A little "note" on dynamics

Today, I encountered again what I encounter a little too often in teaching. And it has always puzzled me.

I've been asked to coach a cello section of the orchestra of this certain performing arts high school (I will not mention the name, since they don't know about this blog :) ), and have been going there for a month now. They are currently working on one of the Tchaikovsky symphonies. A VERY dramatic work. Among the spots we covered today was one of the most dramatic sections of the piece in the last movement, and the cellos have a melody, marked fff.  And it doesn't seem to matter how loud I yell out "fortississimo!!" (the entire floor of the building probably heard me, and it is kind of hard to say it too...), all I get is a sound of mosquito's wing flaps, that are only audible when you are trying to get some sleep (and it's very annoying then).

This is a sort of thing that to me, it actually seems impossible. Yes, IMPOSSIBLE. Do you get less loud, when you get excited? Do you scream when you are trying to be kind?
Yet it's everywhere... It's an epidemic.

(the reason behind this, I will mention perhaps in another entry)

We see the notes, along with many things that are written on the sheet music. Besides the notes, we usually notice key signatures, time signatures, accidentals, and technical directions such as pizz, arco, con sordino, ritardando, etc etc etc, but hardly ever dynamic markings... Who said they weren't important? Who said they were optional? And if you knew the music, what reason can you possibly have to make you think that you can omit them?

Imagine going to see a Star Wars movie, and you are expecting that magnificent opening fanfare as the title rolls up. But the theater somehow plays the audio so low that you'd have to be very quiet to hear it. How disappointing would that be?

Imagine Ravel's Bolero, or Barber's Adagio with zero dynamics, staying somewhere between mp and mf from the beginning till the end...
Or the flute melody at the opening of Grieg's "Morning Mood" is performed by the brass section in ff.

(Ravel's Bolero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ZBzIXoJDM

Barber's Adagio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUOZ69PjQzk
This is a video of an orchestra that I founded. And that's me in the cello section :)

Grieg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAMLCDnCLzs)

They will cease to be music. Just notes that mean nothing and move no one.
And perhaps in the case of Grieg, it will be a completely different kind of "awakening"...  changing the meaning 180 degrees, which maybe worse.

When we listen to music, we are listening to these things: the melody(notes in horizontal lines), the harmony (notes in vertical lines), texture of the piece (simple or complex, how many things are happening at once), the height of the pitches, the quality of the sounds (warm or harsh, articulations, vibrato, sounds of particular instruments, etc), rhythm, duration and pace, structure and composition, performers' performance level, AND dynamics (how loud, how soft). All of these things get combined and then finally makes sense to us as "music". Each of these components are just as important as the others.


Imagine a piece that has all of these things, except it only has one note. Or imagine going to a Puccini opera but the lead soprano is ill and staying at home, and the notes of the soprano are performed on an electric guitar in stead. Music will ceae to make any sense.

The same composers that wrote those notes also wrote those dynamic markings. They are just as important, and if you ask me, they are MORE important than the notes.

Those mf's and pp's, and fff's, are there not just for the looks. They are meant to be followed like the notes and the rhythms are.

ALWAYS do the dynamics folks! We are a music making group, and not members of a "Let's try to put the fingers on the right spots of the fingerboard" club. I will not teach that class.