WebFacts 1
This analogy owes its origin to Edward T. Cone, whose short book Musical Form
and Musical Performance (New York: Norton, 1968) remains a valuable resource for performers
and a pleasurable reading experience. Cone discusses the ball-throwing analogy on pages 26-27:
If I throw a ball and you catch it, the completed action must consist of three parts:
the throw, the transit, and the catch. There are, so to speak, two fixed points: the
initiation of the energy and the goal toward which it is directed; the time and
distance between them are spanned by the moving ball. In the same way, the
typical musical phrase consists of an initial downbeat . . . a period of motion . . . .
and a point of arrival marked by a cadential downbeat.
Part of Cone's challenge to performers is simply to raise questions for thought. For example, he
begins Chapter 2 (p. 32) with these questions: "Sooner or later every discussion of the problems
of musical performance seems to raise the question of the ideal interpretation: is there such a
thing? Does one perfect performance of a composition subsist as the ideal toward which every
actual one should aspire?" He later concludes (p. 34): "Every valid interpretation . . . represents,
not an approximation of some ideal, but a choice: which of the relationships implicit in this piece
are to be emphasized, to be made explicit?"
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