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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Getting Started with Myaskovsky
Post Subject: regarding speed and things - readingPosted by Dominic on: 2/18/2007
I've been attentive to all that ive found out about Furtwangler lately and the strength of his readings seems to be borne across by how fast things go. So the question was raised, reading the notes you transcribed above, whether the validity of a quick reading of Myaskovsky should be left judged by the writer of said. Having not ever heard any Mya that i know of i'm really in no position to judge, but unless it's very quiet when i'm listening, some vitality through speed is welcome.


As far as colour goes are you refering to absolutes, or to say, nuance in colour?
Russian culture seems to have an interesting relationship with colour, i mean look at St Basil, and then to the washed out blue on an 'Aeroflot' craft. But at the same time much of the colour in the society seems to come in a sort of vulgar way, partly since the berlin wall people have imported the shmaltiest crap. But maybe that's my own perspective on colour. For a long time in my life i essentially disowned colour and even dismissed speed outside of necessity, largely as gross indecency of a society that was incincere and hence wholy vulgar and bankrupt. Some of that has changed, i've learned much from budhism and tao, and the deeper sides of mysticism (sorry if this sounds cheesy) to forgive and even embrace society's faults, i still have misgivings but i'm more open to colours, and bounciness, general frivolty because sometimes they can be real. Sometimes bloated solidstate bass can be real too. Anyway what i'd like to point towards here is, oh wait this wasn't my point, but serves as a good background for the idea so i'll leave it.

So back to nuance and things. i brought up a particular topic before in regards to colour and things.
I was talking about modern video reproduction and dynamic range but soon after i started thinking about other parts of that. Colour has many properties, the information can be thought of in terms of how pure it is, how much light can be seen from it, importantly to me, one can see and understand not only many tones and colours but visual information that has nothing to do with other visula information, for example: a sepia toned photograph displayed on my computer screen and the (if i pay attention) the differences in colours on the bark of the tree outside my window through the sheer curtain, and i can see and understand both while holding a very brightly coloured pen. Next to this is that our reproducing media cannot fully capture any one of those accurately and in no way can mannage all at once. But that's not really what i was getting at. What i've been getting at is that colour in sound has perhaps as many manifestations (ignoring audio) as in the visual realm.
And in a way i don't find the 17th C colour of a painting all that interesting, sure it's dramatic, but there is overall one kind of aproach to the colour. So perhaps there are different useful ways of injecting colour into a seemingly grayscale russian reading.

Actually i didn't provide an exampe of what i was talking about, in sound it is very difficult to describe, but visually i can do it by suggestiong you imagine a black and white photograph, then imagine it with glass over it, and then with a spotlight, and then with the sunlight on that glass. Now imagine a piece of music where you can hear the same changes.

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