Make a Crescendo to Reach a Climax
1962 saw the release of "The Manchurian Candidate", directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey. Building to a shattering crescendo….
[John Farr, "Presidential Pictures: Top Movies About The Top Job", Huffington Post, 25 April 2010.]
Sorry, stop right there! "The Manchurian Candidate" is a perfectly good movie that I quite enjoyed watching, but it most emphatically does not build to a shattering crescendo, for the simple reason that crescendi are not built to–they are the build itself.
I would apologize for my persnicketiness but I've just been busy being a musician for several hours, playing my 'cello in the orchestra for our just-closed production of "Carousel", a show with lots and lots of nice music and plenty of crescendi and decrescendi.
Crescendo is an Italian word (plural: crescendi) used as a musical term to mean gradually growing louder; in Italian, literally "growing". It has come to be used as a verb, too. One may crescendo to a climax, say, a loud fortissimo; a crescendo may be used to reach a climactic part of the music or, by analogy, a dramatic point or climax.
But–please!–"crescendo" is a process, a route to a place, not the place itself.
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on Monday, 26 April 2010 at 23.42
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I've already crescendoed tonight. Too bad I had no one with whom to share it.
But thanks for the clarifications.