How the Right-Hemisphere understands Harmony Somewhere in the dim distant reaches of my memory I recall being told of the modes in music that minor was sad and major was happy. But what key is nostalgia, which is often a…
“Time” is not of our World Whosoever danceth not, knoweth not the way of life. Jesus Christ [1]Found in a Gnostic Hymn of the second century, quoted in Curt Sachs, World History of the Dance (New York: Norton, 1937), 3.…
When the hall is heard filled by the emotions created by the music, whose emotions are they?” First of all, some important facts about the emotions as pertains to conducting: 1. The basic emotions and their expression are the same…
Music is not an Art Object A number of early philosophers debated what is meant by “Art.” Do we mean by Art what the artist has in his mind, or is it the actual manual activity of the artist or…
How to Write a Love Letter For reasons reviewed in the first little essay in this series, here you are—the real you, trapped in the right-hemisphere of the brain which is mute, with respect to language, [1]The right-hemisphere contains vocabulary…
Why the Students don’t listen to you in Rehearsal In a recent paper, “Why Music Education is no longer about Music,” I reviewed for the reader the basic characteristics of our bicameral brain. [1]Since the initial research which won the…
Reprinted from “On the Significance of the Title,” The NBA Journal, Vol. LV, Nr. 2, Winter, 2015. In April 2015, I will be conducting an all-city honor band in San Diego and have programmed Wagner’s beautiful arrangement of the music…
For a million years or more, singers and instrumentalists playing on natural instruments made music freely with the sole goal of expressing their feelings. But once notation appeared the “rules” of music began to be addressed to the eye rather…
In a communication we recently received from Professor Maxime in Paris, she encouraged all instrumentalists to begin thinking of the Italian piano and forte symbols to mean relative degrees of emotional intensity and not the standard practice of indicating only “soft” and “loud” sound.