A Minute with Miles

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: “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.

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: “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.

Words today from the great writer and critic Jacques Barzun. I’ve combined several related passages: “Music is a medium through which certain unnamable experiences of life are exquisitely conveyed through equivalent sensations for the ear…

The words today of Hector Berlioz, writing about Beethoven: “… the thousands of men and women… whom he has so often carried away on the wings of his thought to the highest regions of poetry…

Quotations, this week, from great musicians and writers. This is from the composer Ernest Bloch: “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...

It was a fad that brought the bass drum, cymbals, and triangle to Europe. The fad was for a kind of Turkish military music known as Janissary music. The Janissaries were the personal guard of the Turkish Sultans, and they were famous for their bands, which featured the bass drum, cymbals, triangle, and an instrument of bells and jingles called the Turkish crescent.

Operetta is light opera...or opera light. Its goal is to amuse: to be witty, charming, funny, not serious either in style or substance. Operetta includes lots of spoken dialogue and eye-catching dance numbers, and the musical material is usually appealing, tuneful…uncomplicated.

"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.