Download 2013-04-25

M100: Music Appreciation
Discussion Group
Ben Tibbetts, T.A.
[email protected]
Thursday April 25, 2013
Welcome! Please sign the attendance at the front of the room.
Today’s Agenda
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•
Presentation Signups
Pass out tickets for the jazz concert tomorrow at
8pm in Bowker Auditorium
• Pages 366-382 and 455-460
(Skipping discussion on pages 446-451 to 461-466)
• Teaching Evaluations
Homework for weekend will be:
• 20th Century Worksheet (on Moodle)
• Listening Log Collection #2
Final Presentations
The sign up sheet is at the front of the room.
Perks
Day #1: get it over with & don’t have to come in again @ 8:00am
Day #2: more time to prepare your presentation/paper
Pass back stuff (briefly)
Pass out tickets for the jazz concert
tomorrow at 8pm in Bowker Auditorium
Concert report will be due on Presentation
Day #2
(Not in on that day? Drop it in my mailbox: in
the Fine Arts Center, Copy Room, East Wing)
Pages 366-382 and 455-460
Arnold Schoenberg
1874-1951
Austrian composer/painter
serialism - "A style of writing in which notes
are drawn not from a scale, but from a
predetermined series of notes. Serial
composition flourished between ca. 1920
and 1980." -page 518
twelve-tone composition - "A type of serial
composition in which twentieth-century
composers manipulated a series ('row')
consisting of all twelve notes of the
chromatic scale, not repeating any one of
these notes until all other eleven had been
sounded, thereby effectively avoiding any
sense of tonality." -page 519
atonal - "A style of writing that establishes no
harmonic or melodic center of gravity;
without a tonic, all notes are of equal weight
and significance." -page 515
expressionism - "A broad artistic movement
that flourished in music, painting, and
literature in the early decades of the
twentieth century, in which psychological
truth took precedence over beauty, and
inner emotion took precedence over any
sense of external reality." -page 516
Sprechstimme - "In German, 'speech-voice'. A
style of singing halfway between speech and
lyrical song, in which the singer hits precise
pitches and then allows them to tail off,
rather than sustaining them, as in lyrical
singing." -page 518
"Colombine" from Pierrot lunaire
(English, Pierrot in the
Moonlight)
“Pierrot” is a sad clown, pining for
love of Colombine, who breaks
his heart and leaves him
Text/translation
on next slide
“Colombine” from Pierrot lunaire
Translation from http://www.lunanova.org/pierrot/text.html
Igor Stravinsky
1882-1971
Russian composer
Ballet – “a theatrical entertainment in which
ballet dancing and music, often with scenery
and costumes, combine to tell a story,
establish an emotional atmosphere, etc.”
-Dictionary.Com (definition 2)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ballet
• polytonality - "The juxtaposition of two conventional
harmonies in a way that creates a new dissonance." -page
517
• pentatonic [scale] - "A scale consisting of five tones." -page
517
• ostinato - "A short pattern of notes repeated over and
over." -page 517
• through-composed - "A form in which each section has its
own music, with very little or no repetition between
sections." -page 518
Sergei Diaghilev was a Russian art critic and
patron
Founded the “Russian Ballets”
Ballet: The Rite of Spring, Part One: The
Adoration of the Earth (excerpt)
John Cage
1912-1992
American composer/music theorist
aleatory music - "Music composed using
elements of chance." -page 515
About Cage’s 4‘ 33“ or “Four minutes and
thirty-three seconds”
Three movements, composed in 1952
Supplemental: Sam Harris on mindfulness
meditation
Electronic music - "Music using sounds
generated (and not merely amplified) either
in whole or in part by electronic means." page 516
Musique concrète - "French for 'concrete
music.' Music using sounds generated by
everyday, real ('concrete') objects not
normally thought of as musical instruments
and then manipulated electronically." -page
517
Indeterminacy (excerpt)
Text on following slides
One evening I was walking along Hollywood
Boulevard, nothing much to do. I stopped and
looked in the window of a stationary shop. A
mechanized pen was suspended in space in such a
way that, as a mechanized roll of paper passed by
it, the pen went through the motions of the same
penmanship exercises I had learned as a child in
the third grade. Centrally placed in the window
was an advertisement explaining the mechanical
reasons for the perfection of the operation of the
suspended mechanical pen. I was fascinated, for
everything was going wrong. The pen was tearing
the paper to shreds and splattering ink all over the
window and on the advertisement, which,
nevertheless, remained legible.
It was after I got to Boston that I went into the
anechoic chamber at Harvard University.
Anybody who knows me knows this story. I
am constantly telling it. Anyway, in that
silent room, I heard two sounds, one high
and one low. Afterward I asked the engineer
in charge why, if the room was so silent, I
had heard the two sounds. He said,
"Describe them." I did. He said, "The high
one was your nervous system in operation.
The low one was your blood in circulation."
Listening Log Collection #2
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•
Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin
Terraplane Blues by Robert Johnson
Cotton Tail by Duke Ellington
Ornithology by Charlie Parker
Voiles by Claude Debussy
"Colombine" from Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire
Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Part One: The
Adoration of the Earth (excerpt)
• John Cage’s Indeterminacy (excerpt)
Final Reminders / Homework
• Need a volunteer to take the Teaching
Evaluations to the music office in the Fine
Arts Center, Room 273 (East Wing)
• 20th Century Worksheet due next class (on
Moodle)
• Listening Log Collection #2 due next class
• Questions? Email:
[email protected]