Tag Archives: symphony

Crescendo

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crescendo: (n) a gradual, steady increase in loudness or force.

I do realize there’s a danger in over-analyzing things. It can become tedious, if not obnoxious. Yet I will tell you—life becomes much simpler when you first realize it’s supposed to be simple, and then you start looking for the parallels that dwell behind every experience and lurk beneath each rock.

Over the years I have played my share of music.

Some people have even accused me of being a musician.

I’ve written songs and I’ve composed about eight symphonies (though Mozart and Beethoven shouldn’t be worried about their day jobs.)

Music has taught me a lot.

That’s not a very profound statement, but once again—simple.

Music knows what the key is meant to be in every situation.

It finds a melody, so some sensibility can be mustered for the hearer.

It certainly acknowledges the need for harmony.

And it has a great desire to strike a chord of commonality among us.

But never does music teach us anything more than it does with the crescendo.

Some people live their lives full out, loud, always punctuating their crescendo to the maximum. Then when they need to say something essential or shout out a truth, no one listens because they are always blaring and trumpeting their feelings.

The wisdom of music is to start your piece quietly and build.

Let’s be honest—if the audience doesn’t want to hear the song or doesn’t prefer the tunefulness of it, playing it more loudly does not achieve much of anything. But if you can acquaint all those around you with a theme they really embrace, by the time you get to the finale, you can generate a crescendo that triumphs the message and the music to the climax.

I used to be of a mindset that the louder I said something, the more emphatic and powerful it became. But I just ended up in a room with a bunch of fellow bellowers, shouting over the top of one another.

I shall never forget the night I was playing a concert, and the band that was on right before our troupe closed out with a screaming anthem, leaving the audience leaping to its feet, applauding wildly.

I realized there was no way to top that, so I looked for a bottom. I took the stage with just my guitarist and sang our sweetest, most childlike ballad. By the time I finished, the attention was mine. If I had desired, I could have manufactured my own crescendo. There was no hurry. It wasn’t a competition.

Turn down the noise.

First in your own mind—your own twitter—and then patiently let it all tone down around you.

Take a deep breath, pick your moment, make sure it’s timely…

CRESCENDO.

 

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Count

Count: (v) to enumerate

“That doesn’t count.”

A statement often made when people are in the process of a count.

What should we count? What really counts?

Well, you can count on me to try to turn this into something meaningful. Or maybe it’s not meaningful at all, just making “meaningless” a little less painful.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

What should be counted?

I think it may be the central question to the serendipity of the human race. Yet I must be honest with you—every symphony must be willing to go through the process of being a cacophony. In other words, if we’re not willing to deal with the messiness of our lives, we will never be able to straighten things up and narrow our focus.

  1. We certainly should not count offenses. No good discussion ever begins with, “This is the third time this week…”
  2. Counting your blessings is considered to be a virtue but I must admit, when people start including the joy of having their rice dish set up perfectly, I become a little cynical.
  3. It’s never a good idea to count the hours. Everything good happens in the seconds leading up to the minute.
  4. Should we count the number of friends we have? Should we count our enemies? Maybe it would be better to count where they overlap.
  5. In a season in which polls seem to be more important than finding purpose, certain counts become ridiculous.

“Do you believe in God?” asks the pollster. 86% said they do, but when pushed for a description, many decided to plead the Fifth.

What should we count?

  1. I think it’s all right to count the fingers and toes of new-born babies, unless you plan on destroying a nine-digit one.

What else could we count?

  1. I think we could count the number of times we allow ourselves to give a damn about something other than counting the problems, the iniquities, the faults, the sins and the disagreements of others.


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Conductor

Conductor: (n) a person who directs the performance of an orchestra or choir.

I have a friend who has played oboe for many years.

I got a hankering to write some pop-classical music, and thought it would be wonderful if we could start a symphony orchestra in a medium-sized Southern town. (On another occasion I will go into the details of what it was like to promote such a high-brow idea in a town where thefunny wisdom on words that begin with a C
 Cracker Barrel is always packed to the gills.)

But the thing we immediately discovered was that female conductors and symphony orchestras do not necessarily coincide–and also that symphony orchestras and innovation have been separated for quite some time.

So rather than easing our way into the marketplace, we took a radical approach. Perhaps the most outlandish idea was placing the conductor in the middle, at the rear of the orchestra, facing the audience, so those who came to the hear the symphony could experience seeing the symphony conducted, right in front of them.

It was ground-breaking, and my friend was a natural.

We did this for about eight or nine years, and then grew weary of the tedium.

One wonderful thing about life–if you get tired of what you’re doing, you can go “conductor” yourself in another activity.

 

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Anthem

dictionary with letter A

Anthem (n.): a rousing or uplifting song identified with a particular group or belief.

I have become convinced that the best way to ruin any experience is to have a committee discuss it or experts share insights on “why it is so complicated.”

Thus the National Anthem.

Yes, the beautiful lyrics written by Francis Scott Key and the saloon song sung by so many Englishmen of the day came together for a rousing rendition of patriotic jubilation.

When I was a kid people sang it without commenting on the complexity of the melody line or trying to lift it an octave at various intervals to stimulate emotional reactions.

It was just beautiful.

Matter of fact, when I got the chance to do a musical arrangement of it for a symphony, I began it with an arpeggio of strings, lending a more pastoral depiction of the first stanza:

Oh say, can you see by the dawn’s early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?

It’s such an intimate statement, really not requiring double brass and pounding drums. It is a progressive work, beginning with a gentle spirit and ending with a victorious shout.

But like so many other things in our country, we’ve turned it into a debatable dilemma–a dastardly debacle.

It’s not that we need a new national anthem.

We just need a people who can be moved by pride in our nation as the anthem is performed.

 

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Aficionado

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

Aficionado: (n.) a person who is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about an activity, subject or past-time

I am almost certain that these two particular words NEVER, or perhaps better stated, RARELY, work together.

I am talking about knowledgeable and enthusiastic.

In my life I have encountered people who were knowledgeable, but the information they attained through schooling or experience had disembowled their enthusiasm.

Likewise, I have been in the company of those ablaze with enthusiasm, only to discover that their limited scope of comprehension had cursed the project to the great pit of ignorance.

Yes, it is a rarity to discover a human being who is both knowledgeable and enthusiastic, therefore fulfilling Webster’s definition of aficionado.

It is perhaps one of my primary goals in life–to learn the inner workings of my craft without becoming jaded, cynical or bored.

  • For I will tell you, the worst person in the world to teach you about the Constitution, government and the great American dream is a politician.
  • I have never found ministers to be a tremendous source for bolstering one’s faith through their personal testimony.
  • I certainly would not want to discuss lifelong love and fidelity with a prostitute.
  • In turn, becoming excited about the wonderful choices available in a restaurant is not always accomplished by talking to the chef or the owner.
  • And needless to even say, having an inspiring dialogue about the glory of music is doomed to failure if you are going to chat with the first violinist of a symphony.

My goal? To learn to do what I do better–while still maintaining a childlike heart, as if it were the first day on the job.

People often ask me  if I get tired, sharing the same stories and songs. You can sense that part of them WANTS me to be burned out. But there is a little boy or girl inside, who instead wants to leap for joy if I am still thrilled to be on my playground. So it is always my magnificent pleasure to inform them that each song I sing and each word I speak surprises me every night with new significance.

I would love to be knowledgeable. Just not snarly.

I desire to be enthusiastic. Could I do that without being inept?

“Aficionado” should be the goal of everyone who wants to see the world get better.

To do that, we have to learn the truth and allow it to set us free … instead of making us depressed.

　

Accelerando

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Accelerando: (adj. & adv.): with a gradual increase of speed (used chiefly as a musical direction)

It was another example of one of those times when I overstepped my boundaries and in the process, slipped on my own crap.

I wrote a musical piece for the piano and was blessed that a small symphony orchestra agreed to play it in one of their concerts. It helped that I was good friends with the conductor. She thought it would be excellent if I performed the piano part with the symphony, giving it more focus.

Never considering my limitations on the magical eighty-eight keys, I quickly agreed, and gave a passive effort of rehearsal.  It was passive because I had enough arrogance to believe that I was a fairly decent pianist, and also regarded myself as being acquainted with this particular music since I had written it.

When I arrived at the first rehearsal with the orchestra, it became quickly obvious that I was ill-prepared to be anywhere NEAR the musical instrument  provided to make the melody, especially when I came to the end of the concerto. Because I was unable to the play music in the correct timing, I slowed them up, which prompted a flutist near the conductor to raise his hand and ask, “Is this passage going to be rubato?”

My conductor friend shook her head without verbally responding.

He persisted. “So — should we anticipate an accelerando?”

She frowned and once again shook her head.

It was very embarrassing–similar to being in a foreign country, and in a clumsy way ordering off the menu, only to notice that the waiter has gone back to the cook to chat in their common language and laugh at your selection.

Later on, my conductor friend explained that the flute player was asking if my playing was going to be rubato, which meant purposely slowed up by my own choice, or if there was some way she could build a fire under me to create an accelerando ( in other words, play it right).

I discovered that day that even in the world of classical music, there is still language available that says, “Hustle up your butt!”

The fact that it’s being said in Italian only makes it a bit more elegant.

It also makes it a trifle more aggravating.

 

Abattuta

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAbattuta: (adv.) a musical term meaning to return to strict tempo.

Sometimes I think life should be more musical–not in the sense of bursting into song while you’re waiting for your meatball sandwich at Subway, but musical in the sense of flourishes in timing, with exciting melodies and enhancing harmonies. Music grants you the ability to suddenly play very fast. And then … you can abattuta! Return back to your strict timeframe.

Life is not that way. It takes sixty seconds to make a minute, an equal number of minutes to make an hour, and twenty-four of them eventually make a day. Wouldn’t it be great if you had some sort of control–like a conductor’s baton–to make certain portions of your daily composition go quicker?

In other words, when you go to the dentist and he’s drilling on your teeth, you could increase the tempo–get out of the chair with a flourish. And then, as you were allowing the Novocaine to wear off and you stop at that Steak and Shake to reward yourself with a delicious chocolate-marshmallow milkshake, you could slow the tempo w-a-a-y down, allowing the ooey-gooey to eek its way down your throat.

You could speed up church services and slow down romance.

You could accelerate the interchanges you have with your children to confirm that you’re a good parent, and slow down the ending of the game, which finally, for a change, is actually close and interesting.

Maybe that’s the whole problem–life is too abattuta. Because when we try to relish moments, the clock frowns at us and continues its steady pursuit of strict formality.

Yes, clocks are like that. Still, I will search for a way to freeze moments so I can enjoy them even more as they thaw out. And I will hum songs and think happy thoughts to speed through those activities that are truly grueling and boring. Yet I know there will always be the abattuta to taunt me back to the mature notion of remaining in strict time.

I guess I never saw God as the conductor of an orchestra. To me, He’s more like the guy who plays the triangle. He lets the symphony ensue, but every once in a while, inserts his two-note passage that seems to make all the difference in the world.