Pensées
New seeds for contemplation
“Decrescendo” is a neologism and not a real word. You should use dimenuendo instead. Every musician that uses “decrescendo” needs to be consistent and commit all the way and start using “deritardando” for when you want to go faster and “destaccato” for smooth passages.
About 10 years after I was hooded, I was visiting family and sitting at a table with my niece who was 16 at the time. She was on her phone when she expostulated, “Everyone stop! I have a musical emergency!” I responded, “I’ve been waiting 10 years for this moment. I can help. I’m a doctor…of music.”
Mondegreen #1: a conductor mentioned something about terraced dynamics in a Baroque piece. A chorister misheard it as “terrorist dynamics.” I propose we keep the term “terrorist dynamics.”
Mondegreen #2: in rehearsal a conductor asked me about a pronunciation. I gave my answer and followed it with, “That’s apparently the demotic pronunciation.” The conductor looked at me incredulously and queried, “The demonic pronunciation?!!” I propose we don’t keep the term “demonic pronunciation.”
I saw a post where a teacher said, “I’m going to teach these kids what penultimate means if it’s the next to the last thing I ever do.”
Several times, I’ve heard people say, “That’s an overexaggeration.” I’m still not sure what that word means, but it’s growing on me.
Instead of fixed versus moveable do solfege, I’m going to start calling it fixed versus broken do solfege.
When I was teaching, there was a percussionist that decided to switch majors. After a few years, he came back to finish his music degree. His paradiddles and ratamacues were so out of shape that he had to practice for hours on end. He was suffering the actions from his re-percussion.
I heard someone catachrestically describing a Southern drawl as “dialectical” when they meant “dialectal.” I was going to correct them in my best Florida accent, but I became paralyzed because of the intense irony.
When musicians don’t charge enough for their work, I’m always reminded of the immortal wisdom of Huckleberry Finn, “He charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it too.”
I don’t think that decrescendo is all that neo any more. Indeed, I believe it has been grandfathered in to the common parlance, and not that recently. That said, I find your call for parallel usages compelling. Such constructions should certainly be encouraged, but ought to remain, I believe, demandatory.
Bwa hahahaah!