On 3/25/2011 5:37 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Adding, hu geeb uh fahk?
Expletives deleted, isn't it time we moved beyond the egotistical false
pride of insisting that expressions be in Italian? Or that dynamics be
in abbreviated Italian with extended greater than or less than signs?
This is not an attack on the Italians or on time-honored traditional
practices. If German or French composers wish to notate in their native
languages for native players, why not?
The purpose of notation is to communicate as directly and to make the
music as easily performable as possible for the players.
If most of the players speak English, why not use English for
expressions and dynamics? The international language is now English,
for better or worse.
Are you sure about that? Aren't there more Chinese speakers than
English speakers? And more Spanish speakers? Aren't there translators
at international organizations such as the World Court, the United
Nations, etc.? If English truly were "the international language" as
you claim, wouldn't they have done away with translators and forced all
the diplomats to be fluent in English? Heck, English isn't even the
official language of the U.S.A.
How would you propose handling all the billions of pages of music
already in print, if your suggestion of using English instead of Italian
were adopted? Or are you proposing that we now teach student musicians
of all countries two sets of instructions -- the traditional mostly
Italianate terms plus your new proposed English terms?
Since some language must be used, why must it be English? Why not let
it remain Italian? And what's wrong with the graphical "extended
greater than and lesser than" signs to indicate loudening and quieting
of the sound? They're not Italian -- they're not any language. What's
not to like about graphically representing what should be done?
Some big problems arise when one uses only one's native tongue for
musical instructions (note that the French and Germans who got all
nationalistic and used lots of their own language for instructions
continued to use the traditional Italian terms a lot) -- people who
don't know the language or simply look it up in a dictionary and don't
know the idiomatic usage of the words misinterpret the music. How is
that helpful?
For instance, were I to be adamantly nationalistic and use only English
terms, I might decide to use 'wicked fast' for a tempo indication.
Everybody around where I live would know that meant "extremely fast" but
someone who is not a native English speaker, and many who are native
speakers but who are not from my region and wouldn't know the idiomatic
use of the word "wicked" as a modifier to mean "extremely" would think
"Hmm, he wants the music fast, but I must also make it sound wicked.
Let's see now, the dictionary defines 'wicked' as . . ." and would
interpret the music in a manner I never intended.
But you know, you can go ahead and use English instructions in your
music all you want -- nobody is stopping you. I just don't see a
groundswell of transition to English as the musical language happening
anytime soon.
--
David H. Bailey
[email protected]
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