Category: Musical Concepts
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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 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…