Posted by Rick Denney on February 21, 2003 at 15:54:14:
In Reply to: Orch. Playing (Shorter or Longer Notes?) posted by Matt A on February 20, 2003 at 23:02:07:
Both are saying the same thing. The objective is clarity and beauty. In some circumstances, clarity requires space between the notes, and in other circumstances, beauty requires building in a bit of reverberation to your playing.
When I played in an amateur symphony, I often extended my notes and ended them with a decay because we played in small, dead-sounding spaces. My strategy would add a sense of reverberation to the sound in the same way the string of a string bass will continue vibrate after the bow is lifted. Once, we played in the rotunda of the Texas Capitol, and that room is about as live as it gets without causing deafness. I added lots of space to keep the notes from running together. I am convinced that a good player could make chords in that room by playing fast arpeggios.
Rick "who thinks note endings are as important as their beginnings" Denney