Phrasing and Meter — by Robert Battey
Today’s ruminations have to do with musical phrasing. As a music critic for the Washington Post, I'm regularly attending concerts of all kinds. That, plus a lot of chamber music coaching, leads me to ruminate on this subject often. The ability to produce clear phrasing is just as important as having good rhythm or intonation, but a lot of folks don’t do it well, or as well as they think. Remember, in grade school, when we had to take turns reading aloud from the book? And how some kids were flat, with little inflection and the same pause between every word, while with others it came out sounding like natural speech? To a certain extent it’s the same with music, sometimes even at the professional level. It’s often been remarked that the [...]