>> Allegro, andante, old Italian. Who in this time (in their native >> language) >> actually puts "happy" as a musical direction or "walking"? (Okay, >> maybe the >> Italians. Sr. Andreani, care to respond?) > >"Walking" isn't a very good translation of "andante". The closest >English equivalent would be "going", and in the musical context it's >more like "moving". Perhaps you are getting confused with Spanish, >where "andar" is associated more closely with walking, though even >there it's much broader than the English word "walk", which is very >specific. In Italian or Spanish one might andar by horseback, by >train, or by car, and it's the usual word for all sorts of "go" idioms. > If I say, "andiamo", I'm not saying "let's walk".
>... >Basic music words like allegro, andante, legato, crescendo, etc, are no >longer foreign words in English. They are English words of Italian >origin, just as surely as graffiti, zucchini, soprano, etc. In most >cases the English meaning doesn't match the Italian meaning. For >example, there are a lot of ways you might use the word "legato" in >Italian that have nothing to do with music. Same for "libretto" and >dozens of others. Well, there's a lot to say here, and I'll obviously cover one minimum percentage of the aspect. One thing I have learned, traveling, living and studying in countries also different from my homeland is that it's difficult to state the real, deepest meaning one intends when using his one language terms compared to a different culture; so, for a full comprehensive understanding, a lot of care in communication is needed. When Mozart used to play some of Clementi's piano compositions, he was astonished to discover that playing certain movements -usually in the Finales of some Sonatas (the third or fourth movement)- was almost impossible to him. The difficulty was keeping the right pulse speed when related to the term "Presto" which, grammatically, is an adjective in Italian language, and means "very quickly". When Mozart and Clementi met, the first then discovered that Clementi played the same music at a slower speed that what Mozart intended, and that would been probably, for him, an Allegro o something near to it. This caused Mozart to judge the Italians with not so very appreciating words (even though Clementi was more English educated than Italian). What we can understand, from this, is that interpretation needs a profound cultural approach, and that things don't stand in an absolute way (not even pitch does, if one thinks about the frequencies which absolute pitches passed trough). Just to support my thoughts, I want to say something more about Italian terms used to indicate the pulse's speed: The adjectives used to indicate speed are commonly used in Italian language without referring to music, so "largo" means wide; "lento" slow; "adagio" slow (adagio comes from ad agio, which could mean comfortably, in a confident way, and still is intended as slow in Italian); "andante" something going faster than slow but not so fast; "moderato" could mean: kept within certain limits, in Parliament, a party who sits not on the left or not on the right is moderato. "Allegro" means happy and "presto" means "very quickly". We use these terms currently in our language and for an Italian student starting up, not always all terms make immediately a musical sense. Legato, for instance, means tied up, so, the only way to teach a legato is to give the student an example, then he'll know what the argument is about. Another one: the term "arrangement", means "to be done by yourself", without any help, and it's used frequently when you want to get rid of a typical annoying situation where someone is asking help and you don't want to give any more (or give any at all), so you'll be saying: "arrangiati!". If, in England, asking someone to do something for me, I could sometimes end with "can you arrange that for me?". That could be like in Italian to, but we still have a more negative cultural background for the meaning for this term. Still, "arrangiato da.." (arranged by...) is widely used in commercial music, which has a great influence from English and American discographic industry. Giovanni Andreani Post Scriptum - The interpretation of Italian terms by Mark D Lew is absolutely correct _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
