COMING in 2023 from GIA

Music is More than Technique: A Guide to Why and How

The title and premise of this book, taken from an episode of the Muppets television show in which the violin virtuoso Piganini learns that his prized scale exercises are not really music, makes the case that all musical performance must be more than technique. All performance must transcend the technical. A proficiency of correct rhythms, unified articulation, blended timbres, and relative adherence to score markings are not enough. Performance must go beyond what is printed to reveal what is behind the notation and reveal the character of the music—the expressiveness of it. Quotations from primary sources will testify that expressive performance was a valued and essential element in every historical era and examples of repertoire of the eras will be used to amplify the quotations, with references made to art forms other than music that demonstrate the concinnity of all the arts, both musical and visual.