I'm currently learning "On The Shores of Italy", which is a beautiful song that I can't wait to upload. Unfortunately, work, even if it's waiting tables, must come first! In any case, while looking it over for the sightread, I got curious about what the tempo means, which leads to me to present the first edition of The Appleton Sound's Useless Facts!
Tempo di Valse --
What I know: This is a common waltz tempo, although it doesn't actually indicate what metronomic beat is which is a bit frustrating. It literally translates as "tempo of a waltz". What that means is that the conductor should conduct the piece in 2. Seeing as how this song is in 3/4, that means each measure constitutes a beat as opposed to three beats a measure. Knowing this is rather useless for this piece, seeing as there is, unfortunately, no orchestra and it is just me, I feel like I can measure out a song however I want in order to keep the beat, though my internal metronome does do it in two as Tempo di Valse asks. I just sort of wish I had a BPM just to make sure I'm not taking it too fast or too slow.
Useless things I didn't know (but probably should have...): Tempo di Valse isn't actually Italian. Well, it sort of is... The di alone siginifies that me, but only because French is de la, du, and des. I don't actually know Spanish or Portugeuse to know if that's the case in those languages though I'm almost positive that Spanish is exclusively de. In any case, directions in music are usually written in Italian. So where is the useless fact? Well, the world valse is supposed to mean waltz, but it's spelled v-a-l-z-e in Italian. Valse, or valser is the French spelling.
So, that, my friends, is my useless fact. For some reason, Tempo di Valse spells valze wrong.
The more you know...
No comments:
Post a Comment