Dictionary of Music - Birding America

194 interpretationLUDE, def. 2. 3 A short dramatic entertainment withmusic, formerly inserted between the acts of a playor opera. The practice of inserting such a musicalplaylet began in the late fifteenth century (when itwas sometimes called an intermedio) and continuedthrough the first half of the eighteenth century, especiallyin France and Italy. The sixteenth-centuryintermezzi that were inserted into the revivals ofGreek and Roman plays are among the forerunnersof opera. By the eighteenth century, the intermezzowas nearly always comic, whereas the play or operainto which it was inserted was serious. Another practicearose, especially in Italian opera, of presenting aseries of intermezzi between the acts, which, takentogether, made up a little comic opera. The mostfamous intermezzo of this type is Pergolesi’s LaServa padrona (“The Maid as Mistress”), whichoriginally was a comic intermezzo for the seriousopera II Prigioniero superbo but was so wellreceived that eventually it was performed by itself.This type of intermezzo is the ancestor of the ItalianOPERA BUFFA.interpretation The act of performing, or the particularperformance of a piece of music by a singer,instrumentalist, or conductor. Ideally the performerexpresses what the composer intended as closely aspossible. Where the composer’s aims are indicatedfairly precisely by notation, expression marks, etc.,interpretation is largely a matter of following directions.Even in such cases, however, many details ofphrasing, tempo, dynamics, tone color, articulation,etc., must be decided by the performer. Before about1800 composers were far less explicit in recordingtheir intention than they were in subsequent times,so that the modern performer must become familiarwith the musical traditions and practices of eachperiod in order to render its music as it wasintended.interrupted cadence Another term for deceptivecadence (see under CADENCE).interval 1 A pair of notes sounded at the sametime. 2 The distance between the pitches of twomusical tones. The smallest interval in conventionalWestern music is the half tone, for example, the distancefrom C to C-sharp. Any interval smaller than ahalf tone is called a MICROTONE. Two half tonesmake up a whole tone. All other intervals are similarlymade up of half tones (or half tones and wholetones) and they can be described in terms of thenumber of half tones (or half tones and whole tones)they contain.When two tones of an interval are sounded oneafter the other, the interval is called melodic. Thus, amelody is simply a series of melodic intervals.When the two tones of an interval are soundedtogether, at the same time, the interval is called harmonic.Two or more harmonic intervals make up achord. The pattern of intervals and chords in a musicalcomposition constitutes its harmony.Classical melody and harmony, which dominatedWestern music from c. 1600 to c. 1900, arebased on two modes of a diatonic scale, the majorand the minor, each of which is defined by a particulararrangement of half tones and whole tones. Intervalstherefore are described not only as groups ofhalf or whole tones, but also in terms of degrees ofthe diatonic scale they encompass. In the scale of Cmajor, the first note, C, sounded with another note ofthe same pitch, is called unison (or prime); the intervalsbetween C and all the other notes of the C-major scale are named for the number of notes they“straddle”—C–D is a second; C–E is a third (itencompasses three notes, C, D, and E); C–F is afourth; C–G is a fifth; C–A is a sixth; C–B is a seventh;and C–C′ is an octave (the prefix oct- means“eight”). Intervals larger than an octave are calledcompound intervals because they can be regardedas a combination of two simple intervals. Thus theinterval C–D′ is a ninth, but it can also be consideredan octave (C–C′) plus a second (C′–D′); similarly,C–E′ is a tenth but can be considered anoctave plus a third; etc.The names used for the intervals—second, third,fourth, etc.—are used no matter what pitch the intervalbegins with. Thus C–G, D–A, E–G, F–C, etc., allare fifths. However, intervals can be described stillmore precisely. Because of the different arrangementsof half tones and whole tones in the major andminor scales, the third, sixth, and seventh all are onehalf tone smaller in a minor scale than they are in amajor scale; in addition, there are two varieties of