Understanding Melody, Rhythm, and Harmony in Music: A Comprehensive Guide - Prof. K. House, Study notes of Music

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Chapter 3 Melody

Melody, harmony, and rhythm interact to create musical style

A melody is a series of pitches arranged to form a cohesive musical line. More commonly called the tune.

Most melodies have four main elements in common:

A solid tonal center
Forward motion
A goal or climax
A final feeling of repose

Melodies are made up of pitches.

Pitch is the relative position of a sound high or low.

Musical sounds produced by regular vibrations. Duplication of a pitch either higher or lower is called the octave. The octave is produced by either a doubling or halving of the vibration rate.

A = 440
Octave up is 880.
Octave down is 220.

All cultures use the octave. Divided up differently in different musical cultures.

Western music has preferred a division of 7 pitches in the octave.

These are called:

CDEFGAB then back to C.

Melodies are notated on a grid work of lines called a staff. This staff is marked with a clef to show the relative position of the pitches. The two most important clefs are the Treble Clef and the Bass Clef.

High voices have the treble clef.
Low voices have the bass clef.

The piano, because is can play both treble and bass clefs, uses a Great Staff.

We have smaller subdivisions of the pitches and some pitches were placed in between the seven main pitches. These pitches are marked with the following two signs:

Sharp # - This means to play the pitch between that note and the one just above it.

09/15/2011
Chapter 2 Rhythm

Rhythm affects how melody and harmony are expressed in time.

Musical notation freezes the music in a fixed form so that a performer can study it and replicate it exactly later on.

Rhythm is notated by adding lines and flags to the note heads written on the staff.

Rhythm is the organization of time in music.
Beat is an even pulse that divides the passing of time into equal units.

Beats are grouped into measures or bars.

These gathering of units of beats create what is called the meter.

This gathering of groups of beats results in some beats becoming more important than others.

Duple meter  One two One two One two
Triple meter  One two three One two three
Quadruple meter  One two three four One two three four

A fraction is placed on the score to indicate to the performer what the meter of the piece is. This is called the meter signature or the time signature.

First beat is called the Downbeat, last beat is called the Upbeat.

Beats that happen before the first strong down beat are called a pickup.

The beat that is given the most importance is usually a main big beat. But sometimes an emphasis or accent is placed elsewhere. This is called a syncopation.

Next we have the overall Tempo of the meter. Tempo is an indication of how fast or slow the music should go.

Grave
Largo
Lento
Adagio
Andante

Sometimes the music speeds up and this is called accelerando and sometimes it slows down (ritardando). From this we get the word ritard, which means to slow down in music

Classical music can have a great variety in tempo and meter in the same work

Medieval Music 09/15/2011


Chapter 8, Medieval Music (474-1475)

Various roles for music  Monastery  Cathedral  The Court  Musical Instruments

The Monastery

Life in the monastery followed a very strict code of behavior and an order of worship that followed the hours of the day.

Simple life of work and worship.

The plainsong use to sing these psalms evolved into a written collection of music called Gregorian Chant.
Gregorian Chant – a large body of unaccompanied vocal music set to Latin texts that were written for the Roman Catholic Church starting very early in the church’s history. Written for 15 centuries (named for Pope Gregory the Great). Gregorian chant is pure melody. This kind of music when you have just a single melodic line is called monophonic music or monophony. Music for one line. It would often be doubled at the octave. Either for a choir of Men or a choir of Women. Not together. Two types of singing: Syllabic singing – one or two notes for each syllable of text Melismatic singing - many notes sung to just one syllable. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) – Given to the church as a child as tithe At 52 founded a convent near Bingen Germany. First Renaissance man was a Medieval woman. Playwright, Poet, Musician, Naturalist, Pharmacologist, Visionary Music in the Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris constructed during the “age of cathedrals” (1150-1350) These buildings took around a century to complete. In Paris we have two great churchmen/musicians that take music to the next stage of development: Perotinus and Leoninus Created a style called polyphony. Which means many voices. Polyphonic music has more than one melody. This early polyphony is called organum. A second voice is added usually at the 5th or 4th.  Listen to: Perotinus, Organum on Viderunt omnes. Composers become very involved with writing music to accompany the Mass. The Mass has two parts; The Proper and the Ordinary. The Proper texts change with the liturgical year. The Ordinary texts remain the same. The parts of the ordinary Mass are:  Kyrie  Gloria  Credo  Sanctus  Agnus Dei

The Mass continues throughout history to be a form utilized by composers.

(1475-1600)

Renaissance means rebirth.

Originated in Italy, a rebirth of interest in the Fine Arts:  Poetry, Painting, Music, Architecture

Rediscovery of Ancient Greece and Rome.

Secular music rises in importance and starts to be placed alongside Sacred music.

Humanism, people have the capacity to shape and create their own world, rather than just being conduits of divine inspiration. Artists start to view themselves as important for being creative and start signing and taking credit for their art work.

Artists such as:  Da Vinci, Michelangelo

Josquin Deprez and the Renaissance Motet.

Worked in Italy for various dukes in Milan and Ferrara and for the Pope in Rome.

He was temperamental and egotistical. He demanded high pay and only wrote when he wanted to.

Composers of the Renaissance still wrote Masses but they turned their attentions to a new form called the motet.

A motet is a composition for choir, in Latin on a sacred subject. These were to be sung in the church or chapel or in the home for private devotionals.

Usually sung a cappella, which means “in the chapel”, but in musical terms means just voices singing with no accompaniment. Remember instruments other than the organ were not allowed in the church at this time.

These use the standard 4 voices that were set forth in the Middle Ages, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.

Josquin liked to use a melodic technique called imitation, where each voice enters with the same melodic fragment.
 Listen to: Josquin, Ave Maria CD 1 T8

This kind of writing became very elaborate and creative and started to cause some concern. It became difficult to understand the words and the music became so complex that it was becoming more about the composer than the sacred subject.

Also, we have an important world event on October 31, 1517; Martin Luther nailed his 95 complaints against the Catholic Church to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany and started the Protestant Reformation.

In response to this, the Catholic Church began to clean house: the Counter Reformation.

The Council of Trent (1545-1563).

One thing they examined was music. They decided that the music had gotten too popular and elaborate. They almost decided to outlaw polyphony of any kind, and just use the Gregorian Chant in the church services again.

Lucky for music, the compositions of Pierluigi da Palestrina came to the attention of the council.

They saw that he used a style of polyphony that was more in the keeping with the spirit of the old chants yet still allowed for the multiple voices. Palestrina became known as the Savior of Church Music.
Following a strict set of rules, Palestrina’s music is often constructed around a point of imitation. Each phrase of the text is assigned its own motive or fragment of melody. This fragment appears in each voice part.
 Listen to: Gloria and Agnus Dei of the Missa Papae Marcelli.

Note about the choirs:

An early decree by the Apostle Paul prohibited women from singing in the Roman Church except in Convents. Women were also not allowed to perform in theatrical productions in areas controlled by the church.

To get the high voices needed for soprano lines there were men who learned to use their falsetto range very well. There were also boy sopranos or most famous, castrated males called castratos or castrati. These men developed powerful voices and great lung capacity.

The popular music of the Renaissance revolved around a type of vocal composition known as the Madrigal. It is a piece for several solo voices that sets a piece of secular poetry, usually love poetry. Madrigals started in Italy and soon spread all over Europe. They became extremely popular in England. Around 40,000 of these were published by the year 1630.

Groups of men and women could get together at social gatherings and sing.