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Works Written On Audiophile Interests


rando

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As Winter fast approaches I've begun stockpiling enough reading material to bow a solid wood bookcase.  It occurred to me there is a high likelihood that many of you have collected a large number of materials dealing with aspects of this hobby not directly related to equipment.  Perhaps you could be inspired to pick them up long enough to share a small passage and allow others to seek out a copy should they be so inclined.

 

One of my recent acquisitions was the 1960 first edition of "Music and Worship in the Church" by Lovelace & Rice.  The deeply religious text is but a cover for the deep and well expressed understanding of bringing many uncontrollable variables together in a positive manner such as to make the best of both music and subject matter which would otherwise grow tired with repetition.  A dignified response that seeks to ignite personal relevance and communal growth.  In brief putting away politics or any other dissenting arguments to treat each other with respect lacking in other meeting places.  

 

 

A small text taken from the preface.

 

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Most books on church music are written for the specialists - the organist, the choir director, and occasionally the minister.  While this book is also addressed first of all to these "specialists," the greater audience it seeks is every person in the church.

 

When music is stripped of all its technical language (and hocus pocus with which some pseudo-musicians would surround it) , it reveals itself to be a part of life - as natural a form of expression as speech.  

 

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I've come across another passage of note in Oliver Strunk's original 1950 "Source Readings in Music History."  I trust the subject matter will not be unfamiliar to anyone here.  Thus requiring little description.  

 

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Our subject matter then being all melody, whether vocal or instrumental, our method rests in the last resort on an appeal to the two faculties of hearing and intellect.  By the former we judge the magnitudes of the intervals, by the latter we contemplate the functions of the notes.  We must therefore accustom ourselves to an accurate discrimination of particulars.  It is unusual in geometrical constructions to use such a phrase as "Let this be a straight line"; but one must not be content with language of assumption in the case of intervals.  The geometrician makes no use of his faculty of sense perception.  He does not in any degree train his sight to discriminate the straight line, the circle, or any other figure, such training belonging rather to the carpenter, the turner, or some other handicraftsman.  But for the student of musical science accuracy of sense perception is a fundamental requirement.  For if his sense perception is is deficient, it is impossible for him to deal successfully with those questions that lie outside the sphere of sense perception altogether.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Last night a "Lucey'd" string of posts by numerous members here decided me it was time for bed.  The term a dog eats better than what I'm seeing tabled here aptly summed up my thoughts.  Before turning out the lights I decided to open the latest book on my nightstand, an English translation of "Mozart In Vienna ~ 1781-1791".  The following were the first words to grace the page I left off at, which neatly sliced a letter from W.A. Mozart to his father Leopold in two.

 

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...Verses are indeed the most indispensable element for music, but rhymes - solely for the sake of rhyming - are the most detrimental.  Those high and mighty people who set to work in this pedantic fashion will always come to grief, both they and their music.  The best thing of all is when a good composer, who understands the stage and is talented enough to make sound suggestions, meets an able poet, that true phoenix; in that case no fears need be entertained as to the applause - even of the ignorant.  (October 13, 1781)

 

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