Consider the following:
"Comparatively few instrumentalists, professional or amateur, actually perform in a manner that audibly differentiates among the six dynamics "
"To judge by Lehman's data, Boston Symphony bassoonists, at least, would be prone to accept or even encourage a limited dynamic range in their pupils' performance."
"Perhaps as far as this instrument is concerned (the oboe), a convention could be established so that the three notations pianissimo, piano and mezzo-piano would be played at the oboist's soft level, and the notations mezzo-forte, forte and fortissimo would be played at the loud level. I personally would prefer to see the integrity of the time-honored system of (dynamic mark) notation preserved by developing more skilled oboists."
The above sentences appeared in an article titled "MUSICAL DYNAMICS" by Blake Patterson, which appeared in the November, 1974 issue of The Scientific American magazine. Do these statements seem scientific to you? They certainly seem most assured.
Most scientists propose ideas as theories, not necessarily as final judgments. In the cases of successful theories, other scientists perform the same or similar experiments in order to determine the repeatability or validity of the first scientist's theory. When validity is found with subsequent testing of a theory, it is then often stated as a scientific fact--but not always. Consider studies of the nature of the universe, for example. Scientists are for the most part cautious in their assertions. In the cases of unsuccessful theories, the original theory is determined to be invalid because the same results cannot be repeated time and again. It is particularly important among scientists that personal views and subjective attitudes be kept to a minimum or excluded altogether, to preserve the clarity and logic of the scientific investigation.
It is my sincere opinion that the author, Blake Patterson (an acoustical scientist and avocational bassoonist), has not approached his subject in a scientific manner. He has included many statements of personal bias in this article. He has propounded some questionable value judgments about professional and non-professional performing musicians which I believe can be refuted on both scientific and musical-artistic grounds. It is my intention to analyze Mr. Patterson's proposals and to suggest that he may be quite wrong in many of his summations.
I will retain the progression of the article in question, including the reasoning which seems to have led to the author's quoted statements, taken from context at the beginning of this paper. I suggest in addition that interested readers of this IDRS Journal locate the November, 1974 issue of The Scientific American magazine and read Mr. Patterson's article in its entirety, so as to judge for themselves the accuracy of my comments.
1. The author points out the importance of dynamics and dynamic contrast by comparing the dullness of "canned music" heard in stores and restaurants with the great interest of a symphony orchestra performing Beethoven's Violin Concerto with a fine soloist in a live performance. He mentions that in the concert, at one point the strings and woodwinds barely whisper and at other times they almost shout. Mr. Patterson tells us that the brass and percussion instruments of course (my underline) produce louder sounds. We should remember this statement when we examine the comparison of woodwind dynamics with brass instrument dynamics later in the article.
Comment on 1. Yes, canned music is dull, annoying, sometimes even infuriating, especially to musicians trained to listen carefully and critically to all musical sounds. It is not just the single mezzo-forte dynamic level of canned music which causes us to dislike this ubiquitous weapon from the arsenal of commerce. The actual selections of music are often insipid and dull. And the arrangements are equally vexing. For example, Beethoven's Ninth, last movement with rock band accompaniment, or Mozart's A Minor piano sonata popularized for the hundredth time. The instrumentalists used often play very sloppily: "gliding" violins, and saxophonists doubling on oboe or English horn, sounding out of tune with poor tone quality and incorrect musical expression. All these factors contribute, as much as a steady dynamic level, to our dislike for this kind of "Musak."
Of course, listening to a symphony orchestra playing Beethoven's Violin Concerto in a concert hall will be much more interesting and worthwhile. Just compare the genius of the composer with that of the composers and arrangers of the pap we hear in canned music. Beethoven in particular was noted for scoring sudden and dramatic contrasts in dynamic levels. But let us not forget how important to him was the coloristic variation he used in long solos to individual woodwind instruments and in treating the woodwind family as a separate instrumental choir; his use of the clear, sweet solo violin against the sound of the entire orchestra. Music which contains huge variations between dynamic levels but which fails to contain concurrent strong thematic purpose or form will also become painfully dull, even when played by a great symphony orchestra.
2. Patterson illustrates a page of the conductor's score to Brahms' Symphony No. 2 which includes markings, he says, for "all six" of the standard levels of musical dynamics. He remarks that, "Brahms demands that the players perform at each of the six standard levels . . ."
Comment on 2. Standard levels of musical dynamics is such an inappropriate term. The fortissimo level of loudness which Haydn and Mozart indicated was somewhat softer than Beethoven's fortissimo and markedly less loud than Stravinsky's (see "le Sacre du Printemps") or Richard Strauss's (see "Ein Heldenleben"). And no composer demands anything, after all. Music is a cooperative art between friends: composers and performers alike. Conductors and symphony musicians try to be as faithful to the markings of the score as possible. But stylistic knowledge and room acoustics sometimes mandate departures from the printed markings. No brass section is going to hold a long tutti chord fortissimo--in a Beethoven Symphony - while the violins are playing a much more important melodic line. Their blind (and deaf) adherence to the precise markings of the score in these instances would completely mask the beauty of the violin line. The common solution to this balance problem is for the brass and woodwind players to strike these accompanying chords at fortissimo and then to immediately diminuendo to a forte or softer for the duration of each chord.
In the Brahms Symphony example, Mr. Patterson failed to mention a seventh dynamic indication on his sample page from the score: the sforzato given to the contrabasses in the first bar of the example! Although this is a direction for a louder than usual attack-- for one note only in this instance -- the general dynamic level of this note is neither forte nor fortissimo. It is a note of accent which has 3 dynamic levels technically: loud attack, less loud duration (achieved by an instant diminuendo after the attack), and a decay which contains its own natural diminuendo. Much more importantly, at bars 8 and 9 of the example the first clarinet and first bassoon are marked. But they are the only two instruments in the orchestra to be playing the melody at this time. So, depending on the good or poor stage and room acoustics, the clarinetist and bassoonist might play at one of several actual dynamics in order to have the audience perceive the clarinet and bassoon tone as Brahm's "mezzo-piano." First, the players would always differentiate between a mezzo-piano accompanying line (softer) and a mezzo-piano solo line (louder), even under ideal acoustic circumstances. In Chicago's Orchestra Hall, which has a quite live stage and an equally efficient concert hall acoustic, the Chicago Symphony clarinetist and bassoonist might perform this soli passage at an actual mezzo-forte (general) dynamic -- to be heard by the audience as a solo mezzo-piano. On the other hand, in another major orchestra (for example Pittsburgh or Los Angeles), playing Brahms' Second on tour in a large movie theater with very dead acoustics and where 40% or more of the orchestra's sound power is going straight upwards because there is no shell over the top of the orchestra to focus the sound and to help reflect it out to the audience, the clarinetist and bassoonist will have to play this same passage at a forte or piu forte level in order to be heard at all!
In other words, orchestra players interpret the written dynamic markings both according to the historical period in which the music was written and according to the existing acoustical conditions of a given performance. Part of the conductor's responsibility also, is to be aware of any acoustical problems in a concert hall and to guide the musicians (sections or individuals) to play more loudly or softly than usual in order that the audience may perceive the dynamic balances and gradations indicated in the music.
From the logic of the Patterson article, I have the distinct impression that the author believes musicians should play every note of a passage at the same "indicated" dynamic level--either all piano or all forte, etc. He mentions that because strong dynamic contrasts create so much of the drama in music, it is hardly surprising that composers have "invented" (sic.) symbols to indicate the levels of loudness they wish the performers "to achieve." Is music some kind of a power struggle or a competition to "get to" a loudness level or a softness level? No. Musicians know that all music and certainly every melodic line has many gradations of loudness which follow the intensity rise and fall of the composer's musical thought. A player who unthinkingly plays every note in a phrase at a constantly loud or at a completely soft dynamic level is no musician at all. He is only a musical mechanic.
3. There is a reference to the importance of dynamic contrasts in relation to individual instruments. Patterson contends that the recorder was superseded by the transverse flute principally on grounds of its limited capacity for dynamic variation. He also feels that the harpsichord was eclipsed for the same reason, because of its "very limited potential for variations in loudness."
Comment on 3. Unwittingly, I think, Mr. Patterson has used one expression in this section which does explain the primary reason for the recorder's demise (in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, that is). "Because of its superior expressiveness, the transverse flute quickly eclipsed the recorder and has remained the standard orchestral flute since the time of Mozart." Here, I think, Patterson considers the term "superior expressiveness" as a description of superior dynamic range. But, in fact, the transverse flute has another advantage over the recorder, and that is its capacity for tone color variation, which is very important to expressive playing--at least as important as is dynamic range. The recorder is limited in tone color variety because of the wooden fipple which keeps the player's flexible lips far from the point of initiation of the sound. With the transverse flute, the player's lips rest against the embouchure hole and so may exert a very important effect on the timbre or tone color of the instrument. Composers and audiences of the period were just beginning to seek out greater expressive content, especially in solo performance. So the recorder lost out really on two counts, equally important. So many elements of music are vital to excellence that it seems simplistic that anyone could attach such singular importance to dynamic flexibility alone.
Now that the recorder has come back into popularity in the second half of the present century, we are learning many things about the capabilities of this 18th century instrument. The Dutch recorder virtuoso, Frans Bruggen recently made a recording on which he played 17 different museum instruments which were constructed in the Baroque period. He comments that each of these period instruments is superior in several ways to the modern copies made by most of the well-known firms. This is because the modern recorders, for the most part, are produced by machine operations: the bore is precisely cut and each tone hole is drilled with clean sharp edges. On the period instruments, Bruggen discovered that the bores were made with hand tools only and have important irregularities which improve the resonating characteristics of the instruments. The tone holes are carefully under-cut and are modified with rounded edges. Bruggen states that each of these over two-hundred-year-old recorders has a much larger range of dynamic levels than has almost every make of contemporary recorder. Professional recorder players all know additional fingerings which give flatter or sharper pitch to individual notes. With these fingerings they can increase breath pressures substantially or decrease breath pressures substantially to permit louder or softer playing of most notes than is possible with only the common fingerings. The recorder still has the drawback of a limited range of tone color variation. It is my opinion that this is a greater problem today, for the recorder, than is the one of limited dynamic range.
The harpsichord is capable of great contrasts in dynamic range. The large solo instruments of the 18th Century and their well-made 20th-Century copies are capable of producing the barest whisper of sound (with lute stop); of playing many progressively louder sounds in stepped-up levels; and of successfully drowning out a rather large body of other instruments (as in concerto performances) when octave coupling and full use of registration is employed. The pianoforte has a much greater range of dynamic shadings and coloristic devices than has the harpsichord. With progressively stronger or lighter finger, wrist and arm action, the piano can execute effective crescendi and diminuendi -- and with the sostenuto pedal, the piano can hold single notes and chords for a much longer time than can the harpsichord. These differences made the piano a more expressive instrument at the dawn of the Romantic Period of music. The expressive possibilities of the piano, more than any dynamic limitations of the harpsichord, made the piano a much more popular instrument at that time in musical history.
4. Discussing the Bell Telephone Laboratories' pioneer experiments in the nature of human response to sounds, Patterson mentions that researchers found that a listener can perceive an intensity change (sound power change) as small as .3 of a decibel, which is not more than a 4% increase in vibrational amplitude. Then Patterson states that to recognize changes of loudness in a musical context is much more difficult because of more than one instrument playing at the same time and because of "background noise." At no time in the article, incidentally, is the importance of room acoustics mentioned.
Comment on 4. I agree with the Bell researchers that listeners can indeed perceive very small increments of sound intensity. Concert-goers' ears are very sensitive, and I believe they can hear sound power changes of quite subtle and complicated nature during musical performances. I don't believe they want to be or need to be hit over the head with massive changes of sound power, especially from instruments which are normally quieter instruments.
Composers too are aware of the perception of loudness and of the relative sound power possibilities of the various orchestral instruments. When Ravel or Stravinsky ("Daphnis" and "Sacre") created solos for the alto flute in its lowest register, where the sound power is rather low, they thinned out the accompanying instrumentation to assure that the alto flute would be heard. They also expected alto flutists to listen to the acoustical nature of the given concert hall and to adjust their solo tone dynamic level to its requirements. Just as in the Brahms Symphony example, with clarinet and bassoon, the players must help recreate the composers' conception of balance. Sometimes this means playing softer than the indicated dynamic, and sometimes it means playing much louder. Naturally there are many, many examples where the written dynamic indication is played just as marked --because that dynamic level fits the circumstance
In the symphonies of Robert Schumann, some melodic lines and secondary voice parts have been doubled by instruments in several sections. This is called "thick" scoring. Schumann was not as experienced in orchestration as were Berlioz and Stravinsky, for example. So, in performing Schumann, both conductors and players must employ their sensibilities to the nature of the music and adjust dynamic levels upwards or downwards to allow a clear delineation of the thematic material. If this alteration is not done, a very muddy interpretation results. We see that symphony musicians do not play each dynamic marking always at a certain volume, pre-determined in a mechanical or scientific way. Music is not like that.
5. The author gives data from a 1962 study of Dr. Paul Lehman at the University of Michigan. This experiment was made with the cooperation of 11 professional bassoonists. Each player, sitting in an anechoic chamber (a room devoid of echoes) was recorded in the performance of a chromatic scale from low B1-flat to high C" --two times; once at a "steady" pianissimo and once at a "steady" fortissimo. Patterson states that the players "probably" found their usual comfortable ranges for pianissimo and for fortissimo (as played in the orchestra), and then settled on these levels for playing each of the chromatic scales. The orchestras represented were Boston, Berlin, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Detroit. Each player was given a letter name for purposes of anonymity for this study.
About one of the players -- "C" -- Patterson shows by chart that he used the least dynamic range of the eleven players. He also notes that player "C" varied as much as 9 decibels in difference between some notes when attempting to play an all-pianissimo scale or an all-fortissimo scale. Patterson then intimates that this is exactly how the same player would perform with his home orchestra: he states, "Nonetheless, the 'smoothness' of player C's performance satisfies audiences, conductors and colleagues."
Comment on 5. Anechoic chambers and acoustically damped recording studios also are anathema to artistic musicians. Dr. Arthur H. Benade, in his new book, "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics" (New York-London: Oxford University Press. 1976), states that although anechoic chambers can sometimes simplify the analysis of recorded sound by live instrumentalists, playing in one makes the players feel frustrated and insecure. Benade points out that almost universally, listeners can discriminate small changes of pitch, loudness or tone color immensely better in a room than under more acoustically sterile surroundings. In "Music, Sound and Sensation" by Fritz Winckel (New York: Dover 1967), the author mentions a common problem of singers when they test their voices in a new recital hall in preparation for a performance. The singers experience great feelings of uneasiness if they do not hear the reflection of their sounds returning to them at a rate or volume which seems natural to them. This in turn affects the production of the next sounds in a negative way because of the singers' feelings of insecurity.
The same psychological distress is often felt by symphony musicians when they play in acoustically dampened concert halls. If this is true in a concert situation, imagine the musician's uneasiness in a room totally devoid of echoes! It is analogous to placing a live rose in a test glass jar, with half the water it needs and shining the light from a very dim bulb on it. In a short while the rose would fade and shrivel up, if it did not die outright. If Mr. Patterson were to comment on this analogous experiment, he might suggest that the rose would look just as lifeless in a properly cared for rose garden out of doors! It seems quite unscientific and unfair for an assumption to be made about a professional bassoonist's usual mode of performance with his orchestra, based upon a brief "unreal" situation where the player performs two chromatic scales in a "dead" room
Additionally there is a musical problem for any performer who attempts to play an extended scale of notes at a constant dynamic level. A scale in music, whether it be diatonic, chromatic, whole-tone or otherwise, has a particular shape involving some variation in tension and relaxation. To artificially attempt playing almost the complete range of the bassoon at either pianissimo or fortissimo should seem very unmusical to the orchestra player.
For a more realistic test of the dynamic range variations of a group of bassoonists (or other instrumentalists) I would suggest the following:
i) Select a concert hall with recognizably efficient acoustical properties (the University of Michigan's Hill Auditorium would be fine, as would Boston's Symphony Hall and New York's Carnegie Hall or any other "successful" concert hall).
ii) Have each test musician sit in a chair placed on the stage at the usual position for that instrument in the orchestra seating plan. For the bassoon, this would be at least half the distance between the conductor's podium and the back of the (imagined) orchestra. The musician would then have his usual points of reference in terms of projection of his sound to the edge of the stage and out into the concert hall.
iii) Place the test recording equipment, including microphone(s), somewhere in the hall itself; NOT on stage in close proximity to the player. We want the audience's listening level, not (approximately) the performer's.
iv) Have each musician perform examples from the orchestral literature for his instrument, concentrating on passages which include various dynamic levels.
Some possible examples (for bassoon) might be:
(a) pppppp: -- The passage so marked by P. Tchaikovsky in his Sixth Symphony for the bassoon solo which completes the clarinet diminuendo in Movement 1. (This solo is often played by the bass clarinet which can perform at the barest whisper of sound more easily than can the bassoon. But I have personally played this solo many times on bassoon as have many other professional bassoonists.) The bassoonists should be allowed to use any mutes specially trimmed reeds, and/or special fingerings they would normally use when playing this very soft passage. Another super-quiet moment in this Symphony's first movement could also be tested: it occurs during an earlier clarinet statement of the theme, where the bassoons form part of the dream-like accompaniment. The first bassoon alternates between d and f or f# The f# is usually played with the f# trill key to be as soft as possible at the diminuendo which ends this passage. These two samples might represent the very softest playing usually required for bassoons.
(b) pp:--The opening passage of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" Overture (six measures and one note).
(c) p:--The opening solo of Stravinsky's "le Sacre du Printemps."
(d) mp: --The first solo passage (normally with clarinet) in movement I of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony.
(e) mf: -- The second phrase (with eleven high d " flats) of the bassoon solo in Ravel's "Bolero."
(f) f: -- The bassoon duet from Bizet's "Carmen."
(g) piu forte: (a common dynamic not included in the "six standard" dynamics of Patterson) -- The opening bassoon solo statement of Mozart's Concerto for Bassoon, K. 191. Although it would disturb the uniformity of the test, a more realistic position for the player in performing this example would be near the edge of the stage and standing.
(h) fortissimo: --The first bassoon part to the soli bassoon section passage in Shostakovitch's Fifth Symphony, movement II (at No. 50 - especially measures 9 through 13 of this passage).
(i) "con tutta forza" or "molto fortissimo" -- The bassoon part of a tutti orchestral passage so marked at the dramatic finale of one of the big operas (Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," for example). Composers occasionally indicate this super-loud dynamic one or the other - when they want the maximum level of dynamic power from each instrument in the orchestra, compatible with reasonable tone quality and maintaining the gradations of loudness variation implied by the musical lines.
At one point in his article Patterson contends that "most" woodwind players elect a safe mezzo-forte rather than risk a note's not speaking and that they "never try to play a real pianissimo in public."
This may be so for amateur performers who practice and perform at infrequent intervals. Such players have weaker lip and facial muscles than those of professional woodwind players. Their instruments are usually not in as optimum repair either with even reasonable air-tight sealing of pads and joints. These factors will limit the dynamic range possibilities of any woodwind. Why didn't Patterson explain the importance of this? Every professional's livelihood depends upon it.
Considering the very wide range of loudness levels required to perform the above examples, I am quite certain that most professional bassoonists (naturally including every one of the players tested by Lehman in 1962 at The University of Michigan) would record an excellent range between their softest sub-pianissimo and their loudest "molto fortissimo."
6. The author describes two series of tests performed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology "in the 60's." These involved "talented amateurs" from the Boston area. Among the instruments recorded were: all the orchestral stringed instruments, the woodwinds of the wind quintet plus English horn, and of the brasses - horn, trumpet, trombone and tuba. According to Patterson, the first tests, by Melville Clark and Paul Milner, imply that musically competent listeners could not determine by listening to variations in timbre alone, the original loudness levels of tones recorded at either pianissimo mezzo-forte or fortissimo and then played back at only one dynamic level. The second experiment, by Melville Clark and David Luce, involved - from the original playing group - violin, double-bass, flute clarinet horn, trumpet, trombone and tuba. As in the Lehman test with bassoonists, these musicians were asked to play chromatic scales at all-pianissimo and at all-fortissimo dynamic levels.
Patterson states that the players performed at "pp" and "ff" levels that each subjectively thought to be appropriate for "typical orchestra music." Mentioning that many of these players could not maintain the same dynamic level throughout these chromatic scales, Patterson suggests possible reasons for as much as a 5 decibel spread away from the intended dynamic level. Players may hear a distortion of some of the sounds they produce, either because of vibrations transmitted to their ears through the facial tissues or head, or because of resonant effects of wooden plates and cavities (strings). The results indicate to the author (Patterson) that no player in either of the M.I.T. tests recorded a dynamic range with as great as a 30 decibel difference in sound power. This 30 db difference is the minimum required separation for "adequate" perception by the audience in a concert hall, according to Patterson's preference.
Comment on 6. Again, Patterson is comparing apples with airplanes. He fails to mention the laboratory circumstances for the M.I.T. tests. Did these players perform in an anechoic chamber also? Even if they played in a more acoustically natural room setting, I feel that the performance of chromatic scales all at one dynamic level or another would cause feelings of unmusicality to enter the players' thinking. This alone could consciously or, unconsciously lead the players to instinctively inflect some changes in loudness.
There is no "typical orchestra music" as described. Merely compare the dynamic loudness of a Haydn fortissimo with a fortissimo by Dmitri Shostakovitch, for instance!
Patterson here makes a rather unfair innuendo as he compares the results of the Lehman test in Ann Arbor with the results of the M.I.T. Clark-Luce test. Since the bassoonists performing in the Boston test "probably" studied with members of the Boston Symphony bassoon section, and because one of the Boston Symphony bassoonists was among the eleven tested by Lehman in Ann Arbor, Patterson suggests "somewhat invidiously" (in his words) that BSO bassoon teachers would accept or even encourage a limited dynamic range from their pupils. Perhaps a more gentlemanly and a more scientific way of finding this out would be for the author to ask Boston Symphony bassoonists if this is indeed the case. He might also ascertain for certain that the bassoonists who participated in the M.I.T. test were actually students of these professionals.
In regard to the players possibly receiving a distorted impression of the loudness of some of the tones they produce due to the acoustical and physical factors mentioned by Patterson, I agree that some differences possibly are caused in this manner. But, as more and more student and professional instrumentalists are making use of tape recorders to record their rehearsals and concerts - and so can hear examples of their playing as heard from a distance performers can be more assured that the tone they are producing is achieving the results they desire and which the composers have asked.
7. Mr. Patterson asks if greater dynamic differences (than appeared in the Lehman and M.I.T. tests) are possible. Is a 30 decibel range possible, (which he insists should be minimal for all instruments)?
He replies that by testing quite a few amateurs (including himself on bassoon), he found that all could play a dynamic range of from 30 to 40 decibels. The instruments tested were violin, double-bass, flute, bassoon, trumpet and trombone. He does not state the acoustical conditions under which these tests were made.
He mentions a performance by Isaac Stern of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with orchestra. He suggests that the vast difference in dynamic range employed by Mr. Stern may have reached 50 decibels (a scientist guessing? in a scientific magazine article?). This would mean the equivalency of a fortissimo which was 100,000 times more powerful than his pianissimo. "The effect enthralled his audience," is the author's remark.
Comments on 7. Did the author test these performers in anechoic chambers? If not, can he compare their results with the Lehman test, for example? He does. Were these performers playing without extreme distortion of tone quality at the loud end of the dynamic scale? Patterson claims that special fingerings and trimming of his reeds (bassoon) permit him to play louder and softer than "is normally done." Professional bassoonists use special fingerings also and scrape reeds for soft or loud special effects. But even with normal fingerings and average reeds, most professional bassoonists play with a very wide range of sound power. Force of air has much to do with increases of sound power. X-ray photographs of the lungs of professional wind instrument players often show a much larger lung capacity than is average for non-musicians of the same body size. This is as a result of the wind musicians utilizing their lungs very strongly both for rapid inhalation of air and for controlled, steady and strong exhalation during playing.
Does music exist solely as a vehicle to see who can play the loudest or softest? Did the audience listening to Isaac Stern in the Beethoven concerto leave the auditorium thinking, "Wow! He played 100,000 times louder in his fortissimo than in his pianissimo passages!"? Or did they perhaps go home thinking, "What a beautiful and lovely performance of that great work of art! "?
8. Finally, the author determines that the woodwinds of the orchestra demonstrate the least amount of dynamic range of all the instruments. And the oboe is the most offending of all. Patterson alludes that "the findings of Clark and Luce" suggest that oboists seldom achieve a dynamic range of more than 4.7 decibels. (Remember, these were talented amateur oboists.) Next, the author prescribes a possible answer for the oboe: establish a convention of only two dynamics for oboists - one for pp. p, and mp (soft), and the other for mf, f, and ff (loud).
Comments on 8. Orchestral woodwind players have been steadily increasing their capacity for very soft and for very loud playing completely in parallel with the great improvement in the quality of all instrumental playing which has occurred during the past 50 years.
Increased awareness of great playing has been made possible through the phenomenal increase in recordings of soloists and orchestras throughout the musical world and by the international touring of these soloists and orchestras.
I know of a few oboists who could blow down Mr. Patterson's door (and argument) with their reaction to his comment about their limited range of dynamic levels. There is a very great range of sound power possible with the oboe. That is one of the reasons this instrument has been a star soloist in the orchestra ever since its introduction as a 3-keyed instrument in Lully's court orchestra. But even if the oboe cannot match the trumpet, say, or the horns of the orchestra in maximum sound power measureable on a decibel scale, why should it do so? Every instrument has its individual character, strengths and weaknesses. I would detest hearing an alto flute sound as loud as a trombone, for instance. Composers are usually very happy with the contrasts of dynamic levels produced by all members of the world's best orchestras. Why does Mr. Patterson feel that "the sky is falling" regarding dynamics?
If a professional orchestral oboist were to perform the experiment outlined in my "comment on 5.", utilizing a concert hall and stage - his usual performance surround and substituting appropriate examples from the oboe literature for each dynamic level, scientists monitoring his performance would discover a very great range of dynamic levels indeed. A much greater range than the 4.7 decibel difference suggested by Patterson, surely
To sum up: It is my opinion that Blake Patterson's entire argument misses the point, both scientifically and musically. There are many aspersions cast unnecessarily upon the performance practices of fine professional artists. There are several inconsistencies in the manner of presentation of a scientific paper as well.
There are some problems of dynamic level control present to some degree in every performance. But Mr. Patterson has not mentioned any of them. Primarily, I feel that most musicians do not make diminuendi as effectively as they make crescendi. It is psychologically much nicer to expand the tone and to remain loud (one can hear one's self so well) than it is to suppress the sound more and more. It is also a bit more physically difficult to diminish the tone gradually (on a woodwind instrument) than it is to increase the dynamic level. The very best orchestras concentrate on making the diminuendo as effective as the crescendo. This is an important factor in separating these few orchestras from the many "good and excellent" orchestras.
Another frequent dynamic problem is one of orchestral balance. The conductor should be able to encourage one section to play louder and another section to play softer to achieve the best delineation of the musical lines. Again, the top conductors are gifted in performing this important function of balancing the orchestra's sound. But not all conductors pay enough attention to this.
And, sad to say, many orchestra players are only interested in their own parts - not the total orchestral sound. Their pianissimi are too loud, not because they cannot play more softly, but because they want to hear themselves at all times. This is a psychological problem which will not be solved in an anechoic chamber. But with good inspiration from conductors and increased pride in the level of performance of each orchestra towards playing better and better (not just louder and louder), music and the listening public will benefit greatly.
I invite Mr. Blake Patterson to attend a concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra directed by Sir Georg Solti, in either New York's Carnegie Hall or Chicago's Orchestra Hall. Let him sit and listen carefully as this exceptional body of artist musicians perform with an excitement and an excellence which has seldom been equaled in the history of the symphony orchestra. Let him follow a score, if he likes, and see where all the dynamic marks appear. Within the musical sensitivities I have discussed earlier in this article I can assure him that the Chicago symphony will play from the softest to the loudest with a very large range of decibels in between - even each woodwind instrument. But additionally, the beautiful quality of that sound and what this orchestra does with the music will remain in his ears for year to come, I hope.