Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [interpretation]

54 questions
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Performance practice of Viennese Waltz

Occasionally, when I listen to an orchestra playing a Strauss waltz or something similar, I hear something interesting in the background rhythm of 'boom chik chik' in that the first 'chik' happens somewhere before beat 2. Take, for example, this…
NReilingh
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Notation - when to use staccato vs rests

I'm arranging a piece of music I wrote for string quartet, and I'm not sure what the most practical way of notating the following rhythm is. I'm self taught and rarely use written music, so I'm not sure how a classically trained musician would…
Innealtoir
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Slurs within slurs

How do I play the slurs with in the larger slur? Can you play this two ways? One big slur or individual slurs?
Jazzfess
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How can I play Für Elise well?

I've always heard that Für Elise is an extremely difficult piece to play well, despite being relatively easy in a technical sense. An added challenge is that it's been extremely over-played (I'm just glad it's no longer a fashionable ringtone where…
user28
12
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Is Beethoven's title "Sonata quasi una Fantasia" an oxymoron, and does the title instruct how to perform it?

Beethoven's so-called "Moonlight" Sonata is fully titled "Sonata quasi una Fantasia". Google translates this literally to "Sonata almost a Fantasy", but I'll assume it means more like "Sonata in the style/manner of a Fantasy". As a Sonata is a…
Widor
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What is the correct way to realize this ambiguous swing notation?

I'm practicing a choral accompaniment on the piano, and it indicates swung 8ths. However, in some places the rhythm is notated as 3 eighth-note triplets, and in others, it uses 16th-16th-8th. Initially, I thought that these two rhythms would be…
John Alexander
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How can I stop playing notes and start playing music?

After some 40 years of playing music very poorly, I've come to realize that I'm playing the notes, but not playing music. I have played the trumpet, tenor sax, piano, classical guitar and tenor recorder for several years each, and it all comes out…
foolishmuse
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What do the written instructions in Satie's 1ère Gnossienne mean?

I'm a beginner or early intermediate piano player, and picked up the score to Erik Satie's Gnossienne no. 1 from IMSLP. It contains some textual comments in French, which I presume are from the composer himself. My French is extremely rusty so I…
Thomas
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Performance of classic music

Possible Duplicate: What does a conductor actually do? I've heard different versions of Johann Strauss II: "Tales from the Vienna Woods", - they were guided by the different conductors? So what is the difference of performing the same musical…
user3356
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In Bach's WTK I Prelude in C major, is Glenn Gould's performance more literal reading of the score?

Bach's prelude in C major, being beginners' favorite, seemingly shouldn't be controversial as to how it should be read. This is why Glenn Gould's interpretation came to me as a shock with each arpeggio ending abruptly. Virtually every other…
Szymon
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What does it mean to "play what is not written"?

"You must play not only what the composer wrote, but also what the composer did not write." That's a paraphrase of advice that's always stuck with me (but the source of which is long forgotten). I know it relates to giving the music an…
Aaron
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Have a note stand out in a pianissimo chord (piano)

This is the last chord of Francis Poulenc's Mélancolie for piano. It occurs while a piano D♭ major chord is still resonating in the bass. How would you have the B♭♭ be perceptible, surprising, and yet still pianissimo? Any technique? I tend to…
Benoit
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Pedaling in Satie's Gymnopedie #1

I'm an adult piano novice learning Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1. The edition I'm working with has no pedal markings. You can see the score here: http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/3/38/IMSLP01599-Satie_Gymnopedies.pdf For most of the piece,…
chapka
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Double stopping pizzicato on the violin

So recently I watched a video on double stopping on the violin, you can watch it here. In the video when she started to play pizzicato and hit those two notes, she hit them one after another, sort of like what you would do in an arpeggio. So my…
Phanest
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What does it mean to interpret music? and how to develop your own musical interpretation of a piece?

I am a pianist, and I often hear the term "interpretation" in phrases like – "you must now develop your own interpretation of the piece" "when advancing in music, subtlety in approaching the interpretation of the music is very important" "For being…
Ved Rathi
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