Dept. of Orchestrational Exaggeration

Evidently back in the 1940's The New Yorker's fact checking was not up to its present high standards, or else the Mr. Spitalny quoted in the piece posted yesterday was not much of a score reader at all. Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony begins with the full string section, marked forte, not with a single quiet snare drum as the quote implied. Later in the first movement, a long march does begin with a single snare drum. And all hell does break loose at the end.

I'm guilty of some exaggeration of my own. Our orchestra's parts this week aren't from the 1940's as I implied, the semi-legible script on my photocopy only suggests an antiquated era. The performance parts themselves (or scores, if you like) are brand new and carefully corrected by our orchestra librarians, Martha Levine and Chris Blackmon. It's a good thing I don't have to be so fastidious (and can occasionally sneak in later and edit!) or else every post I write would be followed by a longer list of corrections!