Appogiaturas make you cry (allegedly)

[Neil McGowan]

Some more pseudo-musicology from the Wall Street Journal (of all places).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213010291701378.html

[ahinton]

Some more pseudo-musicology from the Wall Street Journal (of all places).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213010291701378.html

Well, it's not all rubbish by any means - Prof. Sloboda's no fool, for a start (very much the reverse, in fact) - although the standard of journalism leaves almost everything worthy of the subject to be desired ("Mendelssohn's Trio for Piano" instead of Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor - which is presumably what was meant - being a classic example); the problem with this kind of writing is not even so much that the work of a pop singer is pulled into service in the inevitably vain hope of seeking to make making some kind of interesting musicological / neurological point but that the scant attention actually paid to the neuroscientific aspect of the subject is largely due to the writer's inability to distinguish between emotion and sentimentality, in common with so many people nowadays.

[Neil McGowan]

"Mendelssohn's Trio for Piano"

In fairness, it could very well be that some oafish sub-editor has fiddled with Sloboda's text here, in the mistaken hope of making it "clearer".  Rather like James Joyce's famous book "Odysseus".