Giulio Silva
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,767
    I'm finally ready to indulge in some blockquoting myself, an aside from Ernst Bacon's Notes on the Piano (p128):
    One need only listen to spoken words without music, to see that all poetry is read in a manner impossible to capture in our system of rhythmic notation. The very early Gregorian music probably enjoyed this freedom (later lost, and indeed only partially recovered in the renditions of Solemnes, the more pursuasive for their otherwise excellence, but largely recovered in the important researches of Giulio Silva, of San Francisco).


    Google turns up this book and a biographical sketch, but does anyone here know more about Silva, his researches in chant, and whether he founded a schola?
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,942
    http://www.jstor.org/stable/737912

    Born 1875, died 1967.
    Thanked by 1Richard Mix
  • mrcoppermrcopper
    Posts: 653
    One need only listen to spoken words without music, to see that all poetry is read in a manner impossible to capture in our system of rhythmic notation.
    Hm. Indulging in a little blockquoting myself, I believe the author to be wrong. A string of spoken words without music HAS rhythm. Steve Reich, for example in "different trains", has done wonderful things by finding both the rhythm and the melody in ordinary prose. Rhythm is an essential thing about human art and, probably, human life.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    Yes it has rhythm. The key phrase is:
    impossible to capture in our system of rhythmic notation.


    This is true of much music as well, especially any written outside of the MUSIC IS SOMETHING WRITTEN DOWN tradition of academic music.
    Thanked by 1Jahaza
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