Thanx for the continued interest! I don't know if my intentions here are
exactly lyrical, but at least some of them are quiet.
Aaron J. Rabushka
arabus...@austin.rr.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Williams, Jim" <jwilli...@franklincollege.edu>
To: <finale@shsu.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 10:47 PM
Subject: Re: [Finale] OT: dynamic range for musical anvils?
There's an Alec Wilder band piece that calls for anvil.
I will check it for dynamics; that will "iron" out all our problems.
As we all know, Alec was one of the few composers who truly understood
the lyrical potential of the anvil and sought to unlock it.
Sent from my iPhone, so please pardon all the typos.
On Apr 26, 2010, at 11:37 PM, "Andrew Stiller"
<kalli...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
On Apr 25, 2010, at 9:37 PM, Aaron Rabushka wrote:
Is anyone acquainted with the musical use of anvils, and their
possible dynamic range? Every instance I can thing of is loud, and I
noticed that Wagner does not give any dynamic's for Mime's hammering
in Siegfried. Is anyone here familiar with any quiet uses of them?
I can't believe so many responses can be so wrong and/or beside the
point!
Wagner and Verdi had in mind real anvils (jeweller size!) but nowadays
the anvil is a real percussion instrument made by percussion
manufacturers for purely musical use. Think of it as a sort of metal
clave: It's a solid metal bar, cylinder or tube, playable at any
dynamic you please depending on the mallets you use.
Like the slapstick, thundersheet, lion's roar, etc., there is
absolutely no requirement that the anvil be restricted to smithy
imitations. An excellent abstract example of itsr use is in Varèse's
*Ionisation* (player 12), where two of them are called for (high and
low), and asked to play as softly as pp.
For more (much more!), see my *Handbook of Instrumentation* pp.
194-195.
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
Finale@shsu.edu
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
Finale@shsu.edu
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
Finale@shsu.edu
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
