Notes for Listening to Music | Music Appreciation | MUS 1751, Study notes of Music

Download Notes for Listening to Music | Music Appreciation | MUS 1751 and more Study notes Music in PDF only on Docsity! Chapter 1: Listening to Music 01/25/2012
Why do we listen to music?  It gives us pleasure  It affects our minds and bodies  Intensifies and deepens our feelings  Heightens the emotional experience of events

How musical sounds & sounds machines work:  Listening to music: a physical reaction to a disturbance in our environment  A sound machine creates a vibration which creates sound waves, processed by the inner ear and converted into electrical signals that are transported by neurons to the primary auditory cortex in the center of the brain and releases dopamine o Causes mood enhancement

Low pitch sounds  vibrates slowly
High pitch sounds  vibrates rapidly  Musical sounds tend to be regular in their vibration. (Noise tends to be more jagged, while music is more smooth.)

Acoustics remain the same, but the means of capturing and preserving sound have been constantly evolving.  Until up to 900 C.E., most music was passed down orally. o At around this time, the Benedictine monks began to find ways to notate their religious chants.  Around 1250, more popular styles of music began to be notated.  As centuries go by, the written music or scores became more elaborate with tempo markings (how fast) and dynamic markings (how loud or soft).  The 19th century marks the advent of playback technology with the invention of the photograph by Thomas Edison (1877).

Classical vs. Popular Music  Classical – high art of learned music that requires a particular set of learned skills to perform or appreciate it.  Popular – music with large mass appeal  Classical music separates itself from popular music in the following ways: o Relies on acoustic instruments o Preset musical notation o Primarily instrumental and is more about sounds and gestures than lyrics o Longer and more demanding to listen to o The rhythm or beat varies greatly in importance o More abstract and timeless

Why listen to classical music?  It relieves stress and is relaxing  It centers the mind  It provides a vision of a better world  It is a learning opportunity about people, history, and the world.
Classical music is all around you. You may find out that you know more of this than you realize, but you just didn’t know what the song was called.

Learn to be a good listener  Active vs. Passive o Passive – Music is on in the background, and you hear it but not don’t really pay attention. o Active – Music is in the foreground of your insights.  A staff is marked with a clef to show the relative position of the pitches. o Treble Clef – also known as the “G clef”. Wherever it curls around is where G is located. o Bass Clef – also known as “F clef”. The location of the dots shows where F is located.  High voices have the treble clef. (Flute) [Soprano]  Low voices have the bass clef. (Tuba) [Bass]  Because the piano can play both bass and treble, it uses a Great Staff.

There is also a smaller subdivision of the pitches, and some were placed between the seven main pitches.  Sharp (#) – means play the pitch between that note and the one above it.  Flat (b) – means play the pitch between that note and the one just below it.  These are the black keys on the piano.

Melodies have a central pitch, called a tonic.  The central tonic pitch is the basis for a scale that is given that tonic’s notes name. (A “c” scale’s tonic note is c.)  Scales can be either major or minor. o It depends on the arrangement of the whole and half steps within the scale. o Major: 1 – 1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – 1 – ½ o Minor: 1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – ½ - 1 – 1

To tell the performer what key they are to play the piece in, the composer marks the staff with a key signature.  The key of the piece is the name of the scale that the piece was based on.  Ex: Tonic pitch C, scale major C, Key is C major

Chromatic Scale Classical pieces like to modulate, meaning they do not stay in the same key.  The moving away from and returning to tonic is how this music is made.  It takes practice to hear this process work, but it is recognizable.  Think of it as a change in scenery.
Another common change is in mode.  This is when the piece starts out either major or minor and then switches.
Melodies can move by steps of leaps.  Steps are easier to sing than leaps.  Leaps are typically in instrumental music.

Smaller pieces of the melody are phrases. (There are usually 2.)  Antecedent phrase (moves away)  Consequent phrase (comes back)  The last few notes that bring a phrase to its close is called the cadence. ( a resting point) Chapter 2: Rhythm 01/25/2012
Rhythm  Rhythm – the organization of time in music.  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 later on.  Rhythm is notated by adding lines and flags to the note heads written on the staff.  Rhythm is perhaps the most fundamental element of music. We respond to it physically and even dance to it.

Beat: an even pulse that divides the passing of time into equal units.  Beats are grouped into measures or bars.  The gathering of units of beats create what is called the meter. o 3  3 beats o 4  quarter note gets the beat  The gathering of groups of beats results in some beats being more important than others. o Duple (2/4) – up and down beats o Triple (3/4) o Quadruple (4/4) – also known as common time.  1st Beat – Downbeat  Last Beat – upbeat o Beats that happen before the 1st strong downbeat are called pick-up  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 syncopation.
Chapter 7: Musical Style
Musical Style Periods  Middle Ages (476-1475) o Hildegard: O Greenest Branch o Dark Ages, Lots of religious traditions  Renaissance (1475-1600) o As Vesta was from Latmos Hill Descending o A rebirth of the arts and the concept that people could make their own futures  Baroque (1600-1750) o Bach: Brandenburg Concerto 5,I o Vivaldi, Bach o Music is highly polyphonic  Classical (1750-1820) o Mozart: Symphony No. 40 o Artists like Mozart, Beethoven o During the Enlightenment period: Rise in interest in government and science  Romantic (1820-1900) o Berlioz: Symphony Fantastique, V o Interested in freedom, the emergence of the free artist o About emotion and storytelling, not as organized as classical music.  Impressionism (1880-1920) o Debussy, Volies: from Preludes o Much like impressionist art  Modern (1890-1985) o Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, Madonna  Postmodern (1945-present) o Adams: Short Ride in a Fast Machine o Philosophy that all art is created equal o Chapter 8: Medieval Music (474-1475) 01/25/2012
The various roles music played in:  The monastery  The 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.  Schedule: o 4:00 – get up and sing psalms o 5:00 – sing psalms o 6:00 – sing psalms (repeat every hour) o until 9:00 – mass service (Highlight of the day) o They lived a simple life of work and worship.  The plainsong used to sing these psalms evolved into a written collection of music called Gregorian Chants o Gregorian chant – a large body of unaccompanied vocal music to Latin texts that were written for the Roman Catholic Church starting very early in the Church’s history.  They were written for 15 centuries.  Named for Pope Gregory the Great o Gregorian Chant is out melody.  This kind of music when you have a single melodic line is called monophonic music or monophony. It would often be doubled at the octave. o Either for a choir of men or a choir of women (never together.) o Song: Gregorian Chant, Anonymous, Viderunt Omnes (“All the ends of the Earth”) [5th century] o 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)  German nun who wrote Gregorian Chants  Given to the church as a child as a tithe.  First “renaissance man”, a Medieval woman o Playwright, poet, musician, naturalist, pharmacologist, visionary o She wrote her own text based on these visions that she began to get.  Granted a sainthood.  Song: Hildegard, O rubor sanguinis (“Oh redness of blood”).

Music in the Cathedral  Notre Dame of Paris constructed during the “Age of Cathedrals” (1150-1350)  Cathedrals took about a century to complete.  In Paris, we have 2 great churchmen/musicians that take music to the next stage of development. o Perotinus and Leoninus  They create a new style of music called polyphony (many voices).  Polyphonic music has more than one melody.  The early polyphony is called the organum.  A second voice is usually added at the 5th or 4th.  Song: Perotinus, Organum on Viderunt Omnes  Composers become very involved with writing music to accompany the Mass. o A particular set of texts as part of the liturgy of the Church. o Two parts:  The Proper  Always change with the liturgical year  Reserved for special holidays such as Christmas or Easter  The Ordinary  Text remains the same  The mass that is recited on all normal days  Parts of the ordinary mass:  Kyrie (“Have Mercy”) Chapter 9: Renaissance Music 01/25/2012
Renaissance means rebirth.  Originated in Italy; a rebirth of interest in the Fine Arts o Poetry o Painting o Music o Architecture  Rediscovery of Ancient Greece and Rome  Secular music rise 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 artwork.  Time of great artists such as: o Da Vinci o 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 was demanded to 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. o A composition for a choir, in Latin, on a sacred subject. These were to be sung in the church or chapel or in the home for private devotionals. o Usually sung a cappella which means, “in the chapel”, but in musical terms means just singing voices with no accompaniment.  Instruments other than the organ were not allowed in the Church at this time. o These use the standard 4 voices that were set up in the Middle Ages. (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass).  Josquin liked to use a melodic technique called Imitation. o Each voice enters with the same melodic fragment. o 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.  Song: Josquin, Ave Maria CD 1 T8
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 to Protestant Reformation.  In response, the Catholic Church began to clean house. The Counter Reformation.  The Council of Trent (1545-1563)  They examined music. They decided that music had gotten too popular and elaborate. They almost decided to outlaw polyphony of any kind and go back to Gregorian Chants.
Lucky for music the compositions of Pierluigi de Palestrina saved music in the Church.  He used a style of polyphony that was more I keeping with the spirit of the old chants, yet still allowed for the multiple voices.  He 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. o Each phrase of text is assigned its own motive or fragment of melody. o This fragment appears, in turn, in each voice part.  Song: Palestrina, Agnus Dei of the Missa Papea Marcelli
A note about 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 for the soprano lines there were men who learned to use their falsetto range very well. o 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.  Men and women cold get together at social gatherings and sing.  Madrigals like to use a technique called word painting. Word painting is when the music follows the words. Basically, they are musical puns.  Song: As Vesta was from Latmos Hill Descending, CD1 T10 