Grammar/Music/Improvisation
  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,700
    Kind of a strange question...

    When an organist is improvising, is he/she improvising:
    "on a theme"
    or
    "upon a theme" ???

    I tend to use "upon" but I hear most of my colleagues use the word "on."

    Was Charles improvising on the theme or improvising upon the theme?
  • francis
    Posts: 10,819
    rarely for me. I usually let the wind blow where it wills... however, if i have just played a hymn, then almost always it starts from there and wanders off.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    Once upon a time, I rhapsodized upon a theme of ... but when seated at the organ, I improvised (up)on a hymn tune. Hmm... I don't know!!
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,414
    That I know of, there is nothing approaching legislation about (or upon) this. (Don't anyone tell the people in Rome, though!) It seems to me that what one nearly always encounters, by way of convention and precedent, is an improvisation 'on' such and such; but, if one were to be so pretentious as to improvise 'upon' such and such, it had ought to be awfully good!
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
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