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5
Jun
2019
A friend recommended a YouTube performance of “The Moldau,” the great symphonic poem by Bohemian composer Bedřich Smetana. Reviews called it “a stunning performance,” as indeed it was. Especially the interplay between flutes and clarinets in the opening phrases.
But as the symphony progressed, the camera kept cutting away, for a second or two, to a lone man playing the triangle.
A triangle is perhaps the simplest of all musical instruments. It’s a bent piece of metal. It can play one note. That’s all. And yet the person playing that triangle had to believe that his one note was just as essential to the whole symphony as the first violinist’s cascade of melody.
That one note had to come at the right time. Exactly the right time.
His part mattered. Even if it was only one note.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Smetana, triangle, one note, symphony