Sight Reading (34 page)

Authors: Daphne Kalotay

BOOK: Sight Reading

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ARPEGGIO:
(Italian: “like a harp”) A broken chord in which the individual notes are sounded one after the other in rapid succession (usually ascending) instead of simultaneously.

BADINAGE:
(French,
badiner
: “to jest, joke”) Term used to describe a piece of music with a lighthearted, playful mood, as in a bantering conversation.

BAGATELLE:
(French: “trifle”) Term used as the title of a short lighthearted piece of music, in no specific form, often for piano. The term was first used by FranÃ§ois Couperin in 1717 and was employed most notably by Beethoven in a series of such compositions for piano.

CADENZA:
(Italian: “cadence”) An ornamental passage, often improvised, usually leading to the last section of a movement or composition (most often an aria or concerto), in which the virtuosic ability of the soloist might be shown. Cadenzas are now more often written by the composer, although some modern performers continue to improvise.

C-BOUT:
The “waist” or C-shaped indentation of a stringed instrument's body. The upper bout would form the instrument's “shoulders,” and the lower bout its “hips.”

COL LEGNO:
(Italian: “with the wood”) The strings (for example, of a violin) are to be struck with the wood of the bow, making a percussive sound.

DA CAPO:
(Italian: “from the beginning”) The letters D.C. at the end of a piece of music or a section of it indicate that it should be played or sung again from the beginning (
Da capo al fine
) or from the beginning up to the sign (
Da capo al segno
).

FERMATA:
(Italian: “finished, closed”) A notation (sometimes called
bird's eye
) indicating that a rest or note is to be sustained for a duration that is at the discretion of the performer or conductor. A fermata at the end of a first or intermediate movement or section is usually moderately prolonged, but the final fermata of a symphony may be prolonged for dramatic effect, up to twice its printed length or more.

FOUR-PART CHORD:
A combination of four notes played simultaneously.

FOURTH POSITION:
Placement of the left hand on the strings at the fingerboard, where the forefinger is placed on the E string at G. Musicians may choose a different position to produce a particular timbre; the same note will sound substantially different depending on what string is used to play it.

FUGUE:
(Italian,
fuga
: “flight”) A contrapuntal composition. A short theme (the subject) is introduced in one voice (or part) alone, then in others, with imitation and characteristic development as the piece progresses. Generally the voices overlap and weave in and out of each other, forming a continuous, tapestrylike texture.

GLISSANDO:
(French,
glisser
: “to slide”) This Italianized word describes a continuous sliding from one note to another. On the harp or the piano this is achieved by sliding the finger or fingers over the strings or keys; on a stringed instrument each semitone would be sounded as the finger is slid up or down the length of a string.

MARCATO:
(Italian: “marked”) Execute every note in an accented, stressed, or emphasized manner.

MELISMA:
(Greek: “song”) In vocal music, especially in liturgical chant, the technique of changing the note (usually at least five or six times) of a syllable of text while it is being sung.

OPEN STRINGS:
For stringed instruments, a pitch (note) played on a string that is not stopped (held down) by the finger.

PARTITA:
(Italian,
partire
: “to divide”)
Partita
is another word for
suite,
used first in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries where it referred to a multimovement composition consisting of dances and nondance movements or entirely nondance movements.

PIANO:
(Italian: “soft”) This notation is generally represented by the letter
p
in directions to performers to play gently. Pianissimo, represented by
pp,
means very soft. Addition of further letters
p
indicates greater degrees of softness.

PORTAMENTO:
(Italian: “carrying”) A smooth, unbroken gliding from one pitch to another, where the intermediate pitches are audible. This term is used primarily in singing and string instruments. Often called glissando for other instruments.

RITARDANDO:
(Italian: “becoming slower”) Often abbreviated to rit., this notation directs players to slow down or decelerate the tempo. Opposite of
accelerando.

RUBATO:
(Italian: “stolen time” or “robbed”) Short for “tempo rubato.” A direction to perform music more expressively, faster, or slower than strict adherence to the basic tempo would indicate, by taking part of the duration from one note and giving it to another. This tasteful stretching, slowing, or hurrying thus imparts flexibility and emotion to the performance.

SCORDATURA:
(Italian: “out of tune”) An alternative tuning used for a string instrument, generally used to extend an instrument's range, or to make certain passages easier or more possible to perform, or to achieve certain special effects. Scordatura was popular between 1600 and 1750 but is used rarely now.

SONATA:
(Italian,
sonare
: “to sound”) Designates music that is to be played on an instrument rather than sung, by a soloist or ensemble, usually in three movements.

SPICCATO:
(Italian,
spiccare
: “to separate”) A way of playing the violin and other bowed instruments by bouncing the bow on the string, usually with the point of the bow, giving a characteristic separated, detached sound.

STACCATO:
(Italian,
staccare
:
“to detach”) A style of playing notes in a detached, separated, distinct manner.

STAVE:
Staff, stave, or pentagram. A framework of five lines on which musical notation is written such that the higher the note-sign on the staff, the higher its pitch. Note symbols, dynamics, and other performance directions are placed within, above, and below the staff.

SUL PONTICELLO:
(Italian: “at the bridge”) A direction to string players to bow (or sometimes to pluck) near the bridge (the small piece of wood that raises the strings away from the instrument). The tonal resonance is reduced, producing a characteristic glassy and more metallic sound.

TENUTO:
(Italian,
tenere
: “to hold”) A directive to perform a certain note or chord of a composition in a sustained manner for longer than its full duration, but without generally altering the note's value.

TIMBRE:
(Old French: “bell”) The quality of a musical tone that allows one to distinguish voices and instruments; that component of a tone that causes different instruments (for example, a guitar and a violin) to sound different from each other while they are both playing the same note.

TUTTI:
(Italian: “all”) A directive to perform a certain passage of a composition with all instruments together, not specifically by solo instruments.

VERTICAL PIZZICATO:
Musical direction denoted by a circle with a vertical line going from the center upward beyond the circle. Known as the BartÃ³k pizzicato, it was invented by the musician BÃ©la BartÃ³k and is used extensively in his compositions. This technique is achieved by plucking the string far from the fingerboard, using the right hand, using enough force to cause the string to snap back and strike the fingerboard. This snapping sound has its own pitch.

VIBRATO:
(Italian,
vibrare
: “to vibrate”) Vibrating; a rapidly repeated slight alteration in the pitch of a note, used to give a richer sound and as a means of expression. Since the nineteenth century, vibrato has been used almost constantly because of its enhancement of tone.

SOURCES

E-zine articles, http://EzineArticles.com/6816626.

San Francisco Classical Voice, www.sfcv.org; through Naxos, www.naxos.com.

Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary, www.music.vt.edu.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to The MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for support in writing this book. I'm deeply grateful to the friends and readers who helped me from draft to draft and to the composers, conductors, and musicians who read these pages with critical expertise or simply shared their knowledge with me:

Eve Bridburg, Faye Chiao, Jessica Berger Gross, Hubert Ho, Michelle Hoover, Jill Kalotay, Leah Kalotay, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jean Layzer, Judith Layzer, Don Lee, Margot Livesey, Chris McCarron, Tom McNeely, Emily Newburger, Rishi Reddi, Bruce Reiprich, Julie Rold, David Schmahmann, Elizabeth Schulze, Jennie Shames, Mandy Smith, and Anna Weesner.

About the Author

D
APHNE
K
ALOTAY
is the author of the novel
Russian Winter
, which won the Writers' League of Texas Fiction Award and has been published in twenty languages, and the fiction collection
Calamity and Other Stories
, which was short-listed for the Story Prize. A MacDowell fellow, Daphne holds a PhD in modern and contemporary literature and an MA in creative writing, both from Boston University, and has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, Yaddo, and the Bogliasco Foundation. She has taught literature and creative writing at Boston University, Skidmore College, Middlebury College, and Grub Street. Copresident of the Boston chapter of the Women's National Book Association, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Also by Daphne Kalotay

Russian Winter

Calamity and Other Stories

Credits

Cover design by Robin Bilardello

Cover photograph Â© David Sacks/Getty Images

SIGHT READING
.
Copyright Â© 2013 by Daphne Kalotay. All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have
been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text
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Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission
to reproduce from the following: “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” by Hugh
MacDiarmid,
The Complete Poems Volume 1
, 1978, Carcarnet Press Limited.

FIRST
EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-06-224693-6

EPub Edition JUNE 2013 ISBN
9780062246950

13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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