Musicon / Musical education / Bassoon – The grave voice of the oboe
The grave voice of the oboe is heard from the bassoon, where, without becoming assertive, it gains a quality entirely unknown to the oboe and English horn. It is this quality that makes the bassoon the humorist par excellence of the orchestra. It is a reedy bass, very apt to recall to those who ::More
Musicon / Beethoven / Musical education / Programme music / Tone-Painting
A classification of Programme music might be made on these lines: I. Descriptive pieces which rest on imitation or suggestion of natural sounds. II. Pieces whose contents are purely musical, but the mood of which is suggested by a poetical title. III. Pieces in which the influence which ::More
Musicon / Musical education / Nature and limits of the Programme music
Properly speaking, the term Programme music ought to be applied only to instrumental compositions which make a frank effort to depict scenes, incidents, or emotional processes to which the composer himself gives the clew either by means of a descriptive title or a verbal motto. It is unfortunate ::More
Musicon / Musical education / The Concept of Absolute Music
Great musicians have developed, farther than the rest of mankind have been able to develop it, a language of tones, which, had it been so willed, might have been developed so as to fill the place now occupied by articulate speech. Herbert Spencer, though speaking purely as a scientific ::More
