| Saturday, January 3, 2004 |
02:35 - <
|
(top)  |
Okay-- time for another Public Service Announcement...
The word crescendo does not mean "climax".
Got that?
Every five or six web pages I read these days seems to contain some variation on the following: The evening's excitement rose to a crescendo when Lily threw a pie at the band. Aaarrgh! The word you're looking for here is climax, and the fact that this isn't an Italian-derived musical term just means you're gonna need to break out a thesaurus, pal.
Crescendo means, literally, growing. (I discovered this in 2nd-year Spanish class, where we learned the verb crecer, to grow, and its progressive form creciendo. Spanish and Italian follow many of the same rules.) It is used in music to signify a gradual increase in volume. It does not mean the fever pitch to which the volume finally grows. You don't "reach" a crescendo; you undergo a crescendo. You reach a climax.
Is everything clear?
|
|
Brian Tiemann
