Things Beethoven Did Not Write

I may have mentioned that I play (and not terribly well) for a local orchestra. This season, I signed on to be the orchestra librarian as well. This means that, among other duties, I am responsible for unmarking music. I get to go through everyone's part after the concert and erase all the little things they've put in the margins to help them remember how to play their part.

My husband was helping me erase the other night and asked,

Why don't they just play it as it was written?

Good question. I answered that just as a scriptwriter cannot possibly include every nuance of human behavior and speech in his script (nor would we want him to), neither can, nor should, a composer script out every fine detail of the music. Music has tools that allow a composer to be more specific than perhaps a scriptwriter can be, nonetheless, there is still a little room for artistic collaboration and interpretation. And of course emphasis and clarification.

And further, as became obvious as I was cleaning the Beethoven parts, Beethoven did not have the colorful range of musical terminology we employ in this day and age.

Now, I consider myself quite fluent in Italian and this has come in very handy in understanding musical terminology. It does not however, help me very much in understanding some of the notes I recently erased. Here is but a sampling of the personal touches added by musicians in this little orchestra:

A violinist reminding himself to play at the tip of his bow might write: Tip
An extra enthusiastic violinist my also write: Tippy-Tip or the more heartfelt Tip-o-rama.

There is also the obvious: No Sleeping Here!

The particularly descriptive: BLASTING!!!

Or, so you don't forget, you might scrawl in 1-inch letters across the top of the piece, the handy reminder:

DYNAMICS ARE EVERYTHING!!!

Perhaps you want to scare yourself into paying attention. You could pencil in: BOO!!

If the notes on the page are not sufficient, you can add: Yes, we can play here.

Being a violinist, I don't have much understanding of how a woodwind instrument is played, but apparently a handy reminder is: Tongue!

To get your point across to yourself, you can always opt for short, yet descriptive words such as HUGE! or BOOM!!

Or, if you respond better to such things, vulgarity is apparently an option: F***ING LOUD!!! . . . and here I always thought ff meant fortissimo.

And lest we forget that all musicians, even the trumpets, need occasional positive encouragement, one can always make a musical record of nice things the conductor has said:

10-28 9:36 pm "Brass, that was Good!"

And my personal favorite, simply because I have no idea what it means, let alone how to say it in Italian:

Release the Penguins.

Yes, please do.