by our marketing consultant, William Norris<\/p>\n
Almost every line of work has jargon. And when you\u2019ve worked in a particular sector for a long time it\u2019s both easy to ignore and also a way to show you\u2019re \u2018on the inside\u2019 and know what everything means. But occasionally things give you the jolt needed to realise that to the rest of the world you\u2019re speaking gibberish – often the disarming questions you get asked by friends who haven\u2019t encountered your world before.<\/p>\n
Classical music is particularly good (or bad, depending on your point of view) at jargon. And because its\u2019s a niche that people can get quite obsessive about I the jargon runs deep and often unnoticed. One of those questions that had that \u2018jolting\u2019 effect I talk about above was in one of my very first jobs, at the London Philharmonic Orchestra, where I was asked what the difference was between a Philharmonic and a Symphony Orchestra. The question took me by surprise as I guess as I\u2019d never thought to ask it. The answer is that there\u2019s no difference, but looking into it I did find out the rather lovely thing that \u2018Philharmonic\u2019 literally means \u2018love of harmony\u2019.<\/p>\n
Anyway. Given this I thought maybe it\u2019d be useful to have a little explainer of some of the jargon we\u2019ve gleefully employed here at the Machynlleth Festival this year.<\/p>\n
Chamber Music<\/span> Given its homely beginnings, chamber music can lose it\u2019s impact in big concert halls, but happily our Tabernacl is just perfect for it – perhaps one of the best venues for chamber music in the UK.<\/p>\n Quintets, Quartets, Trios and more<\/span> Sextet – 6 musicians K numbers, BMV numbers, and so on All these numbers are simply part of a way of cataloguing a composers music. Not all composers have them, but those who wrote a lot generally do. As an example Mozart\u2019s music is catalogued using K numbers, named after Ludwig Ritter von K\u00f6chel who developed a chronological list of the composers\u2019 music. If you\u2019re REALLY in the know you might refer to a Mozart work as \u2018K467\u2019 but generally I think its much more user-friendly to say \u2018Piano Concerto No.21\u2019!<\/p>\n As a brief summary of some composers and their catalogue numbers:<\/p>\n Mozart – K So no, K numbers aren\u2019t bad for you it turns out!<\/p>\n And what about all those Ops? Opus numbers can give you an idea of whether the music was composed early to late (low to high numbers) in a composers career and for some pieces with pretty generic titles (I\u2019m particularly looking at Chopin here and his many Polonaises, Nocturnes and Mazurkas) can help you identify the specific piece.<\/p>\n Each Opus is broken down into works with an individual numbers, so you\u2019ll have a piece of music which is the 3rd work in the composers 5th Opus being \u2018Op.5 No.3\u2019. And of course something which is regarded as a composer or artists best work is often called their \u2018magnum\u2019 opus. So good that magnums of champagne and the ice cream were named after it\u2026<\/p>\n Now, like the catalogue numbers, you really do have to be a true classical music fan to look at a programme and say \u2018oh yes I LOVE Opus 21\u2019! After 20+ years of working in the business I have just about realised that its Handel\u2019s Opus 5 Concerto Grossi that I particularly love, for example – but they can be essential in pinning down which exact piece you\u2019ll be hearing!<\/p>\n Allegro, Andante, Dolce<\/span> E major? F minor? C major?<\/span> You\u2019ll often see key signatures in listings of pieces and again they can be a useful way of identifying the exact piece. They can also give you an idea of how they\u2019ll sound as in general major key signatures sound upbeat and happy whereas minor ones can sound sad.<\/p>\n Anyway, there we go – a little whistle stop guide to just some classical music jargon. We\u2019ve only scratched the surface so if you\u2019ve burning questions about these or other terms or words let us know on our social media pages\u00a0 and we\u2019ll do our best to explain!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by our marketing consultant, William Norris Almost every line of work has jargon. And when you\u2019ve…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1372,"featured_media":40373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[601,600],"class_list":["post-46096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-classical-music-jargon","tag-classical-music-terminology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"
\nA lot of the concerts in the festival are what’s called \u2018chamber music\u2019. Chamber music is basically music that\u2019s written for a small group of musicians. By nature it\u2019s intimate, and in its early days was really written for performance at home. It\u2019s only relatively recently that it has migrated to the concert hall. The philosopher Goethe described chamber music (in this case a quartet) as \u2018four rational people conversing\u2019 and that\u2019s a a rather lovely way to think of it. It\u2019s not about the big show-off gestures of an orchestra (be it Philharmonic or otherwise!), but about the instruments of the group responding to each other in a conversational manner – one might introduce a tune for example, and the others will respond or expand upon that tune, just like a conversation between friends evolves.<\/p>\n
\nAt a concert of chamber music you\u2019ll often see these referenced, and they simply refer to the size of the group the music is written for:<\/p>\n
\nQuintet – 5 musicians
\nQuartet – 4 musicians
\nTrio – 3 musicians.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>We\u2019ve mostly expunged these from our event details, but you\u2019ll often see these mysterious numbers on concert listings, and they often seem to have the effect to me of making the concert listing look like complex algebra rather than something which is hopefully enjoyable!<\/p>\n
\nBach – BMV
\nHaydn – Hob (Haydn is maybe the ultimate example of why these catalogue numbers are needed, composing almost 500 pieces of music)
\nHandel – HMV
\nMendelssohn – MWV
\nPurcell – Z
\nRavel – MR<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>One thing we have kept in our listings are Opus numbers, because in some cases they\u2019re absolutely necessary to be clear about what the piece of music is (this is also the case with K numbers). Opus numbers are another, more standard, way of cataloguing a composers music, as opposed to the bespoke composer-specific numbers above.<\/p>\n
\nYou\u2019ll often see these enticing words in the listing of the movements that make up a complete piece. They have a pretty prosaic explanation, as they\u2019re basically speed or mood guidance for the musicians, and if you\u2019re an Italian speaker you\u2019re in luck as they\u2019re most often in Italian. So for these examples Allegro means fast, Andante is \u2018at a walking pace\u2019 and Dolce is an indication that the music should be played sweetly.<\/p>\n
\nI hesitated before trying to explain key signatures, but I thought it couldn\u2019t hurt, as really you have to have had learnt how to read music at some stage to \u2018get\u2019 them. Also it\u2019s a big subject. And specific to Wester European music. But basically, if you think about the piano keyboard, the white keys are \u2018natural\u2019 notes and the black keys are the \u2018sharp\u2019 and flat\u2019 notes. A key signature is basically a way of instructing the performer right from the start of the piece what notes to play as natural notes which which to instead play a sharp or flat for. As an example, in C Major you only use the natural notes, whereas in G major the note \u2018F\u2019 becomes F sharp instead.<\/p>\n