colony’s population. A century later when the eternal slave trade was closed, it was estimated that forty percent of the enslaved persons brought to the United States had come through the port of Charleston. Regardless of individuals’ status, the presence of a large African American population throughout South Carolina’s more than 350 years of settled history has had a significant impact of the state’s cultural, economic, and political development.

More today, about 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.

We’re talking about acoustics this week. Acoustics is the science of sound, but the word has another meaning, as well. 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.

Acoustics is the science of sound. More specifically, it’s the branch of physics that deals with sound waves and their properties—how sound waves are generated, how they behave in various circumstances, how they interact.

George Bernard Shaw began his career as a music critic, and in September of 1890 he wrote these words:

Continuing this week’s series of things I wish I’d written… this is from a 1934 article by the great English music critic Ernest Newman: