On Aug 25, 2004, at 2:34 PM, James Bailey wrote:
But this is the point. Words have meanings, but if, as you say (and I agree)
the English meaning doesn't match the Italian meaning, what is the English
meaning? That's the whole point, as far as I'm concerned. We have all the
musical terms that we've changed the meaning of.
Huh??? That makes no sense. The "accurate literal translation" is NOT the real meaning of a musical term.
My composition teacher in college was a stickler for the absolute accurate literal translation of musical terms, where many of the other professors were not.
The other professors were right. Did he use a wooden stick to conduct with? After all, that's the "accurate literal" meaning of "baton".
In my observation, performers use what they *think* the word means, and don't frequently consult musical dictionaries to discover the actual, literal translation of a word.
Surely you don't mean to suggest that if I want to know what a sonata is, I should look up "sonata" in an Italian dictionary?
How far do you carry this? There are thousands of words in English that have a foreign derivation, and not just in music. Do you want to tie them all to the meaning of the same word in the original language?
mdl
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