Author: Theo Thorsson
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Between Naples and Hollywood: Rediscovering the Lost Systems of Composition
1. The Problem of Time In film, time is literal. Not an abstraction, not a metaphor, but measured seconds and frames. Cue 1 of Despiértame ran from 01:00:23:01 to 01:01:56:11: exactly 93.4 seconds. The music had to last the same. At a chosen tempo of 120 BPM, each beat lasts half a second. Multiply it…
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The Tyranny of the Bar Line
The Choir Bouncing on Bars At a rehearsal with the Philharmonie der Universität Wien, I experienced the strangest kind of failure. The choir was not wrong. Every entrance was technically in place, the rhythms aligned, the notated values observed. Yet the music refused to breathe. Instead of unfolding as a phrase, it bounced. Each voice…
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The Silent Art of Choir Conducting
The Silent Center Choir conducting begins in a paradox: the one who shapes the sound makes no sound at all. The conductor does not sing. Yet every breath, every vowel, every onset of tone across a choir begins in response to that silent gesture. Leadership here is neither linguistic nor sonic—it is embodied and anticipatory,…
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Crystallized Notation to Incandescent Musical Performance
Strict formalism in music evokes constraint, exactitude, and rigorous adherence to prescribed notation. Yet paradoxically, this very rigidity can unlock profound interpretive freedom. This irreducible contradiction at notation’s core—where precision breeds possibility—matters deeply: practically, as interpretative choices emerge in real-time; artistically, as beauty thrives precisely in structured boundaries; philosophically, in questioning the interplay between intentionality…
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The Score Is the Map, the Music the Terrain
A musical score is a map to a terrain that does not yet exist—and cannot, until performers bridge the chasm between symbol and sound. The conductor raises the baton; tension gathers in poised muscles as silence fractures… On the stand lies the meticulously notated score, yet the air bristles with a latent realization that these…
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The Impossible Line: Writing for Solo Violin
Writing for solo violin means writing what cannot be played—at least not fully, not all at once. Yet composers return to it again and again, not because the instrument is sufficient in itself, but because it so obviously isn’t. The solo violin is radically exposed: a single body, a single bow, a single vibrating plane…