h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My son is writing his thesis on Sarasate, a Spanish composer. He needs to translate a passage from English to German and asked me to help, but we're not quite sure what the English is getting at. The whole sentence reads:

>> In Spanish music written for concerts or the salon, where there was to be no costume and no dancing, it fell to the notes to convey
everything: the sexually charged atmosphere, the liberating experience
of the dance, the arch tone of the role playing. <<

What exactly could be meant by "the arch tone of the role playing". It presumably refers to the way plays were acted - "affected", "stilted", "over-dramatised", maybe?

If we had another word in English it would be no problem to translate it into German, but "arch" is a many-faceted word and it could mean anything and everything.

Considering it's a sexually charged atmosphere, I would describe 'arch' in that context as 'mischievous', maybe. 'Playful' in an adult context.

Arch means higher grade,rank or passion/feeling
Hence arch duke or enemy


In this context it probably means or means a higher or more sophisticated portrail of drama in the performance, like two dualists before the challenge.

Not playful a touch of menace more likely

I would agree with Icy, with an added "flirtatious".

Deb

I like Bob Stafford's analysis.

Arch only has Bob's meaning when it is joined to the word it is describing, for example archduke, archdeacon. As an adjective, arch means joking in a slightly ironic way.

I wondered why it conjured up a raised eyebrow in my imagination. I should have looked in the dictionary, shouldn't I?

Thanks to all - I shall pass this on.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem about "The rude bridge that arched the flood" did not seem to me to have an ironic meaning.

That's muddying the waters. It has a different meaning as a verb than it does as an adjective. TC was asking about its use as an adjective.

It's probably not a great idea to use poetry to find the definition of a word, as a lot of the joy in poetry is that words are often used to mean something which is slightly *different* from their usual meaning.