- Joined
- Mar 29, 2014
I think that you’re both just a step away from common ground.
Do you recall Deems Taylor’s narration for Walt Disney’s “Fantasia”? How he distinguished the “absolute” music of Stokowski’s transcription of Bach’s Toccata in Fugue from the narrative of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony?
It is the same in figure skating, where the skater always interprets the music, but the music being interpreted may be music as music or music which tells a story.
The music may also suggest a character. The stunning quality of Yulia Lipnitskaya’s “Schindler’s List” program was not merely for her technical virtuosity, but because of the way she conveyed her sense of a gamine being driven by the wind of great tragedy. The music undoubtedly resonated with her, or else she could not have expressed it as well as she did.
Among the leading American ladies today, the short program is usually set to a piece of music as music, while the long program tells a story or presents a character. So Samantha Cesario had Farag’s “Danza Mora” for her short and Carmen as her long, Gracie Gold skates her short to a Grieg piano concerto and is the Christine Daae of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Phantom of the Opera” in the long, and Polina has a flamenco-themed short and is a woodland nymph dancing to themes from James Newton Howard’s “Peter Pan” score in her long.
Ashley Wagner is a little different from the others, for the theme from Khachaturian’s “Spartacus” used in the short seems to complement her woman of passion in the “Moulin Rouge!” long.
One thing about the music used now by skaters which is very different from that of skaters of the past is its coherency. Themes are usually taken from the same piece or at least the same composer, without the jarring contrasts of bits and pieces intended to serve as backdrop to spins and jumps. Peggy Fleming’s free skate at the 1968 Grenoble Olympics was cobbled together from five different pieces of music by composers as diverse as Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens, and Rossini, though in that case, the unifying element was her own extraordinary artistry.
Do you recall Deems Taylor’s narration for Walt Disney’s “Fantasia”? How he distinguished the “absolute” music of Stokowski’s transcription of Bach’s Toccata in Fugue from the narrative of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony?
It is the same in figure skating, where the skater always interprets the music, but the music being interpreted may be music as music or music which tells a story.
The music may also suggest a character. The stunning quality of Yulia Lipnitskaya’s “Schindler’s List” program was not merely for her technical virtuosity, but because of the way she conveyed her sense of a gamine being driven by the wind of great tragedy. The music undoubtedly resonated with her, or else she could not have expressed it as well as she did.
Among the leading American ladies today, the short program is usually set to a piece of music as music, while the long program tells a story or presents a character. So Samantha Cesario had Farag’s “Danza Mora” for her short and Carmen as her long, Gracie Gold skates her short to a Grieg piano concerto and is the Christine Daae of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Phantom of the Opera” in the long, and Polina has a flamenco-themed short and is a woodland nymph dancing to themes from James Newton Howard’s “Peter Pan” score in her long.
Ashley Wagner is a little different from the others, for the theme from Khachaturian’s “Spartacus” used in the short seems to complement her woman of passion in the “Moulin Rouge!” long.
One thing about the music used now by skaters which is very different from that of skaters of the past is its coherency. Themes are usually taken from the same piece or at least the same composer, without the jarring contrasts of bits and pieces intended to serve as backdrop to spins and jumps. Peggy Fleming’s free skate at the 1968 Grenoble Olympics was cobbled together from five different pieces of music by composers as diverse as Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens, and Rossini, though in that case, the unifying element was her own extraordinary artistry.