Music 27 - UC Berkeley

Melody

(main terms to describe how it works, different ways melody can be designed to communicate a specific emotion/paint a picture/emphasize a word in a sung lyric)

- Series of notes arranged in a given order to form a recognizable unit ('tune'); the singing side of a melody, style composed alters it; used to indicate the 'tune' as opposed to the accompaniment (supports melody w/o being a hummable tune)

- High vs. low; plain vs. ornamented

- Movement by: 1) ascending vs. descending, 2) step vs. leap, 3) staying still vs. repeating notes

- Phases/ motives can be emphasizing; repetition or contrast

Rhythm

(how it's grounded in the body/everyday experience & how it's not, potential problems with believing it's a fundamental body thing/more primal/basic than other elements)

- More defining than shape of melody

- Duration of the notes in time (aspect of music), patterns in which long and short durations of sound are arranged; can refer to any particular pattern

- energy created by accents (stronger/louder attacks) on irregular beats

Rhythm Examples

Mechanical rhythm (Haydn Clock Symphony, second movement), march (Berlioz March to the Scaffold), waltz (Bernstein, I Feel Pretty from West Side Story)

Meter

- Organizes rhythm into regular, repeating patterns, based on an alternation of strong/weak beats

- duple meter: alternation based on multiples of two (strong/weak)

- triple meter: based on multiples of three (strong/weak/weak, etc.)

Dissonance

- Note that doesn't fit, provokes agony, then releases into harmony: ecstasy

- Minor chord is dissonance, more sad than major

Harmony

Be able to discuss how effects like tension and release, consoance and dissonance, shape and provoke emotion and physical response when we listen to music. The overtone series (the natural, physical basis for consonant harmonies). "Harmony" as metaphor for human relations, and as actual feeling of concord, agreement in sound.

Timbre

(describe two ex. where choice of specific instrucment, type of voice, or combo of instruments makes a diff to how music feels/sounds)

- Word to describe what a thing sounds like; elements that help you differentiate sounds from one another (car vs. waves, voices differing)

- Varying overtones in notes (piano notes), different proportions happening that help us distinguish between sounds

- Can be how you attack an instrument; pressing down on keys vs. plucking guitar

Performance

Be able to describe a situation (from our class concert or one of the lesson videos) where a performer does something that changes or departs from the basic instructions the composer has written down for the piece. Work out your own opinion about the performer's freedm versus the composer's instructions: how much is it OK for a performer to shape the piece, and how much should a performance just try to faithfully carry out what's written on the page of music?

on the Schubert songs:

Be able to refer to and describe two examples from the songs where the music comments on or amplifies or depicts an idea, feeling, or specific word in the poem. You should be able to say something clear and detailed about how this works--what do the melody, rhythm, or harmony do at this moment to convey the idea?

Word Painting

Musical illustration of the image painted in lyrics

Romanticism

(definition and time frame, example; discuss and compare role of nature in Schubert's "Der Jüngling an der Quelle" and "Erlkönig")

- 1815 to 1840 (or up to 1900)

- emotion, individuality, novelty; fascination with nature, supernatural, the very old and ruined (eg. Medieval churches), mentality still influential now (individualism, pop song lyrics)

Schubert, "Der Jüngling an der Quelle"

- Talked about awakening, sighing, murmuring and ripling as a form of personification, the glow, warmth, endless beloved, etc.

- Shaping of melody to form/emphasize key words

Schubert, "Erlkönig"

(name 4 characters and how he changes the music to distinguish them from each other)

- Narrator: middle Baritone, lack of melody, speech-like and hammering the piano down

- Father: low in voice, speech-like, leaps

- Son: melodic, lots of leap and excitement

- Elfking: similar to song, but has different accompaniment music

- piano is galloping/overwrought with emotional

Schubert, "Ganymed"

- Piano changes its relationship to the voice as the song progresses; starts with lone piano, then bold intrusion in middle of text which means it's getting more intense (+ words get more intense)

- Presents a downward pattern, speeds up again, proceeds to stop plainer rhythms (more like reciting) to mimick "cooling" wind, starts to trill and get really fast and intense (bird-like)

Verdi, declaration of love, La Traviata

- Rhythm rather steady (incline/decline), three beats which resemble a waltz (formal/superficial)

- Pattern/repetition; emphasis after every 3rd beat

Through-composed

Song, each stanza/part of the song is set to new music, different mood/things happening

Strophic form

Each verse has the same music (in song), ex. folk song/nursery rhyme

Ternary form

ABA structure, musical material, new material, then old one again so it's a rounded out form

Enharmomic Change

Particular type of change in harmony under a melody note that stays the same; when there's a chord with a particular note in it and then the composer creates a new chord around the same note but with a diff harmony

Rhythmic syncopation

- Stress on a beat that's usually unstressed, or a rest where one would expect a stress; the expected rhythm is interrupted

- Energizes us and raises the heartbeat

Timeline (Middle Ages/Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modernism, Post-Modernism, Contemporary)

- (500 - 1400 AD), (1400 - 1600), (1600 - 1750), (1750 - 1800), (1810 - 1850/1900), (early 20th), (mid 20th), (now)

- Hildegard, Josquin, Vivaldi and Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert/Schumann (songs) and Chopin/Liszt (piano) and Verdi/Wagner (operas, Rigoletto and Die Walkure), Stravinsky and Schoenberg, Reich and Cage, Wolfe and Shaw

Middle Ages

- (500 - 1400 AD)

- Based on collective experience, almost always about religion, purpose in large organizational context

- Religion concerned education; monastic life dominated by contemplation, discipline of the body/work/prayers; divided into 3 hours jobs

- Music wasn't to listen to - but sing to

Sekt

- During the Middle Ages

- Midday prayer/third of everyday; would chant "Rector Potens veras dewin" doesn't matter what it sounds like, repetition is key

Chants

In religious traditions (Buddhism, Judaism, etc.) much more like speech than singing; slight melodicization; pace and intervals between words were speech-like

Plainchant

Body of rules that are supposed to be sung in strict conditions, dictated to Pope (myth) given by dove who had the message of God, sung into Pope Gregory I's ear so now he knows the entire Gregorian (Plainchant) system

Breadth

Length of phrases matched to what you can sign in a breath; sounds rather casual/speech-like

Hildegard of Bingen

- (1098 - 1179)

- Amazing nun with many talents

- Wrote texts/music for chanted prayers

- Religious in her visions, very terrifying and painful to her perception; visionary and mystic in illustrations (perhaps migraines)

Sequence

Solo, then group follows with the same melody; alteration and repetition

Melismatic

Each syllable is stretched over several notes, further from speech

Chorale

- Each line of music = prayer, breadth = pause; everyone in Lutheran church could participate in it (populist, individualism)

Ritornello form

Trading off large/small groups (how Bach is organized)

Form

- Another element/raw material, like melody/rhythm/timbre; concerned with how music unfolds in time (esp. patterns of repetition/contrast)

- Ex. pop music (verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus); strophic (every line is set to the same music)

Cantana

- Work in several movements for solo voices, instruments, and chorus

- Has to have orchestra/full body accompaniment, singers, and some story to teach a lesson + multiple parts/movements (really long)

Concerto

- Multiple (typically 3) movements for solo voices, has some form of symmetry/contrast, has contrasting blocks of sound

Ritornello

- Set of musical themes played by the orchestra which returns regularly through the moment esp. at the end

- Similar to pillars; main @ beginning and end, short bursts in between

- Form in Baroque music

"Sleepers Awake" by Bach

- Giddy, leaping melodies, high pitches, frequent changes in melody suggest joy and excitement

- First solo section is serene and celestial, high pitches and bright vocal chords suggest entrance into heaven; strong sense of purpose

- Based on poetry "The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins"

Renaissance

- (1400 - 1600)

- Still based on church music; due to higher education and ability to preserve

- Multiple lines but same melody: polyphony (not melody + harmonic accompaniment, or completely different melodies), basically similar melodies doing different things/times

- Josquin des Pres is main one

- purely vocal no instrument, entrances of voices are staggered, starts with the same melody (diff pitches) but go off and do diff things)

Baroque

- (1600 - 1750)

- Music becomes more complex (harmonies, melody lines, ornamentation like trills) despite growing simplicity in religion

- Invention of printing press grew and made music more accessible to people outside of the church

- Development of secular music; more commissioned for non-religious reasons mainly by the wealthy/royal

- KEY WORDS: concerto, cantata, operata, aria

- Instruments utilized w/voice, working together; each of the voices are singing diff parts (no imitation) but similar harmonies

Cantata

A medium-length narrative piece of music for voices with instrumental accompaniment, typically with solos, chorus, and orchestra

J.S. Bach

- (1685 - 1750)

- Hired by Lutheran church to write music; virtuoso organ player and got money that way

- High polyphonic and complicated

Patronage

Getting commissions to make money; typically how artists made their livings, still in place but started in the late Renaissance

Enlightenment

- (1730 - 1790)

- Shift towards thoughts about politics/science/religion, moves towards reason and logical thinking about livelihoods and interpersonality

- Advancement in science as well

- Taxonomy gains popularity during this time person (act of categorizing everything)

Genre

- Type of music defined by the function: who will hear it, where it's played, which instruments/voices used, on what occasion

- Ex. Baroque (concerto, cantana, operata aria), classical genres (symphony, string, quartet, sonata)

Mozart's Concerto (1st movement)

- Overall ambitious, diff form of ritornello (building and continuing what orchestra played instead of playing the same music) and sonata form in 3 sections

- 1. Exposition: exposes material of movement, will compare 2 melodies, in between the first and second is the transition and @ the end

- 2. Development: take 1st and 2nd theme and use in various ways, part of movement that's closest too the Enlightenment

Sonata

Solo work accompanied by a keyboard (Mozart wrote a lot of these)

Sonata Form

- Exposition (theme 1, transition, theme 2); development; recapitulation (themes 1 and 2 are played again + Cadenza + Coda, the ending)

- Most common organization for the 1st movement of a symphony

Cadenza

A virtuoso solo passage inserted into a movement in a concerto or other work, typically near the end

Symphony

A work for orchestra in several movements; usually 4 movements with contrasting tempos & mood: 1) fast, 2) slow, 3) moderate, 4) fastest

Mozart Symphony No 40 in G Minor

- Mood: emotional and dramatic, constant shifts

- Technical terms to describe melody: one short motion (downward step) repeats many times

- Mostly string instruments, agitated rhythms; repetition of a short-short-long rhythm, "sigh" figures in melody

- Transition: begins like repetition of 1st theme but changes and moves away from normal key, @ end begins to climax and cadences

- Second Theme: Melody is smoother, happier, brighter and more relaxed/less tense (major key)

Mosaic effect

Melody derives from many different places/colors in the orchestra

Codetta

Big bursts of fast scale, musical energy closing off the section, sharp loud accents alternating with a fragment from the 1st theme

Martin Luther, Lutheranism

- Wrote 95 theses criticizing Catholic Church basically, wrote with the Founding Fathers of Protestantism in Wittenberg 1517

Vivaldi, Concerto in B Major

- Has a violin solo @ the beginning, it's a concerto piece and ritornello form

- Does have a harpsichord too; violin is harsher sounding, less clean/pristine

Difference between Bach and Vivaldi

Bach is more together and calmer (less anxiety-induced)

Bach, Brandenburg Concert No. 5 in D Major

- The one with the harpsichord, ritornello form in which there's a repeat of the section interspersed with solos

- Orchestra and solo; harpsichord takes over the the end; flutes, violins, harpsichord

Mozart No. 23

- First movement written in sonata form

- Exposition, development, recapitulation (theme 1, transition, theme 2, Cadenza, improvised soul-company, and the coda)

- Overall ambitious, diff forms of ritornello (building and continuing what orchestra played instead of playing the same music) and sonata form in 3 sections

Beethoven, Symphony No, 3, "Eroica," first movement

- Less well-known, not threaded into society

- Are stories associated into it with Beethoven's life, came after the letter addressed to bros

- Napoleon was also in power during period

- Ridiculously pictorial, second is giving bits and such; bridge: prettier tune than 1st and 2nd theme, second theme is static and very contrasting

- @ the beginning there's a downward slope (of transition), alternates with taking fragments of 1st and then using it for justification

- Coda: as long as exposition, lots of 1st theme, then new theme, and french horn

Josquin, Missa pange lingua, Kyrie

- Mass music for worship, he remakes this

- Starts off by quoting Pange Lingua plainchant, then builds up section of music through imitation of voices

- Very confide, not very high release with lower tunes

- Phrases: line of poetry, also when they stop to take notes (long note breath)

Josquin

- Mass is Catholic Church service (musical) 5 main movements/musical sections are: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei

- Interspersed with prayers/sermons/communication

Hildegard of Bingen, "Columba aspexit"

- Sequence: solo, then group follows with the same melody; alteration + repetition

- Melismatic: each syllable is stretched over several notes, further than speech

Operas

- Evening-length (3 hours), a play where everything is sung - similar to most musical theatre

Cabaletta

A simple aria with a repetitive rhythm; the uniformly quick final section of an aria.

Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto

- Main character is the Jester, entertain King of France but in the Italian remake it's adapted to Catholic Italy to Duke of small region

- Rigoletto is baritone (low male voice), Duke of Mantua is the tenor (high male voice), and Gilda is the soprano (high female voice) and daughter of Rigoletto

- Love triangle is evident between high voices

- Inequality of money and feelings since Duke just wants her around but first man Gilda has ever seen or been in love with

- Basically the duke pretends to be a schoolboy and gets Gilda to fall in love with him, then tricks her and kidnaps her (possible rapes her), Rigoletto tries to get revenge by hiring an assassin to kill him but then the assassin is convinced by sister to not kill him, and ends up killing Gilda by mistake

Aria

- Extended # for solo singer with words and music, usually elaborating on a single strong emotion; plot seems to freeze and it's like a bubble, will feature melodic repetition, word repetition, and vocal display

Duet

Zeroing on relationship in a particular moment, deliver intense emotions and normally about them at odds

Recitative

Opposite of aria, stretches of music that follow regular pace of speech

"Questo o Quella"

- Element of music that gives us the clearest signals about duke's character is the uneven contour of melody and leaps, duke is unreliable

- Strophic form: same music repeats every 8 lines, bit like a folk song

- Simple melody: quick, syllabic (1 note/syllable) simple, direct

Classical Genre

- KEY WORDS: symphony, string, quartet, sonata + concerto, mass, operata, aria

Medieval

- (500 - 1400)

- Hildegard Von Bingen (Columba Aspexit)

- Entirely vocal and very speech-like, very free rhythm (not entirely simple) but melodic material is simple

- Only 1 section (solo, then multiple voices join with the same thing)

- Gregorian chant doesn't have instrumental, but Hildegard's does

Clara Schumann

- (1819-1896)

- German, composer who typically wrote for the voice and piano

- Dichterliebe: song #10 is strophic form but last stanza is slightly diff, lots of marking in pieces during Romantic era

- song #1: strophic form, unexpected since it's in minor key and a lot of the words are excutable

Difference Btw Mozart and Beethoven

- Mozart was more calm than Beethoven overall

- In sonata form, Mozart and Hayden focused on the exposition greatly, but Beethoven focused on the development by making it longer and more structured

- Beethoven was more rhythmic than melodic compared to Mozart

Nocturne in Bb Major, Opus 9, No 1

- (1832) Chopin, built up at the beginning as a loose series of variations of one delicate, melodic opening idea, contrast (darker, more reflective idea) then return to opening

- ornament and showing off built in to the melody from the very beginning

Virtuosity

From Liszt: or its own sake, for sheer thrill, and for a sense of progress and pushing back boundaries of ordinary existence

Chopin

- more emotional, introverted as a person, so most of his music was emotional

- miniature forms, forms drawn from social life (dances) and dress them up with lush melodies and rapid embellishments; OR would paint a vivid picture in a few minutes—single idea, or one idea plus one big contrast; nothing equivalent to the rational development or extended logic of sonata form in the works of Mozart or Beethoven

- most important musical principles are: melody (beautiful, memorable), timbre (exploiting what the piano can do in tone and technology, flash), and physical mastery, athleticism

Liszt

- Different from Chopin, but in the Romantic period, was more extroverted and about virtuosity

Gesamtkunstwerk

- Associate with Wagner, means an ideal work of art

- Used it to think of unifying all of the ideas of work in a theatre

- Beautiful form of artwork: has the set, costume, singing, etc. everything comes together to create a beautiful piece of artwork; all of your senses can be engaged in an opera essentially

Leitmotive/leitmotif

- Associate with Wagner

- Ex. Whenever Darth Vader appears in the movie, a specific theme song comes up (sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious)

- Each character had a specific theme, so whenever they appear in the opera then that theme will pop up so everyone begins associating it; sometimes with important objects not just people

- Theme associated with specific character/important object in an opera

"Judaism in Music"

Essay by Wagner basically with him bringing up a lot of anti-semitic means; criticizes the language/Jewish speech in particular

"Der Ring des Nibelungen"

- By Wagner, captured a lot of anti-semitic feelings; four-opera cycle

- derived from German and Norse mythology, rooted in specific German locations (Rhine river, forests), and focused on establishment of a "new world order"

- Possible caricatures of Jewish speech, in characters in Die Meistersinger and Siegfried (3rd)

- Die Walküre (2nd) —only membrsof the "Volsung" race, as brother and sister Siegmundand Sieglindeare, can create a true redeemer-hero

- Parsifal(last opera) set among closed community of men who venerate the Holy Grail and renew their community through sacrament of the Grail

Difference btw Verdi and Wagner

- For Verdi, orchestra is the background, but for Wagner it's orchestral-centered (large, active music)

- Verdi had long, lyrical/passionate melodies for the singers, but Wagner made the music for voices to be natural rhythms that imitated speech

- Verdi said music was more important than words/plot, but Wagner made everything balanced

- Verdi centered plot/music about human emotions, Wagner focused on that and the philosophical ideas/origins of German people

Endless Melody

- Free, speech-like approach to setting words to music

- Each phrase or idea flows into the next, without clear endings or patterns

- Orchestra provides glue

- Meant to sound natural (but can be disorienting)

- Very UNLIKE Verdi—no clear divisions between sections, general impression that characters are half-speaking, half-singing

Modernism

- Started as movement in all arts, roughly early 20th century; includes Stravinsky and Schoenberg

- Responses to the invention of psychology (French) and to industrialization and progress, a form of depersonalization

Stravinsky

- Dissonance: any combination of notes, played simultaneously, that create a harsh or unpleasing effect; OR music characterized by such harsh combinations--used throughout, though it never becomes completely atonal

- Timbre: expanded orchestra instruments used in unusual, forced ways, creating effect of strain or strangeness

- Rhythm: sharp accents, often not where you expect them; often the pulse is more important than the melody

- Form: built up through obsessive, insistent repetition of tiny melodic cells

Rite of Spring

- About the sacrifice of a woman by a Russian tribe in order to get a bountiful harvest in Spring

Primitivism

- Attempt to get idea of what primitive tribe characterized as; early 20th century artistic movement that drew inspiration from ancient fold culture

- Celebrates either the purity of a culture before man-made progress or the barbarism and sheer physical necessity that came before "civilization"

- Sub-division of modernism: primitivist works often treat their ancient materials with a minimum of emotion or personal engagement

- Distance, coldness, collectivity, impersonality seen as desirable (because true, and because new, not Romantic)

Expressionism

- Artistic movement pre/post-WWI, extreme personalization, fascination with the dark recesses of the psyche/abnormal psychology (Stravinsky)

- Put tormented feelings/bizarre imaginings into images, words, music

- In music: dissonance, distortion, changes in mood, dreams, madness, etc.

Atonality

- Technique of composing that gives all 12 tones equal weight, without organizing them around a central tone "tonic"

- Sort of anarchy/democracy of pitches, developed primarily by Schoenberg, "emancipation of dissonance"

Serialism

- Technique of composing that involves using all 12 tones equally, enforces/structures equality by arranging 12 tones in fixed order (tone row) and building an entire composition on repetition and reversals

- Octave/instrument/rhythm the tones come in do not matter, as well as variation in the dynamics (volume)

Ostinato

- Motive repeated over and over again "obstinately"

- In Stravinsky's case the figure is repeating/insistent rhythm; begins with basic unit of 4/5 notes, repeats, alters in a small way to build up long stretches of driven music

- Similar to Beethoven, but varying sections until it all comes together to sound pretty

Society for Private Musical Performance

Schoenberg created this because people didn't like his music, so he said that they couldn't listen to it; tickets at box office, played every Friday

John Cage

- Sonatas and Interludes, 4'33"

- Part of post-modernism, took technology to a new vibe; lacked repetition

- Some music had a lot of direction, others had no direction, 4"33 had a lot of directions that were non-traditional, also wanted to leave stuff up to chance

- What if we take seriously things that are happening in the world, trying to focus on our environment and what's around us

Chance Music

Cage wanted the music to come from the musicians/performers themselves, a lot is left to the individual performer, wanted to break tradition that way

Prepared Piano

- Cage: When they attach a bunch of hardware/anything to the piano strings (looks like a harp) to alter the timbre/sound that comes from the hammer hitting it

- Prepared piano piece where you put stuff in the piano to change the timbre, explicitly written out, has a lot of directions so most of the time the renditions sound fairly similar

Steve Reich

- Different Trains, 3rd movement, After the War

- Part of post-modernism, pioneer of minimalism

- Relentless repetition, stripping, decorations away, some simplicity by using a small element and just emphasizing/pounding it

- Would take cassette tapes and loop them

- Played with things that haven't been played before, traditional in that it's all written out; has tape recordings that he would cut up, also plays with a lot of technology (train noises, governess, etc.) playing against expectation bc not everything you hear would be considered as a 'musical sound'

Minimalism

- By Steve Reich, a major emphasis on repetition and just repeating a small element over and over again

- Means of stripping away modernism (which was just getting bigger), so now they reverted to repetition and phasing (subtle displacement so looping happens in uneven places)

- Typically very steady; not easy listening music

Sampling, Tape Music

- Steve Reich would take cassette tapes and loop them; they had magnetic encodings read on machines, had to physically cut magnetic strips and such (manually)

Sol Lewitt

- Artist who gave instructions for people to paint things

- Shaw used these directions to produce music

Julia Wolfe

- Contemporary artist, Anthracite Fields, 1st movement, Foundation

- Similar to Reich where things are not played in ways you would expect it

Anthracite Fields

- Names of the miners that died in the field, environmental critique, singers drawing attention to situation of these miners who were largely immigrants; geological formation of coal

- Juxtaposition of environment and natural formation of coal, also how people have died trying to get to this

- Sounds like chanting, drawing on that influence in the vocal style, plus experimenting with timbre and instruments (Gregorian Chant)

Caroline Shaw

- Contemporary artist, Partita for Eight Voices, Allemande

- Uses literal directions

Partita of Eight Voices

- Much more playful, lots of different kinds of singing happening; timbre/tone is very different, even in the volume (pointed/nasally to harmonic and what is more traditionally beautiful) AHHH to oooh

- Gravelly timbre, transitions into Renaissance singing

- Recognize how she's playing with timbre, tone, different ways of using your voice

- Bases it on piece of art; artist gave these directions to people who were gonna paint the piece, Shaw uses the directions (Sol Lewitt) also kind of sounds like a dance (why she calls it Allemande); turning piece of visual art into piece of music, how it alters, etc.