Guts provides listeners with a chance to marvel at the range of musical
expression Mark Dresser can coax from the double bass, aided by unconventional amplification and a wide array of extended techniques.
The song is lengthy; 218 measures of 3/8 meter, with extensive vocalise passages, but the paucity of
expression marks or dynamics suggests that Debussy paid little attention to it after completing it.
'I have attempted to teach note-reading, time signature and
expression marks, to give the basis of a sound technique and to encourage young pianists to express their musical ideas.
Gunn exhaustively explores each possible affekt and how it is connected to and influenced by formal structure, harmonic function, key, technique, rhythm, dynamics,
expression marks, articulation, ornaments, the damper pedal and tempo.
(A young adult could use it to self-teach.) Some of the concepts taught include posture, hand position, counting quarter, half, whole, eighth notes and rests, note reading with pre-staff notation and note reading on the grand staff, dynamics and
expression marks, legato, staccato, and slur phrasing, and use of the damper pedal.
Schubert writes
expression marks in the piano part while the instrument plays alone.
7th [begin strikethrough]Light[end strikethrough] is an actual music score, but rather than composing it with the usual crochets and
expression marks, Chan uses bits of torn black paper.
In a chapter on "Debussy and Expression," Nigel Simeone follows "clues" (101) that connect
expression marks in Debussy's scores with passages in his correspondence and other writings, attempting thus to interpret the composer's "search for a precise musical evocation of an imprecise image" (103) and hence his ties to impressionism.
As one would expect from such a fine musician, Howard's added
expression marks are apt and convincing, while his own completion of the final page brings the work to a close with accomplished panache.