Word: instrumentals
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...nothing. I feel like I've walked into the closing scene of a tectonic morality play. Overhead, lights are just swinging into place over the balcony's edge. A crowd of performers is milling in the wings, brocaded and beribboned. In the pit a harpsichordist is bent over his instrument like a hermit at his orisons, wielding the tiny crucifix of a tuning key. A Cupid darts across the unclothed scene, her bow unstrung and one wing dangling. Someone jostles the stringed spear of a chitarrone, and two primped and padded militaries saunter on stage left. This is the dress...
...Western ear gives their carillons a haunting and unfamiliar sound. No one here is quite sure how to play them or what music they were cast for. Aara admits that it is only through a lengthy apprenticeship that one begins to recognize the bells as a playable instrument. Her performances hinge on improvisation and experience. Though she and the other ringers have gradually become adept in the bells' individual utterances, no tune as we know it will ever cross their lips...
...this special whistling technique that's different from what everyone else uses. We were all worried that he wouldn't be able to do it once he got the braces off, but he could." He performs with music-minus-one, which involves whistling over classical recordings with the solo instrument removed. "He whistled at my wedding this summer," Vaux reveals. But because of some problem with the sound system, he had to whistle a Bach piece a cappella. "He did it just right, but without the accompaniment, it's hard to follow...It just left everyone very confused...
...Kris Gauksheim '01 and Adam Beaver '00 play the timpani in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra. I spoke with both of them before a rehearsal earlier this week. They started studying the timpani in grade school. Neither of them said exactly why they were first drawn to the instrument, but they both agree that there is a sort of adrenaline rush associated with the timpani's wildly expansive dynamic range. Beaver points out that he gets to play everything from the gentle, dying heartbeat in a requiem to great, rolling sforzandos where he "comes in like the hand...
...Aside from the acting, one of the most impressive aspects of the film is the technical feat achieved in its production. Each actor in the film plays their own instrument. Streep had never played any musical instrument before, but after two months of lessons, she jumped into classroom scenes that required her to simultaneously play and instruct students. More than half of the 150 children who appeared in the film have studied with the real Roberta Guaspari. Most have never acted. If Craven was aiming for reality, then he surely...