So yesterday I decided to try appealing to the historian in Mira, by playing the whole thing on natural horn. I did today’s take on natural horn, demonstrating the origins of the stopped horn sound. I used a Seraphinoff “Halari” model natural horn with the F crook and played “Kaddish” in the usual key.
Tag: music
on how an academic changes a musician
Mira, Where is the place that you get lost? Is it the stopped horn bit—the fourteen notes with a distant, pinched, buzzy sound, and then the normal horn tone returns? Then there’s a phrase, then a restatement of the second big line of the piece, then the climb to the ending? I’m doing musicology on…
on playing kaddish
Mira Amiras’ blog “and this part is true” had a recent post entitled “war stories” about translating the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish mourner’s prayer. She asks, “What does this really mean?” It’s a good question, because the Aramaic text doesn’t say a thing about mourning. It’s a pretty generic prayer, in fact. Here’s the basic…
mandelbrot and music: on listening in fractal dimensions
Benoit Mandelbrot died this month. He was the guy who came up with fractal theory, which led to all those gorgeous computer graphics like this one: Last week, my friend and contradance bandmate Tina Fields wrote an essay about Mandelbrot’s ideas on her blog, Indigenize! I found it quite thought-provoking, and it surprised me how much I…