the moment of music

THE MOMENT OF MUSIC

‘at the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you’

J. W. von Goethe

1Design Academy EindhovenMan & Leisure

PHILIPP WEBER

April2010

INTRODUCTION

What is the information behind the music?

In this research I focused on the specific moment in which music is being performed.It is an interesting moment, since in this certain moment there are several information streams that clash together at the same time. Informations about the in-strument maker, the listener, the composer and about the player are meeting all in one situation - the music.

How important is the quality of the wood that is used in a violin? what kind of hair is used in the bow? what is the silent information behind the musician who is playing a mu-sic piece? behind the compo-sers inspiration? or behind you and your emotions as a listener?

The moment reveals the acoustic of the materials the violin maker used, the men-tality of the composer, the interpretation and talent of the violinist and the mental and physical experience the receiver has while listening.

I decided to bring all this information into one little dictionary called ‘The Mo-ment Of Music’. It explains all the information that sur-rounds this moment on the basis of me listening to the violinist Liviu Prunaru playing a piece of the composer Ca-mille Saint Saens on a violin made by Stradivari.

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LUTE

can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck, either fretted or unfretted, and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes;

neckviolin

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1 2 the violin belongs to the family of the lutes.

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LUTHIER

is someone who makes or repairs stringed instruments;

the word luthier comes from the French word luth which means ‘lute’;

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3 the craft of lutherie is com-monly divided into two main categories: stringed instru-ments that are plucked or strummed, and those that are bowed; bowed instruments require a bow, the category in-cludes a subtype known as an archetier, a French word mean-ing one who makes bows.

lutebow archetier

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BARTOLOMEO GIUSEPPE ANTONIO GUARNERI

*place of birth Cremona, Italy, 1698–1744;

was a luthier from the Guarne-ri house of Cremona; he rivals Antonio Stradivari with regard to the respect and reverence accorded his instruments, and he has been called the finest violin maker of the Amati line;

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3 instruments made by Guarne-ri are often referred to as Josephs or del Gesùs.

CremonaluthierAntonio Stradivari

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ANTONIO STRADIVARI

*place of birth Cremona, Italy, 1644–1737;

was an Italian luthier, a craftier of stringed instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars and harps;

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generally considered the most significant artisan of all times in this field;

the Latinized form of his sur-name, ‘Stradivarius’, as well as the colloquial, ‘Strad’, is often used to refer to his instru-ments.

Cremonaluthierviolins

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CREMONA

is a city and commune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana; it is the capital of the province of Cremona;

1 2 especially famous for its musical history and traditions, including some of the earliest and most renowned luthiers, such as Guarnieri and Stradi-vari.

luthierGuarneriStradivari

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RED SPRUCE

also ‘Picea rubens’; a wood type of the family of the ‘Pinaceae’; from the forests of Cremona; grows occasionally up to 30m high with a diameter of 0.6m to 1.2m and a density of circa 500kg/cm at 12% moisture con-tent; light, moderately soft, but strong and flexible;

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before processed in instru-ments it has to be stored up to 5 years;

used for the violin front, be-cause the quotient of elasticity to density offers high acousti-cal property.

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Cremonaviolin frontacoustical

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BOSNIAN MAPLE

also ‘Acer pseudoplatanus’, a wood type of the family of the ‘Aceraceae’; from the forests of Cremona;

grows up to 30m high with a diameter of 1.5m with a den-sity of circa 660kg/cm at 12% moisture content; heavy, hard and strong;

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is a species of maple native to central Europe and southwest-ern Asia, from France east to Ukraine, and south in moun-tains to northern Spain, north-ern Turkey, and the Caucasus

before processed in instru-ments it has to be stored up to 10 years; used for the violin back and sides.

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Cremonaviolin

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EBONY

a wood type of the family of the ‘Ebenaceae’; imported from tropical and subtropical regions; grows 10m to 15m occasion-ally up to 30m high with a diameter of 0.6m to 0.9m with a density of circa 1000kg/

cm at 12% moisture content; heavy, hard, strong and close-grained;

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the value of this wood was al-ready known in ancient times as a quote of the bible shows: Ezekiel 27:15The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles where the merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony

used for some details and the fingerboard of the violin, because of its longevity.

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fingerboardviolin

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PERNAMBUCO

a wood type of the family of the ‘Caesalpinia echinata’; imported from Brazil; grows up to 20m high with a diameter of 0.4m;

1 3 excellent for making violin bows, for which is still ex-ported today in small quanti-ties, under the names of Bahia wood.2

bows

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HIDE GLUE

also ‘animal glue’, is an ad-hesive that is created by prolonged boiling of animal connective tissue;

is made of the collagen from skins, bones, tendons, and other tissues, similar to gela-tin; the word “collagen” itself derives from Greek ‘kolla’, meaning glue; stereotypical the animal in question is a horse;

instruments in the violin family require periodic disas-sembly for repairs and main-tenance; the brittleness of the glue allows the top to be removed, often without sig-nificant damage to the wood, regluing the top only requires applying new hot hide glue to the joint;

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nowadays if the violin top was glued on with PVA glue, re-moving the top would require heat and steam to disassem-ble the joint, causing dam-age to the varnish, then wood would have to be removed from the joint to ensure no cured PVA glue was remain-ing before regluing the top;

also functions as its own clamp, once the glue begins to gel, it pulls the joint to-gether; Stradivari might have glued the center seams of top and back plates together us-ing a rubbed joint rather than using clamps; this technique involves coating half of the joint with hot hide glue, the hide glue pulls the joint to-gether as it hardens.

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varnishclampStradivari

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CAT GUT

delusively describes diverse materials from sheep and other natural intestines;

EtymologyItalian saddle makers used the intestines of wild mountain goats first to sew leather; later on they found out that the material is also very beneficial applied in strings; they sold it as ‘cat gut’ to protect it from copycats;

1 4 still today, strings are made from intestines of a sheep or cow.

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strings

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VARNISH

a transparent, hard, protec-tive finish or film used in the wood finishing but;

violin varnishing is a multi-step process involving some or all of the following: primer, sealer, ground, color coats, and clear topcoat;

drying oil such as walnut oil or linseed oil may be used in combination with amber, co-pal, rosin or other resins; the oil is prepared by cooking or exposing to air and sunlight; touch up in repair or restora-tion is only done with spirit varnish.

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the refined resin is typically available as a translucent solid and is then ‘run’ by cooking or literally melting it in a pot over heat without solvents; thick-ened oil and prepared resin are then cooked together and thinned with turpentine into a brushable solution;

in the varnishing of the violin might lay one of the secrets of a ‘stradivarius’.

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rosinviolinstradivarius

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ROSIN

is a solid form of resin ob-tained from pines and some other plants;

produced by heating fresh liquid resin to vaporize the volatile liquid terpene compo-nents; it is semi-transparent and varies in color from yellow to black;

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At room temperature rosin is brittle, but it melts at stove-top temperatures; it chiefly consists of different resin acids, especially abietic acid;

Rosin is also known as colo-phony or colophonia resina from its origin in Colophon, an ancient Ionic city.

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pines

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HORSE HAIR

refers to hair taken from the mane or tail of horses;

can be very stiff or very fine and flexible, mane hair is generally softer but shorter than tail hair, which is longer and thicker; the quality of the horses natural hair may play a role, as it varies to some degree by breed of horse and nutritional conditions; the processing given to horsehair may also impact its quality;

1 4 used for the bows of musical instruments.

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bows

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WHALEBONE

also ‘baleen’ or whalebone, is a filtering structure in the mouth of most whales, which they use to feed by sieving small animals from large mouthfuls of seawater; im-ported from Norway;

not in fact composed of bone, but of the protein keratin, the same substance as hair, horn, scales, claws and nails;

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instead of teeth, these whales have rows of baleen plates in the upper jaw, flat, flex-ible plates with frayed edges, arranged in two parallel rows, looking like combs with thick hair at the end of each comb tooth;

used for the grip of the bow of the violin.

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bowviolin

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BLOCK PLANE

is a tool for sculpting the corpus of the violin; contains a sharp blade;

the walls of the brass body are thick to give the plane the necessary heft even when per-forming detail work and make it very comfortable to use;

1 3 body 82 x 32 mm, blade width 25 mm, thickness 2.2 mm, blade hardness 61 RC, weight 190 g.

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violin

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FINGER PLANE

is a tool for detail-sculpting on the corpus of the violin; contains a sharp blade;

small plane with thin-walled brass castings that make close edge work possible; the thickness of the sole allowed Stradivari to customize its profile;

1 3 blade hardened to approxi-mately 60 RC; plane length 20 mm, blade width 5 mm.

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violinStradivari

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PEG RIEMER

precision tool for shaping the peg, end button and end pin holes of stringed instruments;

the reamer blades are hard-ened to 62 RC;

1 3 taper 1/30, diameter 7.5 x 4 mm, length 105 mm.

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pegstringed instruments

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CALLIPER

for measuring the wall thick-ness of a stringed instrument, cladding, hollow body and veneer;

cast-aluminium frame with precision dial gauge;

1 3 measuring range is 30 mm, display accuracy is 0.1 mm.

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stringed instrument

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ACCURACY

is a conformity to fact; Preci-sion; exactness; the ability of a measurement to match the actual value of the quantity being measured;

Stradivari had to be accurate to a tenth of a millimeter to achieve his appropriate acous-tics;

1 3 violinist Liviu Prunaru states ‘it takes years to find out every little secret about a Stradivari, three millimeter difference play an immense role in the tune or sound’.

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StradivariacousticsviolinistLiviu Prunaru

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VARNISH BRUSH

made from cattle hair;1 2 because of the thick hairs the brush can absorb a large amount of varnish applied to the corpus of the stringed instrument.

stringed instument

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TEMPLATE

made from metal or wood;1 2 pattern to project form and size of a violin or bow on the wood.

violinbow

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FLAT CHISEL

is a tool with blade made for stringed instrument bow making;

the blade is subsequently heat-treated and then ground and polished by hand;

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3 the blade is hardened over its entire length to 59 - 61 RC and mounted to oiled ash handles using an interior ferrule.

bow making

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SPOON GOUGE

is a tool with bent blade for shaping the top and back of the stringed instrument;

the blade is subsequently heat-treated and then ground and polished by hand;

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3 the blade is hardened over its entire length to 59 - 61 RC and mounted to oiled ash handles using an interior ferrule.

stringed instrument

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GLUEING CLAMP

holds the violin corpus togeth-er when glueing;

jaw and handle made of box-wood; nickel-plated spindles, handle with threaded bush-ings;

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3 opening 10 - 75 mm.

violinglueing

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INTERVIEW WITH ANTONIO STRADIVARI

interview in which Stradivari explains how a violin is built, what materials are used and what has to be considered when building a violin;

1 2 an interview with the cremo-nian luthier about his profes-sion, in German.

Stradivariviolincremonianluthier

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VIOLIN

developed in the 1500s; evolv-ing from instruments of the ‘Lute’-family that musicians played with a bow;

the smallest and highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola and cello; part of the Euro-pean lute family;

consists of a spruce top, the soundboard, also known as the top plate, maple ribs and back, two end blocks, a neck, a bridge, a soundpost, four strings, fingerboard, usually made from ebony, tuning pegs and peg box, scroll and various fittings, optionally including a chinrest, which may attach directly over, or to the left of the tailpiece;

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distinctive feature of a vio-lin body is its hourglass-like shape and the arching of its top and back; the hourglass shape comprises two upper bouts, two lower bouts, and two concave C-bouts;

the voice of a violin depends on its shape, the thickness profile of both the top and back, and the varnish which coats its outside surface;

varnish and especially the wood continue to improve with age, making the fixed supply of old violins much sought-after;

a Stradivari-violin is the most highly valued instrument of all times.

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Lutebowspruceviolin elementsvarnishStradivari

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SOUNDPOST

a small dowel inside the in-strument under the treble end of the bridge, spanning the space between the top and back plates and held in place by friction;

serves as a structural support for an archtop instrument, transfers sound from the top plate to the back plate and alters the tone of the instru-ment by changing the vibra-tional modes of the plates;

sometimes referred to as the âme, a French word meaning “soul”;

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moving towards the finger-board tends to increase bril-liance and loudness; moving the sound post towards the tailpiece decreases the loud-ness and adds a richness or hollowness to the tonal quality of the instrument; moving it towards the outside of the instrument increases bright-ness and moving in towards the middle of the instrument increases the lower frequen-cies;

there is very little room to move the post from side to side without fitting a new post, since tension plays an important role in tone adjust-ment.

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bridgetop platefingerboardtailpiece

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STRINGS

made of sheep gut, commonly known as catgut, stretched, dried and twisted; modern strings may be gut, solid steel, stranded steel, or various syn-thetic materials, wound with various metals, and some-times plated with silver;

both gut and nylon strings are in common use; gut is more authentic for playing period pieces, though unfortunately it is also more susceptible to irregularity and pitch insta-bility due to changes in hu-midity; nylon offers greater tuning stability but is seen as anachronistic by purists, as its timbre differs from the sound of earlier gut strings;

1 3 limited lifetime; apart from obvious things, such as the winding of a string coming undone from wear, a player will generally change a string when it no longer plays true, losing the desired tone; the longevity of a string depends on how much and how in-tensely one plays.2

catgut

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SOUNDBOARD

part of a string instrument that transmits the vibrations of the strings to the air, greatly increasing the loudness of sound over that of the string alone;

made from spruce;

operates by the principle of forced vibration; the board is gently vibrated by the string, and despite their differences in size and composition, the board will be “forced” to vibrate at the exact same fre-quency, producing the same sound as the string alone, differing only in timbre;

1 4 scientists assume that the Stradivari violin was affected by a certain mushroom that contributes to the properties of the soundboard and im-proved its acoustic qualities;

although the same amount of energy is transmitted with or without the board present, the sounding board, due to its greater surface area, is more readily able to transform this energy into sound.

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stringed instrumentsprucestringStradivariacoustic

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F-HOLES

are sound holes, an opening in the upper soundboard of the musical instrument;

1 2 though the purpose of sound holes is to help acoustic in-struments project their sound more efficiently, the sound does not emanate solely from the location of the sound hole; the majority of sound ema-nates from the surface area of both sounding boards, with sound holes playing a part by allowing the sounding boards to vibrate more freely, and by allowing some of the vibra-tions which have been set in motion inside the instrument to travel outside the instru-ment.

soundboardacoustic

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BRIDGE

a bridge is a device for sup-porting the strings on a stringed instrument and trans-mitting the vibration of those strings to some other struc-tural component of the instru-ment in order to transfer the sound to the surrounding air;

1 2 bridges may consist of a single piece of material, most commonly maple, that fits between the strings and the resonant surface; alternatively, a bridge may consist of mul-tiple parts;

a bridge allows an arrange-ment for the strings to vibrate freely, but also conducts those vibrations efficiently to the larger surface.

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stringsstringed instrumentmaple

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FINE TUNERS

are screws at the tailpiece;

consist of a metal screw that moves a lever to which the string is attached; they permit very small pitch adjustments with much more ease than the pegs;

1 3 not used with gut strings, which are more elastic and do not respond adequately to the very small movements of fine tuners;

some violinists have fine tun-ers on all four strings; most classical players have only a single fine tuner on the E string.

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tailpiecestringpegsgutviolinists

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SCROLL

is the decoratively carved end of the neck of certain stringed instruments, mainly members of the violin family;

is typically carved in the shape of a volute, a rolled-up spiral, according to a canonical pat-tern, although some violins are adorned with carved heads, human and animal;

1 3 its quality is one of the things used to judge the luthiers skill, instrument scrolls usually ap-proximate a logarithmic spiral;

scrollwork is a common fea-ture of Baroque ornament, the period when string instrument design became essentially fixed.

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neckviolinluthiers

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NECK

is the part of certain stringed instruments that projects from the main body and is the base of the fingerboard;

is usually maple with a flamed figure compatible with that of the ribs and back;

1 3 guitars, lutes, the violin fam-ily, and the mandolin family are examples of instruments which have necks;

the word for neck sometimes appears in other languages in musical instructions; the French term is ‘manche’.

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stringed instrumentsfingerboardmaplelutes

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FINGERBOARD

also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments, is a part of most stringed instruments;

made of ebony, but often some other wood stained or painted black; ebony is the preferred material because of its hardness, beauty, and superior resistance to wear;

fingerboards are dressed to a particular transverse curve, and have a small lengthwise ‘scoop’ or concavity, slightly more pronounced on the lower strings, especially when meant for gut or synthetic strings;

1 4 a musician presses the strings down towards it in order to change their vibrating lengths, causing changes in pitch; this is called “stopping” the strings;

the word ‘fingerboard’ in other languages sometimes occurs in musical directions; in Italian it is called either ‘manico’ or ‘tasto’.

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stringed instrumentsebonystrings

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PEGBOX

is the part of certain stringed instruments, e.g. violin, viola, cello, double bass, that hous-es the tuning pegs.

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violintuning pegs

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TUNING PEGS

is used to hold a string in the pegbox of a stringed instru-ment;

it may be made of ebony, rosewood, boxwood or other material; some tuning pegs are ornamented with shell, metal, or plastic inlays, beads or rings;

1 3 turning the peg tightens or loosens the string, changing the pitch produced when the string is played and thereby tuning it.2

stringpegboxstringed instrumentebony

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C-BOUT

two concave C-bouts deter-mine the waist of the violin providing clearance for the bow.

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violinbow

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TAILPIECE

the tailpiece anchors the strings to the lower bout of the violin;

may be made of ebony, rose-wood, boxwood, or rarely pernambuco; other materials include cast light metal, and composites including plastic;

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choice of material may have more than just cosmetic ef-fect; a well-made instrument is sensitive to tailpiece weight and mass distribution;

fine tuners are sometimes built into the tailpiece.

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stringsviolinebonypernambucofine tuners

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CHINREST

is an ergonomically shaped piece attached to the body of a violin or a viola to aid in the positioning of the players jaw or chin on the instrument;

may be made of ebony, rose-wood, boxwood, or plastic;

unusual for early violins like the Stradivari and therefore mostly added to the instru-ment afterwards;

1 4 invented by Ludwig Spohr in the early 1800s in response to increasingly difficult reper-toire which demanded freer left hand techniques than had previously been used; today considered a standard part of the viola and violin.

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violinebonyStradivariLudwig Spohr

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LUDWIG SPOHR

*born in Braunschweig, 1784-1859

was a German composer, vio-linist and conductor;

usually known by the French ‘Louis’ form of his name out-side Germany;

sometimes described as ‘The Forgotten Master’, Spohr was once as famous as Beethoven; as a violinist, his virtuoso play-ing was admired by Queen Victoria; as a composer he ranks as an historic figure in the development of Ger-man music drama and whose greatest triumph was in the oratorio; his orchestral writ-ings and chamber works were once considered on a par with Mozart;

1 5 invented the chinrest about 1820.

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composerviolinistvirtuosochinrest

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ARCHETIER

is a French word for one who makes bows of the string family of instruments such as violin, viola, cello and double bass; root of the word comes from archet ‘the bow’;

typically uses between 150 and 200 hairs from the tail of a horse for a violin bow;

1 3 in making a bow, the greater part of the woodworking is done on a straight stick.

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bowsviolinhairsstick

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BOW

a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the in-strument emits as sound; the vast majority of bows are used with string instruments;

the characteristic long, sus-tained, and singing sound produced by the violin, viola, violoncello, and double bass is due to the drawing of the bow against their strings; this sustaining of musical sound with a bow is comparable to a singer using breath to sustain sounds and sing long, smooth, or legato melodies;

1 3 without the bow the violin family could only be played pizzicato.

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string instrumentsstringslegatopizzicato

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STICK

is the main-part of a bow, a straight piece of wood, mostly ‘Pernambuco’;

the bow maker graduates the stick in precise gradations so that it is evenly flexible throughout;

1 3 in order to shape the curve or “camber” of the bow stick, the maker carefully heats the stick in an alcohol flame, a few inches at a time, bending the heated stick gradually to the proper shape; a metal or wooden template is used to get the exact model’s curve and shape while heating.

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bowPernambucobow makertemplate

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FROG

holds and adjusts the near end of the horsehair on a bow; most often made from ebony, but other materials are used as well;

1 2 the metal parts of the frog, or mountings, may be used by the maker to mark various grades of bow, ordinary bows being mounted with nickel silver, better bows with silver, and the finest being gold-mounted.

horsehairbowebonymaker

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GRIP

part of a bow made of a wire, silk or ‘whalebone’ wrap and a thumb cushion made of leather or snakeskin.

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HAIRS

between 150 and 200 horse-hairs are used for a violin bow; bows for other members of the violin family typically have a wider ribbon, using more hairs;

white hair generally produces a smoother sound and black hair, used mainly for double bass bows, is coarser, produc-ing a rougher sound; lower quality bows often use nylon or synthetic hair;

1 3 rosin, a hard, sticky substance made from resin, is regularly applied to the bow hair to increase friction.

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horsehairviolin bowviolinrosin

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LEGATO

in musical notation the Italian word legato meaning ‘tied together’ indicates that musi-cal notes are played or sung smoothly and connected; in transitioning from note to note, there should be no inter-vening silence;

1 2 there is an intermediate ar-ticulation called either mezzo staccato or non-legato.

musical notationnotes

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PIZZICATO

is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a stringed instrument; the exact technique varies some-what depending on the type of stringed instrument;

1 2 on a violin the violinist plays by plucking the strings with the fingers, rather than using the bow; this produces a very different sound from bowing, short and percussive rather than sustained.

stringsstringed instrumentsviolinstbow

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VIOLINIST

a person who plays the violin; either in an orchestra as a part of a musical group or as a soloist;

Liviu Prunaru states‘Music needs a second com-poser, which is the instrument player. His artistic way of play-ing refers to his personality, if he wants to play better he has to become a better person.’

1 3 interprets the music the com-poser wrote; in this interpre-tation various aspects play a role such as experiences and other influences.

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violinLiviu Prunarucomposer

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LIVIU PRUNARU

*born in Craiova, 1969;

is a Romanian violinist; he serves at the Royal Concertge-bouw Orchestra as a concert-master;

began his violin studies at the age of six; was invited by violinist and Maestro Alberto Lysy to study with him at the renowned Menuhin Academy;

his entrance exam at the first school in Romania was a piece of the composer Camille Saint-Saëns, he states‘I have a personal memory of Saint-Saëns, I had to enter a his concerto in the school in Romania. If I would not have passed this exam I would have stopped the violin.’

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completed his professional studies with Miss Dorothy De-Lay in New York at the Julliard School, where he also actively participated in Master Classes with Itzakh Perlman;

currently a professor at the Menuhin Academy in Switzer-land;

was previously performing on a 1676 ‘Guarneri’ violin and is now playing a ‘Stradivarius’ sponsored by the Royal Con-certgebouw Orchestra;

recorded many CDs with Camerata Lysy, as well as his own debut CD featuring works by Gluck and Saint-Saens with pianist Luc Devos.

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violinistCraiovaRoyal ConcertgebouwAlberto LysyMenuhin AcademycomposerCamille Saint-SaensDorothy DeLayJulliard SchoolItzakh PerlmanGuarneriStradivariusGluckLuc Devos

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CRAIOVA

is Romanias sixth largest city and capital of Dolj County, is situated near the east bank of the river Jiu;

1 2 place of birth of violinist Liviu Prunaru.

violinistLiviu Prunaru

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ROYAL CONCERTGEBOUW

Dutch ‘Koninklijk Concertge-bouworkest’, is a symphony orchestra of the Netherlands, based in Amsterdam;

1988 Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands conferred the ‘Royal’ title upon the orches-tra;

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in December 2008, a group of top critics invited by the ‘Gramophone Magazine’ ranked the Royal Concertge-bouw Orchestra as the top symphony orchestra in the world;

among many other members as, Liviu Prunaru leads the Orchestra as a concertmaster.

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Liviu Prunaru

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VIRTUOSO

from Italian virtuoso, Late Latin virtuosus, Latin virtus meaning skill, manliness, excellence;

2 is an individual who pos-sesses outstanding technical ability at singing or playing a musical instrument; the plural form is virtuosi.

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musical instrument

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VOICEMAIL OF LIVU PRUNARU

on his voicemail Liviu Prunaru plays the violin proving his dedication to the instrument.

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Liviu Prunaruviolin

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ALBERTO LYSY

*born in Buenos Aires, 1935-2009;

at age five, his father intro-duced him to the violin; Lysy left school at age 13 to devote more time to the instrument, and was subsequently trained;

3 studied together with Liviu Prunaru at the Menuhin Academy; Liviu bemoaned the death of his maestro and dedicated the pieces ‘Midnight Bells’ by Heuberger-Kreisler and ‘Melodie’ by Christoph Wil-libald Ritter von Gluck shortly after his death to him.

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violinLiviu PrunaruMenuhin AcademyMidnight BellsHeubergerKreislerMelodieChristoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck

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HTTP://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=FHZKWS3DVH4&HD=1

link to a performance of Liviu Prunaru playing Midnight Bells by Heuberger-Kreisler, dedicated by himself to his de-ceased maestro Alberto Lysy, using the Internet platform facebook.com.

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Liviu PrunaruMidnight BellsHeubergerKreislerAlberto Lysyfacebook.com

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RICHARD FRANZ JOSEPH HEUBERGER

*born in Graz, Austria, 1850-1914;

2 was an Austrian composer of operas and operettas, a mu-sic critic, and teacher.

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composer

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FRIEDRICH KREISLER

*born in Vienna, Austria, 1875-1962;

was a violin virtuoso and or-chestral composer;

3 one of the most famous violin masters of his day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing.

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HTTP://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=OUDBKUVNAEC&HD=1

link to a performance of Liviu Prunaru together with Luc Devos on the piano play-ing ‘Melodie’ by Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck, dedicated by himself to his de-ceased maestro Alberto Lysy, using the Internet platform facebook.com.

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Liviu PrunaruLuc DevosChristoph Willibald Ritter von GluckAlberto Lysyfacebook.com

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CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD RITTER VON GLUCK

*born in Erasbach, Germany, 1714-1787;

2 counts to one of the most important opera composers of the second half of the 18th century.

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composer

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LUC DEVOS

*born in Brussels, 1960;

is a Belgian pianist;

2 recorded various CDs, he performs on one of them to-gether with Liviu Prunaru.

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Liviu Prunaru

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HTTP://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/PRUNARU?V=WALL&REF=TS

link to the facebook profile of Liviu Prunaru, who is member of this social network with 710 ‘friends’;

2 one of his friends is Philipp Weber, a committed listener of his music.

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LORD YEHUDI MENUHIN

*born in New York City, 1916 –1999;

was a violinist and conductor who spent most of his per-forming career in the United Kingdom; born to Jewish par-ents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzer-land in 1970 and of the United Kingdom in 1985;

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commonly considered one of the twentieth century’s great-est violin virtuosi;

founder of the Menuhin Acad-emy in Gstaad, Switzerland, where Liviu Prunaru studied together with Alberto Lysy.

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violinistvirtuosiLiviu PrunaruAlberto Lysy

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DOROTHY DELAY

*born in Medicine Lodge, 1917–2002;

was an American violin in-structor, primarily at the Juil-liard School;

3 she worked together with Itzhak Perlman, who both gave class to Liviu Prunaru.

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violinJulliard SchoolItzakh PerlmanLiviu Prunaru

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JULLIARD SCHOOL

located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conserva-tory;

2 informally identified as simply “Juilliard,” and trains about 800 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music.

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ITZHAK PERLMAN

*born in Jaffa, 1945;

is an Israeli American vio-lin virtuoso, conductor, and master-instructor; one of his students was Liviu Prunaru;

3 widely considered as one of the preeminent violin virtuosi of the 20th century; played during the entertainment at the state dinner attended by Queen Elizabeth II on May 7, 2007, in the East Room at the White House.

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COMPOSER

is a person who creates mu-sic, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpre-tation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through elec-tronic media;

the preservation of individual compositions did not receive enormous attention and musi-cians generally had no qualms about modifying composi-tions for performance; over time, however, the written notation of the composer came to be treated as strict instructions from which performers should not devi-ate without good practical or artistic reason;

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performers do, however, play the music and interpret it in a way that is all their own; in fact, in the concerto form, the soloist would often compose and perform a cadenza as a way to express their individual interpretation of the piece;

a term that is often used to refer to composers of instru-mental music, such as those found in classical, jazz or other forms of art and tradi-tional music.

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musical notation

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MUSICAL NOTATION

is any system which repre-sents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols;

originated in European classi-cal music and is now used by musicians of many different genres throughout the world;

the system uses a five-line staff; pitch is shown by place-ment of notes on the staff, and duration is shown with differ-ent note values and additional symbols such as dots and ties;

is read from left to right, which makes setting music for right-to-left scripts difficult;

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a staff of written music gener-ally begins with a clef; follow-ing the clef, the key signature on a staff indicates the key of the piece by specifying cer-tain notes to be flat or sharp throughout the piece, unless otherwise indicated; following the key signature is the time signature; measures or bars divide the piece into groups of beats, and the time signatures specify those groupings;

directions to the player regard-ing matters such as tempo and dynamics are added above or below the staff;

for ensembles, a ‘score’ shows music for all players together, while ‘parts’ contain only the music played by an individual musician.

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CLEF

french meaning ‘key’, is a mu-sical symbol used to indicate the pitch of written notes;

placed on one of the lines at the beginning of the staff in a musical notation;

5 indicates the position of one particular note on the staff; the treble or G clef was origi-nally a letter G and it identi-fies the second line up on the five line staff as the note G above middle C; the bass or F clef shows the position of the note F below middle C; the C-clef indicates the position of middle C.

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NOTE

is a character, variously formed, to indicate the length of a tone, and variously placed upon the staff in a musical notation to indicate its pitch;

2 a musical sound; a tone; an utterance; a tune.

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musical notation

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CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS

*born in Paris, France, 1835-1921;

was a French composer, organ-ist, conductor, and pianist, known especially for ‘The Car-nival of the Animals’, ‘Danse macabre’, ‘Havanaise’, ‘Intro-duction and Rondo capriccioso’;

his aunt introduced Saint-Saëns to the piano, and began giving him lessons on the instrument; at about this time, aged two, Saint-Saëns was found to possess perfect pitch; his first composition, a little piece for the piano, is now kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France;

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studied composition at the ‘Conservatoire de Paris’;

gained a high reputation that resulted in his introduction to Franz Liszt, who would become one of his closest friends.

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composerThe Carnival of the AnimalsIntroduction and Rondo Capriccioso

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THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS

is a musical suite of fourteen movements by the French romantic composer Saint-Saëns; the orchestral work has a duration between 22 and 30 minutes;

2 made up of fourteen move-mentsIntroduction et marche royale du lion - Introduction and Royal March of the Lion; Poules et coqs - Hens and Roosters; Hémiones - Wild Asses;Tortues - Tortoises;L’éléphant - The Elephant;Kangourous - Kangaroos;Aquarium;Personnages à longues oreilles - Characters with long Ears;Le coucou au fond des bois - The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods;Volière - Aviary;Pianistes - Pianists;Fossiles - Fossils;Le cygne - The Swan;Finale.

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composerSaint-Saens

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INTRODUCTION AND RONDO CAPRICCIOSO

is a composition for violin and orchestra written in 1863 by Camille Saint-Saëns for the virtuoso violinist Pablo de Sara-sate; since its 19th century premiere, it has continued to be one of Saint-Saëns’ most popular compositions;

Saint-Saëns intimate knowl-edge of violin technique is obvious in the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso;

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the two most emotionally intense passages employ the use of multiple strings, empha-sizing the power and harmony of the music; a piece that releases a strong emotional reaction in many listeners such as Philipp Weber, one of the listeners enjoying this quality of the piece;

was the entrance exam of Liviu Prunaru when he applied at the music school in Roma-nia;

represents ‘The Moment Of Music’ in the exhibition The Moment Of Music by Philipp Weber.

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THE MOMENT OF MUSIC

a moment in which e.g. the violinist plays a certain music piece with his instrument;

a moment in that all informa-tion surrounding the violin, the piece of music, the player him-self and the receiver or listener gets together; the moment which reveals if the chosen materials for the instrument and the technique of making were right, if the composer could express his imagination in a way that the player can understand him or her, if the violinist does a good interpre-tation and if the listener can develop an emotional relation to the whole performance;

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the climax of the long way of music from invention and medium to interpretation and reception;

a peak in which many different processes that are dependent on each other find together.

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RECEIVER

person that listens either live or via a medium like the CD; when receiver and player hap-pen to be in the same room, i.e. the listener perceives the music live, a ‘Moment Of Mu-sic’ takes place;

2 end consumer of the music, who experiences the music with his physical and mental body.

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LISTENING

or ‘audition’, is one of the traditional five senses; it is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations via an organ such as the ear; the inability to hear is called deaf-ness.

is one of the most crucial means of survival in the ani-mal world, and speech is one of the most distinctive char-acteristics of human develop-ment and culture;

performed primarily by the au-ditory system, vibrations are detected by the ear and trans-fused into nerve impulses that are perceived by the brain;

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like touch, audition requires sensitivity to the movement of molecules in the world out-side the organism;

active listening is not just an automatic response to sounds; it requires a listener to understand, interpret, and evaluate what he or she heard; today, the ability to listen is an important skill in interperson-al communication; the book and exhibition ‘The Moment Of Music’ focuses on this ability to listen, since we are more and more overwhelmed by nowadays information and find it hard to concentrate.

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ACOUSTIC

is derived from the Greek word ‘akoustikos’, meaning ‘of or for hearing, ready to hear’ and that from ‘akoustos’, ‘heard, audible’, which in turn derives from the verb ’akouo’, “I hear”:

is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of sound, ultrasound and infra-sound, all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids;

scientists who work in the field of acoustics are acousti-cians;

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the application of acoustics in technology is called acousti-cal engineering; there is often much overlap and interac-tion between the interests of acousticians and acoustical engineers;

the science of acoustics spreads across so many facets of our society, music, medi-cine, architecture, industrial production, warfare and more; art, craft, science and tech-nology have provoked one another to advance the whole, as in many other fields of knowledge.

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hearing

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EAR

is the organ that detects sound;

2 not only acts as a receiver for sound, but also plays a major role in the sense of balance and body position; is part of the auditory system.

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body

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HUMAN BODY

the last step the music takes from its long process;

the place where music trans-forms from sound waves to a chemical-physical experience;

3 the medium in which music releases its full emotional af-fection.

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emotional affection

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PHILIPP WEBER

*born in Münster, Germany, 1987;

student of the Design Acad-emy in Eindhoven; currently studied ‘The Moment Of Music’;

3 receiver of music, listens e.g. to music played by Liviu Prunaru and written by Camille Saint-Saëns; does not yet know the difference between music played with a ‘Stradivarius’ and music played with a ‘nor-mal’ violin.

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MUSIC IN MY BODY

is a short film by Philipp We-ber, showing in which parts of the body the music is affect-ing; a tracking of the emotion-al reaction he associated with a certain moment in the music;

is a short film that goes along with a poementer me through my earscome, play in my head

a punch in the gut it crawls down my neckcaressing my skinand leaves with a tingle in my fingertips;

3 shows that music has a strong physical affection on the hu-man body.

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EMOTIONAL AFFECTION OF MUSIC

also ‘thrill’, is the chemical communication music can achieve; the music releases different hormones in the body; these hormones have a slow and long, ‘analogue’, i.e. depending on the concentra-tion, and unconscious affec-tion on the target organs;

takes place in different body parts of the receiver of music through hormones; as Philipp Weber already documented his physical experience with music in ‘Music In My Body’, every receiver has a different perception of this affection; body parts mostly affected are the scalp, face, throat, shoulders and neck, pit of the stomach and arms; resulting in goose bumps, lump in the throat or even tears;

3 emotions are aroused by the music that provokes expecta-tions, these are at their high-est when we are unexpected surprised;

an affection that mostly re-sults in a psychological experi-ence as well.

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PSYCHOLOGICAL AFFECTION OF MUSIC

can release an already experi-enced memory:

Sloboda ‘we re-live the emotional sequence that happened, the first time we heard a piece of music, whenever we hear it again.’;

3 pictures and haptics that are connected to the music will be associated every time the piece of music is heard again, mostly subconscious; there-fore music can be a medium of manipulation, but also used for therapy.

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HORMONE

is a chemical released by a cell in one part of the body, that sends out messages that af-fect cells in other parts of the organism;

only a small amount of hor-mones is required to alter cell metabolism; hormones in the human body are often transported in the blood; cells respond to a hormone when they express a specific recep-tor for that hormone; binds to the receptor protein, resulting in the activation of a signal transduction mechanism that ultimately leads to cell type-specific responses;

3 endocrine hormone mol-ecules are secreted directly into the bloodstream, while exocrine hormones or ec-tohormones are secreted directly into a duct, and from the duct they either flow into the bloodstream or they flow from cell to cell by diffusion in a process known as paracrine signalling.

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MUSIC THERAPY

aims to understand musical behavior and musical experi-ence;

is both an allied health profes-sion and a field of scientific research which studies cor-relations between the process of clinical therapy and biomu-sicology, musical acoustics, music theory, psychoacoustics and comparative musicology;

3 is an interpersonal process in which a trained music thera-pist uses music and all of its facets, physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual, to help clients to im-prove or maintain their health; music therapists primarily help clients improve their observable level of function-ing and self-reported quality of life in various domains by using music experiences, e.g. singing, song writing, listen-ing to and discussing music, moving to music, to achieve measurable treatment goals and objectives.

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