I’ve not thought much about the playing side of the dramatic ends of pieces composers often provide – thunderous finales that transform musicians into blacksmiths, hammering out several repetitive measures on their various instruments as fiercely as possible in order to completely drown the venue with sound and produce something beautiful.  The effects are often palpable on me from the listener’s side; I can react involuntarily with a little (sometimes big) cheer, even with headphones in my living room.

CMv Weber’s Hunter’s Chorus, my newest piece, feels like it’s all finale.  The dynamic indicators start loud and finish louder – my first ever encounter of fortissimo.  It’s fun – a romp, but if the whole piece sounds like a finale, then the finale is indeed a proper finale.  The final three notes are the same –  two played up-bow followed by a down bow – I can do that without gusto and speed more or less fine.  But doing it with the gusto ff requires and following what immediately precedes it in the piece, well, that’s going to take a while.

To play these troublesome spots I isolate them and play them over and over again, of course.  So for two mornings in a row my living room has just been one big, horribly messy ff.  I’m about to make it three.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan