 | Your current subscription status is: MyWordaDay Only.
> Did you know Vocab Vitamins Complete is just $16.50/year?
> Subscribe
> Account Settings
To UNSUBSCRIBE, click here and follow the instructions on our simple form.
Fire Escape Partners
3465 25th Street, Suite 17
San Francisco, CA 94110 | (adjective, adverb)
[ik-STEM-pah-ree] 
adjective
1. done, performed, or spoken with little or no preparation or forethought: "Without any materials and using only extempore sales pitches, Jeb was able to close several new clients over the course of the conference."
adverb
2. without advance preparation or study; extemporaneously
Origin:
Approximately 1553; borrowed from Latin, 'ex tempore': offhand ('ex': out of + 'tempore' ablative case of 'tempus,' genitive 'temporis': time). In action::
"Katherina: Where did you study all this goodly speech?
Petruchio: It is extempore, from my mother-wit."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616). British dramatist, poet. [Katherina and Petruchio] The Taming of the Shrew.
"Miller: 'It's amazing how you can't have people talking over one another in a play but in an opera Mozart can have many people uttering at the same time, can organise this extraordinary layer upon layer, the ensemble, and it actually gets the drama across. Of course I can't say how it's done. I don't know enough about it musically. How does he do it?'
...
It was another instance of how, when it comes to 'serious' music, the most articulate and intelligent of us find ourselves humbled, disqualified, mystified and ashamed. Miller -- a man of oceanic intellect known for delivering extempore lectures on subjects as various as Parkinson's disease and the Enlightenment project -- was having trouble with music. When it came to Mozart he felt he had to pass. He deferred to the expert.
But what had Miller wanted? Secretly he had been hoping, I am certain, for talk of dominant sevenths, relative minors, surprising modulations into the tonic major. Music's greatest secrets, people so often still believe, are held in the equivalent of an electronic printed circuit diagram. Transistor A fits into capacitor B. Cadence C leads to resolution D. Whatever. Just so long as it's technical and we don't quite understand. Experts know better than us. And the mystery, even when, as in this entertaining series, the design is to demystify, must above all be maintained."
Dermot Clinch. "A week in music." New Statesman (September 5, 1997).
"About Pontus there are some creatures of such an extempore being that the whole term of their life is confined within the space of a day; for they are brought forth in the morning, are in the prime of their existence at noon, grow old at night, and then die."
Plutarch (~A.D. 46-A.D. 120). Greek essayist and biographer. [Consolation to Apollonius.]
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment