{"title":"Beyond “Beautiful”","authors":"Walter S. Reiter","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197525111.003.0018","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The lesson starts by comparing two paintings. One, purely decorative, depicts a vase of flowers. The other, Rembrandt’s portrait of Homer, is meaningful in many ways: to describe it merely as “beautiful” is to miss the point. So it is with music. Johann Mattheson, in Der Vollkommene Capellmeister, gives us a detailed insight into what he calls the “science of melody.” The composer chooses a required affect and turns it into a written composition; the performer studies the written page and, perceiving the affects, turns it into sound. In the lesson’s exercise, “Becoming conscious of the ever-changing affects,” the reader is charged with identifying affects in a movement by Handel on a bar-by-bar basis. Punctuation is another essential aspect of literary and musical texts and is crucial to a rhetorical way of playing. There are two types, written and implied. The reader is asked to identify the punctuation in the Handel movement.","PeriodicalId":294892,"journal":{"name":"The Baroque Violin & Viola, vol. II","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Baroque Violin & Viola, vol. II","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197525111.003.0018","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
The lesson starts by comparing two paintings. One, purely decorative, depicts a vase of flowers. The other, Rembrandt’s portrait of Homer, is meaningful in many ways: to describe it merely as “beautiful” is to miss the point. So it is with music. Johann Mattheson, in Der Vollkommene Capellmeister, gives us a detailed insight into what he calls the “science of melody.” The composer chooses a required affect and turns it into a written composition; the performer studies the written page and, perceiving the affects, turns it into sound. In the lesson’s exercise, “Becoming conscious of the ever-changing affects,” the reader is charged with identifying affects in a movement by Handel on a bar-by-bar basis. Punctuation is another essential aspect of literary and musical texts and is crucial to a rhetorical way of playing. There are two types, written and implied. The reader is asked to identify the punctuation in the Handel movement.