Notturno

A musical and artistic interlude for the evening

Today’s New York Times Spelling Bee letters:

F, I, N, O, R, U, and center T (all words must include T)

Merriam-Webster says…

Silly little dictionary! Don’t you know that notturno can’t possibly be a word if The New York Times says it ain’t?

For a complete list of rejected words, check out the Spelling Bee Master.

What’s your favorite dord* from today’s puzzle?

My Two Cents

Not that anyone probably cares, but I had a hard time with today’s Spelling Bee. And here’s a fair spoiler alert if you’re a die-hard player and you haven’t completed today’s game yet: I’m gonna mention a few stats. So you can skip ahead to the next section. Or, if you got here by accident and don’t want to read anything else, you can still help me earn 13 cents by simply scrolling down slowly.

Today’s Spelling Bee had 58 words (with 1 pangram) and 204 points, which I thought was a lot considering the letters D, E, and G were missing. (Puzzles with E-D and I-N-G tend to have a lot of words or points or both.) Today you need 143 points to reach Genius level, which is what I usually shoot for. Sometimes I’ll get to “Queen Bee” and find all the words and points, but as long as I get to Genius I’m happy. And it took me forever to do that this morning.

Anyway, you’re not here to read about my difficulties with the Spelling Bee, but to learn something about our word of the day.

The second definition of notturno was given simply as “nocturne”, and when I clicked on that I got this:

So, it seems we got music and paintings. Let’s get on with it then. It will be short and sweet.

Music

The original notturno was light, ensemble music that trended in the late 1700s. It was given that name because the intention was that it be played in the evenings, much like serenades were. (A serenade is a musical greeting performed in honor of someone. Although one typically thinks of a gallant male lover serenading his lady through a window, this musical composition was also used to honor friends and people of rank. Serenades were supposed to be performed on quiet and pleasant evenings, as opposed to the aubades, which were performed in the mornings.)

Mozart, who lived in the 18th century, wrote a few notturni (plural of notturno) such as Serenade №6 for orchestra in D major, or “Serenata Notturna”, composed in 1776…

…and the Notturno in D, K.286, written for four “mini-orchestras” consisting each of strings and two horns. The second, third, and fourth orchestras are placed at a certain distance from the first and serve to echo it.

In the nineteenth century the notturno developed into a piano piece played in one movement. Irish composer John Field is widely considered to be the father of the Romantic nocturne, as he wrote the first such pieces under that name.

But perhaps the most famous nocturne composer was Frédéric Chopin, who wrote twenty-one, of which of Opus 9 No 2 may be one of the best-known:

Paintings

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter who lived during the nineteenth century. He is best known for this painting…

…and for using nocturne as a term to describe a painting style depicting scenes evocative of the night or subjects as they appear under low light or in the absence of direct light. But centuries before Whistler appropriated notturno for painters, guys like Rembrandt were already doing that. Constantly. One of the Dutch Master’s most famous (and gigantic) works is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. Perhaps you know it as The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch,

If neither of those ring a bell, don’t worry. Most of us simply refer to it as The Night Watch.

That nickname is a terrible misnomer, however, because the scene depicted takes places during the day. No, Rembrandt was not drunk or high when he painted it. At least, I don’t think he was. Turns out that the painting was coated with dark varnish and dirt for hundreds of years, misleading even experts into thinking that it showed a nocturnal scene. That coat of varnish served a purpose, however, protecting the painting from a knife attack in 1911. Yep, gunk can occasionally be useful.

Today you can go see this classic work of art from the Dutch Golden Age at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. If you can’t make it, though, you can study The Night Watch at your leisure in this online 44.8 gigapixel image:

Now you know. Next time you’re at a classical music concert and they play Chopin’s Op. 9, №2, you can brag to your friends that what they’re listening to is a notturno. Don’t be surprised if they tell you to shut up, though. Not because you’re talking during a concert… but because the editors of the Spelling Bee decided that notturno is a dord*.

You can check out my previous entry on another dord* here:

*What the heck is a dord, you ask? Here’s the answer: