As much as I am hesitant to jump in between two pretty smart guys, when it comes to music, I feel I’m obliged. Jay Nordlinger chides those who pronounce the word forte, to mean a strength or prime skill, the same way they’d pronounce the musical term forte. He says that the first word, which is French, should be pronounced “fort” and not “for-TAY” as we pronounce the Italian word.
Ed Morrissey disagrees and, on the pronunciation, I think he has the right of it. I don’t agree with the way he explains the meaning of the musical term forte.
First, forte in Italian primarily means “strong”, even musically. Piano means “soft”, not quiet, and mezzo-forte means moderately strong, not primarily moderately loud. The terms relate to how the music is played by the musician more than the volume control, which is admittedly a subtle distinction. At least, that’s how I learned it when studying music in my childhood, and the Collier’s dictionary supports the interpretation of my music instructors.
I’d correct his use of the words “is played” to “was played”. When the primary instrument most often heard was the piano, this was true. In order to create dynamic range on a piano, you hae to strike the keys with varying degrees of force. Thus, the dynamic terms (those that indicate volume) referred to how hard you needed to strike the keys. The terms forte and piano referred to the specific mechanics instead of the player’s interpretation. That was so largely because, when the piano was first invented and named, there was no such thing as individual musical interpretation.
Go back and listen to early instrumental music. It was all played at pretty much the same volume. Interpretation didn’t matter, only form and the intertwining of melodies (in polyphonic music) or of melody and harmony (in homophonic music).
Once the piano made its appearance, composers had a new tool – dynamic range. The problem is that all the players were used to playing the harpsichord, which didn’t have a dynamic range. You could strike the keys hard and get pretty much the same volume as if you struck them lightly. So pianists had to be instructed by the composer how to play passages sofer or louder. Thus the use of piano, forte, and all the other dynamic markings to tell them to hit the keys harder of softer.
The terms changed, though, with the advent of more varied musical instruments and with individual musical interpretation. Telling a musician to play a note “strong” made much less sense on a clarinet or a trumpet. Musicians and composers then changed the way they used the words from a mechanical instruction to an interpretive one. “Strong” became “loud” and “soft” became “quiet”. That made a lot more sense and it didn’t bother the pianists, who had figured out the whole “if I hit the keys hard, the sound will be loud” thing. Interpreting forte as “loud” also allowed for other ways of playing music loudly, such as singing forte but expressivo (expressively) or grazioco (gracefully). “Loud” made more sense, as it’s a lot more difficult to figure out how to sing a passage with strength and grace. Likewise, using piano to mean “soft” makes sense when you have to sing a passage piano con agitato (softly, with agitation) like you might hear at the beginning of Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi in Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (at the :25 mark). (As a side note, percussionists dream of hitting a cymbal crash like the guy did at the :21 mark. He was in Heaven right there.)
And if composers want musicians to perform the music forcefully, there’s always the direction con forza (with force).
So, yes, Ed is technically correct, at least in a time when pianos were the King of the Instruments and dynamic variation was a new and exciting thing in music. Today, though, the musical forte means something different.
Was that geeky enough for everyone?
Tags: Ed Morrissey, Jay Nordlinger, Music
