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Resouce: Geoffrey Chew. "Articulation and phrasing." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/40952 (accessed October 17, 2010). I found this article by curious of the deeper meaning and usage of articulation. It is interesting that articulation does not only mean the detachment, staccato or slurs of the notes, it also includes the phrasing and the melodic progressions. I used to think that articulation needs to be put in the most important consideration for the Bach’s music and other Baroque music; however, after reading through this article, I think that articulation is not only a requirement of the certain music style, it is the key of musical expression and musical impression. According to the article, it says “The term ‘phrasing’ implies a linguistic or syntactic analogy, and since the 18th century this analogy has constantly been invoked in discussing the grouping of successive notes, especially in melodies; the term ‘articulation’ refers primarily to the degree to which a performer detaches individual notes from one another in practice (e.g. in staccato and legato).” It seems that there are distinctions between these two terms, the phrasing works for the melodies while the articulation serves for the notes; however, in my personal perspective, they are from the same family. Melodies are made up by notes and the proper articulation on each note sets up the progressions of phrases .Indeed, we cannot just focus on every single note when we play the whole piece, otherwise, everywhere details or arrangement will make the piece separately; however, at the same time, our professors always tell us to put more time on the trivial things---articulation, dynamic, etc. It is not easy to present a well-organized piece which still has those sparkling details. In the article, it provides us a clue attain the goal. The author wrote down “Resources of articulation also differ with the performing medium and acoustic surroundings.” I totally agree with the point. The articulation is not desired for the music in the Baroque period, it is desired for the expression of the music, in order to create the dancing, singing, swing sound effects, composers and performers would do various arrangements to arrive the final musical atmosphere. For example, I used to play Bach English suites No.2, there are several dance pieces (Gigue, Allemande, Sarabande,etc.) which makes up the whole suite, also, there are same notes’ groups or sections where I would like to put different articulation; those all depends on the music environment or the mood of the atmosphere. There is no matching desire of the articulation for the notes, the most correct way to decide how to use the articulation is to consider about the music mood, the melodic progression and the sound acoustic. Even for the same piece, when we play it in different concert halls, we might change the way to approach to the sound acoustic, for instance, if the hall is drier, we would give the staccato a little more time to create the clear and chewing-full sound. In conclusion, I like the article a lot. According to the topic of “articulation”, I think we cannot find a certain way to identify the term, it is about the personal perspectives, individual opinions about the pieces, and the understanding of the music backgrounds, etc. which, is a forever topic and a forever disagreement –exiting speech. For me, I would prefer to say it is all about the hearing---our ears.