Here are the "Study Questions" Ms. Robbins wrote up for Mendelssohn’s World.
Musical Qualities
In addition to the musical issues that Dr. Strawser has raised, I would like you to think about the following questions.
Please observe carefully at the concert.
Watch and listen to what the musicians do. (Use SHMRG or something like it - see this post)
Pay attention to the details that you see and hear. You may use this sheet and/or the listening guide organizer to take notes for your essay if you like. (two sides to this page)
*** ***** ******** ***** ***
1. - What makes this a “fine art”? How do the performers and the music differ from pop music or other folk music forms? How do you think they might have similarities?
2. - How does the music express itself? Is it merely the notes and their loudness, or are there different ways to play them?
3. - What provides contrast? What is the same (unity)? What is different (variety)?
4. - Can you recognize the structure of the music? If we hear a tune, call that A, then hear A again, and then something new we call B. Many structures are AABA, ABA, ABACAD, etc. Can you analyze the structure of your favorite song?
5. - In what ways does the composer create? In other words, what tools are used to create a musical work of art? If a painter uses color, shading, texture, medium, etc. then what does a composer use?
6. - How do you think the composer communicates through two centuries how the performers today should play the music?
Showing posts with label music4NonMusicians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music4NonMusicians. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Fun with SHMRG
When I was teaching in college, my students often asked what they were supposed to listen for and I said “anything you hear.”
How do you learn to hear something? Well, that sounds obvious – you listen – but sometimes there's so much to listen for, you don't know where to begin. And if you don't know that much about the technical aspects of music, you can easily be intimidated.
Here's a way you can “break this down” to get started. This is better to do when you're listening to a recording that sitting at the concert, but mentally you make notes too about certain things. What's great about this method is, the more you know about music the more you can write down or the more specific you can be; if you don't have that much experience listening to music – and I mean ANY kind of music – your observations will be more generic but you can still notice things.
It was really cool that while I was writing this up, Ms. Robbins, one of the school district's music teachers, sent out a diagram of things you can listen for and discuss when listening to a piece of music. It's very similar to what I was using with my students years ago.
So take a piece of paper and right these letters
S – H – M – R – G
in different parts of the page – leave yourself enough space in between to write several random observations.
What do these letters mean?
S = SOUND which means what kind of sounds do you hear? With 8 string players, talking about what instruments are playing is fairly easy, but at some points you might focus on the first violinist (Odin Rathnam) or another of the players: what are they doing that caught your attention?
Sound also means “how is this sound created?” What is the TEXTURE like – are all the instruments playing, just a few, maybe only one or two? Is the sound “thick” or “thin” sounding? That's texture.
H = HARMONY which basically means how notes are put together to make chords and how chords move from one to another to create different moods: are they moving slowly or rapidly? What kind of feeling do you get from that? Is it creating a relaxed atmosphere or is it very energetic or unstable? For musicians, you could notice if the chords are more vertically oriented – like chords you'd play on the piano – or are they the result of different parts moving horizontally in such a way that chords are created out of the different lines they're playing together (this is also called “counterpoint).
Of course, by the time you write something down, the music keeps going and you may look back later and have no idea where in the music was that thought you just wrote down! Don't worry. Music moves forward in time: it's not like a picture you can look at in your own time and stare at one item for a while before moving on to the next. Music moves at its own speed – fast or slow – but you have to go with the flow!
M = MELODY which is usually what people listen for. Not everything HAS a melody and not all melodies are “tunes” you can hum or sing along with. Sometimes “melody” is just the most prominent line which could be in the top part or in the bottom part.
Melody is also made up of fragments, like I'd said: you have a note, you take several notes and make a word out of them – these are MOTIVES and you can build melodies out of these. These might be “recognizable gestures” you'll notice when they come back. Sometimes they come back in places you might not expect, not always in the fore-ground. Maybe it's in the middle-ground or the back-ground.
You can also jot down ideas about the shape of these main motives – maybe a line that represents the shape of the music: in the opening of the Octet, the first violin plays a rising line that contains three fragments. You might draw a short rising line, separated by a small space, then a higher rising line, another 'breath' and the one more rising line that expands into a descending squiggle. How often does that “shape” come back as you continue listening?
R = RHYTHM. Everybody knows what “rhythm” is but you don't need drums to have rhythm (they do make it easier, though!). In the Overture to “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” Mendelssohn has several melodic ideas that are different from one another by their rhythms – if not the exact patterns of short and long notes, then a sense of how the notes are grouped together. Are all the notes bustling along really fast? Are there notes that sound slower (for musicians, the difference between eighth-notes and half-notes)? Do these set up patterns you can recognize when you hear them again?
G = GROWTH which means how things grow. If you look at a seed, you have no idea what it's going to look like when it's full grown. Even after a few sprouts, you can't always be sure what the flower or the leaves will look like later on. Music is the same way: when a piece starts, do you know what the whole thing is going to be like? No, unless you've heard it before and really know it well. Even then, there might be things – small details – you'll pick up on another hearing that you didn't notice before. Have you ever walked past a familiar place and suddenly something catches your eye? “Oh, I hadn't seen that before.” But it was probably there all along.
This is where you might notice these “small details” of how a melody is put together, taking a musical “word” and turning it into a musical motive that you hear again and again. Is it different from before? Is it the same or maybe only slightly different? How does the composer make it sound different? If it sounds REALLY different, is there something about it that kind of sounds like the earlier one did? Is this a complete contrast? What impact does this contrast have: does it change the mood, increase the drama, make it sound like another character in the scene has just walked into view?
One of the basic concepts of music is “UNITY” and “VARIETY.” How does a composer use either one? What does this do to the overall sense you're getting from the music?
A lot of these ideas will give you “small building blocks” which can be put together to make “larger building blocks.” What you have might be like starting with a single brick, but eventually you start seeing how these bricks can make a wall that, when you get a chance to see it, is actually the side of a house. How does a brick house look different than a wooden one? How does an apartment building look different than your school building or the State Capitol? How does something built 5 years ago look compared to something built over 100 years ago? These are elements of “growth” - how you develop a larger sense of “FORM” and how the surface differs from piece to piece. But just like those houses and buildings, no matter what they look like to you or how big they are or what they're used for, they all have similar things in common: they're built out of small things, they have walls, a roof, windows and doors. Different kinds of music can have the similar kinds of things in common but yet be completely different in how they sound to you.
There's another one I left out – I guess it would be T for TEXT (or W for WORDS). Since a lot of music, especially “pop culture music,” sets words – even though a lot of classical music is just instrumental – you can also jot down ideas about the words they're singing. More importantly, how does the rest of the music – what accompanies the words – get across what the words mean (or imply)?
Even if there isn't a text that's being sung, maybe it's part of a movie or TV show's scene that's telling a story or serving as background to a dialog. How does the music help the scene? What would the scene be like without the music? Are you even aware there WAS music in that scene?
So when you're done with your SHMRG, you'll have a mess of rambling observations but maybe, as you think about it, it begins to give you an idea of what you're listening to.
Try it with music you're familiar with – take your favorite song and really “listen” to it (don't just “hear” it). If there's something you really like, what is it that makes it like that? How do all these different details that make up a song help you enjoy it? Can you SHMRG a rap song or a country ballad? Sure – try it!
And the next time you find yourself listening to something you don't like at first, rather than sitting there being bored with it, try SHMRG-ing it and see what kind of things you discover in the music. It may help you realize, “hey, there's something here, after all.”
- Dr. Dick
How do you learn to hear something? Well, that sounds obvious – you listen – but sometimes there's so much to listen for, you don't know where to begin. And if you don't know that much about the technical aspects of music, you can easily be intimidated.
Here's a way you can “break this down” to get started. This is better to do when you're listening to a recording that sitting at the concert, but mentally you make notes too about certain things. What's great about this method is, the more you know about music the more you can write down or the more specific you can be; if you don't have that much experience listening to music – and I mean ANY kind of music – your observations will be more generic but you can still notice things.
It was really cool that while I was writing this up, Ms. Robbins, one of the school district's music teachers, sent out a diagram of things you can listen for and discuss when listening to a piece of music. It's very similar to what I was using with my students years ago.
So take a piece of paper and right these letters
S – H – M – R – G
in different parts of the page – leave yourself enough space in between to write several random observations.
What do these letters mean?
S = SOUND which means what kind of sounds do you hear? With 8 string players, talking about what instruments are playing is fairly easy, but at some points you might focus on the first violinist (Odin Rathnam) or another of the players: what are they doing that caught your attention?
Sound also means “how is this sound created?” What is the TEXTURE like – are all the instruments playing, just a few, maybe only one or two? Is the sound “thick” or “thin” sounding? That's texture.
H = HARMONY which basically means how notes are put together to make chords and how chords move from one to another to create different moods: are they moving slowly or rapidly? What kind of feeling do you get from that? Is it creating a relaxed atmosphere or is it very energetic or unstable? For musicians, you could notice if the chords are more vertically oriented – like chords you'd play on the piano – or are they the result of different parts moving horizontally in such a way that chords are created out of the different lines they're playing together (this is also called “counterpoint).
Of course, by the time you write something down, the music keeps going and you may look back later and have no idea where in the music was that thought you just wrote down! Don't worry. Music moves forward in time: it's not like a picture you can look at in your own time and stare at one item for a while before moving on to the next. Music moves at its own speed – fast or slow – but you have to go with the flow!
M = MELODY which is usually what people listen for. Not everything HAS a melody and not all melodies are “tunes” you can hum or sing along with. Sometimes “melody” is just the most prominent line which could be in the top part or in the bottom part.
Melody is also made up of fragments, like I'd said: you have a note, you take several notes and make a word out of them – these are MOTIVES and you can build melodies out of these. These might be “recognizable gestures” you'll notice when they come back. Sometimes they come back in places you might not expect, not always in the fore-ground. Maybe it's in the middle-ground or the back-ground.
You can also jot down ideas about the shape of these main motives – maybe a line that represents the shape of the music: in the opening of the Octet, the first violin plays a rising line that contains three fragments. You might draw a short rising line, separated by a small space, then a higher rising line, another 'breath' and the one more rising line that expands into a descending squiggle. How often does that “shape” come back as you continue listening?
R = RHYTHM. Everybody knows what “rhythm” is but you don't need drums to have rhythm (they do make it easier, though!). In the Overture to “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” Mendelssohn has several melodic ideas that are different from one another by their rhythms – if not the exact patterns of short and long notes, then a sense of how the notes are grouped together. Are all the notes bustling along really fast? Are there notes that sound slower (for musicians, the difference between eighth-notes and half-notes)? Do these set up patterns you can recognize when you hear them again?
G = GROWTH which means how things grow. If you look at a seed, you have no idea what it's going to look like when it's full grown. Even after a few sprouts, you can't always be sure what the flower or the leaves will look like later on. Music is the same way: when a piece starts, do you know what the whole thing is going to be like? No, unless you've heard it before and really know it well. Even then, there might be things – small details – you'll pick up on another hearing that you didn't notice before. Have you ever walked past a familiar place and suddenly something catches your eye? “Oh, I hadn't seen that before.” But it was probably there all along.
This is where you might notice these “small details” of how a melody is put together, taking a musical “word” and turning it into a musical motive that you hear again and again. Is it different from before? Is it the same or maybe only slightly different? How does the composer make it sound different? If it sounds REALLY different, is there something about it that kind of sounds like the earlier one did? Is this a complete contrast? What impact does this contrast have: does it change the mood, increase the drama, make it sound like another character in the scene has just walked into view?
One of the basic concepts of music is “UNITY” and “VARIETY.” How does a composer use either one? What does this do to the overall sense you're getting from the music?
A lot of these ideas will give you “small building blocks” which can be put together to make “larger building blocks.” What you have might be like starting with a single brick, but eventually you start seeing how these bricks can make a wall that, when you get a chance to see it, is actually the side of a house. How does a brick house look different than a wooden one? How does an apartment building look different than your school building or the State Capitol? How does something built 5 years ago look compared to something built over 100 years ago? These are elements of “growth” - how you develop a larger sense of “FORM” and how the surface differs from piece to piece. But just like those houses and buildings, no matter what they look like to you or how big they are or what they're used for, they all have similar things in common: they're built out of small things, they have walls, a roof, windows and doors. Different kinds of music can have the similar kinds of things in common but yet be completely different in how they sound to you.
There's another one I left out – I guess it would be T for TEXT (or W for WORDS). Since a lot of music, especially “pop culture music,” sets words – even though a lot of classical music is just instrumental – you can also jot down ideas about the words they're singing. More importantly, how does the rest of the music – what accompanies the words – get across what the words mean (or imply)?
Even if there isn't a text that's being sung, maybe it's part of a movie or TV show's scene that's telling a story or serving as background to a dialog. How does the music help the scene? What would the scene be like without the music? Are you even aware there WAS music in that scene?
So when you're done with your SHMRG, you'll have a mess of rambling observations but maybe, as you think about it, it begins to give you an idea of what you're listening to.
Try it with music you're familiar with – take your favorite song and really “listen” to it (don't just “hear” it). If there's something you really like, what is it that makes it like that? How do all these different details that make up a song help you enjoy it? Can you SHMRG a rap song or a country ballad? Sure – try it!
And the next time you find yourself listening to something you don't like at first, rather than sitting there being bored with it, try SHMRG-ing it and see what kind of things you discover in the music. It may help you realize, “hey, there's something here, after all.”
- Dr. Dick
Friday, September 11, 2009
Another Way of Listening to "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
There are several ways to listen to a piece of music: you can listen to it because you like it (or because you were told to...); you can listen to it to hear what you like about it (“oh, that's the hee-haw bit”) or you can listen to it critically as a performance (“they didn't play that very well, there” or “I like how they got a little more dramatic here”); you can listen for the enjoyment you get out of it (“this part makes me sad; that part makes me smile”) or you can listen to it recognizing which section of the music represents which characters in the story (“there's the 'fairy music' again”). Or you could make up your own story using it as a sound-track for your imagination (“I hear the space aliens scattering as the space-ship lands here and they're cautious about approaching it when the door suddenly opens – at 1:15 – and out come the astronauts...”).
You can also listen to it “technically.” A music student might listen more technically than a non-music student (I hate that term, like you're majoring in non-music...) so you might call the technical details different things, depending on your familiarity with the jargon (“sounds like it's getting ready for something new here at 2:06” as opposed to “yes, the transition between the closing idea as it modulates to the dominant key”).
Let's listen to it, now, with these pointers, thinking of it more abstractly (but using the “character references” as tags). Think also how Mendelssohn gives each of his musical ideas a kind of “personality profile” so you can recognize them when you hear them again.
0:00 Opening chords – sustained in woodwinds, suspended animation? The mood shifts between one chord (in winds at 0:20) and when the strings play it (at 0:27). For music students, this is a shift between an E Major chord (winds) and an E Minor chord (strings).
0:27 – First “Theme” - the fairy music - more a sound and texture than a melody – strings scurrying...
0:49 – again
0:56 – a chord interrupts (“looking around”?), a sound associated with the opening chords
1:06 – after pausing, the 1st Theme resumes, as if starting over but now expands...
1:15 – suddenly we hear a 2nd Idea (will it be the 2nd Theme?) - what contrast do you hear here – volume, rhythm, shape of the melody? Sounds like the two mortal couples have burst in on the fairy's scene...
1:29 – a new rhythmic idea (or “word”) that gives it new energy
1:46 – it's the fairy music from the 1st Theme but how is it different, now?
2:06 – it begins to fragment and sounds like it's going somewhere...
2:13 – and arrives here – it's a more lyrical theme, associated with the two mortal couples who are having relationship issues: perhaps the mood of the music represents their love? Technically, this is the “real” 2nd Theme (not the 2nd musical idea, though, we've had several of those, like “words” in a sentence; this is a new paragraph). But it's only the first part of it: the woodwinds ask a question which...
2:20 – is answered by the strings (remember this, we'll hear it often as an independent idea or “word”) So the 2nd Theme is made up of two distinct short “phrases”
2:34 – it begins again but instead of doing it the same way, things start to expand in length
2:44 – a fanfare figure is added that interrupts the original lyrical mood of 2nd Theme (from 2:13-2:34) – there is a variation on the “phrase” from 2:20 added here (a little variety out of a little unity)
3:02 – sounds like it's going to start going somewhere... then arrives here, suddenly:
3:09 – the thumping bass notes begin the theme associated with the comic actors who will try to put on a play of their own. While they're strutting about, rehearsing, they are “attacked” by Puck who gives their leader, Bottom by name, the head of a donkey (a play on the old expression, “making an ass out of him”) – embedded in this theme are musical gestures that reflect the hee-haws, the braying of donkey!
3:20 – this rowdy theme is countered by a rising gesture
3:32 – we hear the fanfares we'd heard back at 2:44 – do they sound different here?
3:40 – the 2nd Theme returns but with more of the fanfares – which increases the tension and arrives at...
3:57 – the return of 1st Theme or the Fairy Music – it starts off sounding very similar but then starts going off in different directions... where's it headed, after 4:03?
4:13 – it becomes more unstable: how is Mendelssohn making it less stable? What does something like the low sounds you hear at 4:18 do for the stability?
4:20 – more fanfares with the 1st Theme Fairy Music in the background – what do the isolated sustained tones in the horn do for the music's stability at 4:32... 4:39 and 4:45?
4:56 – sounds like something new: a pattern in the winds (rising up by one note, then falling back) with rumblings in the lower strings
5:06 to 5:25 – things have gotten kind of hushed – one voice is moving downward while another voice is moving gradually upwards... where's it going? Stable or unstable?
5:25 – it becomes a little smoother but still sounds questioning...
5:40 – the music is interrupted by a “pleading” line, as if one of the lovers is on his or her knees asking for understanding or forgiveness – where does it come from? It's actually a variation on the “answer” part of the 2nd Theme (check out the music at 2:20).
At this point, the first video ends before this resolves. Is it a satisfying ending if you stopped the piece right here?
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
Well, that's a lot of stuff going on but it's how Mendelssohn builds six minutes of music out of a few different musical ideas – some are themes, others are just “gestures” like the little fanfares – and the most important (main) theme is really just a scurrying texture of strings representing the mysterious magical world of the fairy sprites who live in these woods.
So far we've had several musical ideas that can be grouped into those basic sections of a SONATA FORM – from the opening's introductory chords to 3:57 is the EXPOSITION... the reworking and fragmenting of some of the material, all mixed up, from 3:57 to the end of the first clip (actually the beginning of the second clip) is the DEVELOPMENT Section. So we'd expect, now, a RECAPITULATION, going back to the opening again to bring everything back together again.
So, let's listen to the 2nd half of the piece in this video clip which picks up just about where the first clip broke off.
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
Here, the “pleading” music ends at 0:13 with the sustained chords from the very opening (that “once upon a time” sound) beginning at 0:14. This is what we'd expect: this is what will become the RECAPITULATION (the final “A” in the A-B-A-like form).
0:39 – the 1st theme's fairy music continues as expected but it begins to expand...
1:17 – the 2nd theme comes back – the mortals' love theme – but wait a minute, what happened to the lively “barging-in” music from the mortals we originally heard at 1:16 in the first video clip? It's not here!
There are some other subtle differences here, too: it's not just a run-through of everything we've heard before. But we do hear familiar music – the fanfares, the Comedians' music with hee-haws. And at that point, Mendelssohn could give it a lively ending at 3:40, probably what most composers would've done – it would make people applaud more, after all. Yay! But wait, there's more!
3:40 – instead of wrapping it up, here, he brings back the 1st theme's fairy music again
3:59 – the first time around, those hesitant “looking around” chords are now expanding into something more like the opening's “once-upon-a-time” chords
4:39 – but here's something that sounds familiar: what is it? It's actually the musical idea we heard at 1:16 in the first video which we associate with the mortals barging into the woods: remember how loud and energetic it sounded? How does it sound here?
Remember, the piece if called “A Midsummer Night's DREAM” – are they falling asleep here? Then at 5:24, those magical opening chords come back as if to say “and that's how it ends: was it really just a dream?”
Technically, this is like an added bonus track that composers often use to wrap things up a little more neatly. It's not what we expect so it adds to the enjoyment by being a little more unpredictable: maybe it puts a different “spin” on what we've heard. It's called a “CODA” which is the Italian word for tail, as in the “tail-end.”
When you were children, ever have somebody read you a bed-time story to send you off to sleep? And you fell asleep before it was over? Maybe that's what's happening here: Mendelssohn has finished the story and carefully closes the book so as not to wake you.
- Dr. Dick
You can also listen to it “technically.” A music student might listen more technically than a non-music student (I hate that term, like you're majoring in non-music...) so you might call the technical details different things, depending on your familiarity with the jargon (“sounds like it's getting ready for something new here at 2:06” as opposed to “yes, the transition between the closing idea as it modulates to the dominant key”).
Let's listen to it, now, with these pointers, thinking of it more abstractly (but using the “character references” as tags). Think also how Mendelssohn gives each of his musical ideas a kind of “personality profile” so you can recognize them when you hear them again.
0:00 Opening chords – sustained in woodwinds, suspended animation? The mood shifts between one chord (in winds at 0:20) and when the strings play it (at 0:27). For music students, this is a shift between an E Major chord (winds) and an E Minor chord (strings).
0:27 – First “Theme” - the fairy music - more a sound and texture than a melody – strings scurrying...
0:49 – again
0:56 – a chord interrupts (“looking around”?), a sound associated with the opening chords
1:06 – after pausing, the 1st Theme resumes, as if starting over but now expands...
1:15 – suddenly we hear a 2nd Idea (will it be the 2nd Theme?) - what contrast do you hear here – volume, rhythm, shape of the melody? Sounds like the two mortal couples have burst in on the fairy's scene...
1:29 – a new rhythmic idea (or “word”) that gives it new energy
1:46 – it's the fairy music from the 1st Theme but how is it different, now?
2:06 – it begins to fragment and sounds like it's going somewhere...
2:13 – and arrives here – it's a more lyrical theme, associated with the two mortal couples who are having relationship issues: perhaps the mood of the music represents their love? Technically, this is the “real” 2nd Theme (not the 2nd musical idea, though, we've had several of those, like “words” in a sentence; this is a new paragraph). But it's only the first part of it: the woodwinds ask a question which...
2:20 – is answered by the strings (remember this, we'll hear it often as an independent idea or “word”) So the 2nd Theme is made up of two distinct short “phrases”
2:34 – it begins again but instead of doing it the same way, things start to expand in length
2:44 – a fanfare figure is added that interrupts the original lyrical mood of 2nd Theme (from 2:13-2:34) – there is a variation on the “phrase” from 2:20 added here (a little variety out of a little unity)
3:02 – sounds like it's going to start going somewhere... then arrives here, suddenly:
3:09 – the thumping bass notes begin the theme associated with the comic actors who will try to put on a play of their own. While they're strutting about, rehearsing, they are “attacked” by Puck who gives their leader, Bottom by name, the head of a donkey (a play on the old expression, “making an ass out of him”) – embedded in this theme are musical gestures that reflect the hee-haws, the braying of donkey!
3:20 – this rowdy theme is countered by a rising gesture
3:32 – we hear the fanfares we'd heard back at 2:44 – do they sound different here?
3:40 – the 2nd Theme returns but with more of the fanfares – which increases the tension and arrives at...
3:57 – the return of 1st Theme or the Fairy Music – it starts off sounding very similar but then starts going off in different directions... where's it headed, after 4:03?
4:13 – it becomes more unstable: how is Mendelssohn making it less stable? What does something like the low sounds you hear at 4:18 do for the stability?
4:20 – more fanfares with the 1st Theme Fairy Music in the background – what do the isolated sustained tones in the horn do for the music's stability at 4:32... 4:39 and 4:45?
4:56 – sounds like something new: a pattern in the winds (rising up by one note, then falling back) with rumblings in the lower strings
5:06 to 5:25 – things have gotten kind of hushed – one voice is moving downward while another voice is moving gradually upwards... where's it going? Stable or unstable?
5:25 – it becomes a little smoother but still sounds questioning...
5:40 – the music is interrupted by a “pleading” line, as if one of the lovers is on his or her knees asking for understanding or forgiveness – where does it come from? It's actually a variation on the “answer” part of the 2nd Theme (check out the music at 2:20).
At this point, the first video ends before this resolves. Is it a satisfying ending if you stopped the piece right here?
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
Well, that's a lot of stuff going on but it's how Mendelssohn builds six minutes of music out of a few different musical ideas – some are themes, others are just “gestures” like the little fanfares – and the most important (main) theme is really just a scurrying texture of strings representing the mysterious magical world of the fairy sprites who live in these woods.
So far we've had several musical ideas that can be grouped into those basic sections of a SONATA FORM – from the opening's introductory chords to 3:57 is the EXPOSITION... the reworking and fragmenting of some of the material, all mixed up, from 3:57 to the end of the first clip (actually the beginning of the second clip) is the DEVELOPMENT Section. So we'd expect, now, a RECAPITULATION, going back to the opening again to bring everything back together again.
So, let's listen to the 2nd half of the piece in this video clip which picks up just about where the first clip broke off.
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
Here, the “pleading” music ends at 0:13 with the sustained chords from the very opening (that “once upon a time” sound) beginning at 0:14. This is what we'd expect: this is what will become the RECAPITULATION (the final “A” in the A-B-A-like form).
0:39 – the 1st theme's fairy music continues as expected but it begins to expand...
1:17 – the 2nd theme comes back – the mortals' love theme – but wait a minute, what happened to the lively “barging-in” music from the mortals we originally heard at 1:16 in the first video clip? It's not here!
There are some other subtle differences here, too: it's not just a run-through of everything we've heard before. But we do hear familiar music – the fanfares, the Comedians' music with hee-haws. And at that point, Mendelssohn could give it a lively ending at 3:40, probably what most composers would've done – it would make people applaud more, after all. Yay! But wait, there's more!
3:40 – instead of wrapping it up, here, he brings back the 1st theme's fairy music again
3:59 – the first time around, those hesitant “looking around” chords are now expanding into something more like the opening's “once-upon-a-time” chords
4:39 – but here's something that sounds familiar: what is it? It's actually the musical idea we heard at 1:16 in the first video which we associate with the mortals barging into the woods: remember how loud and energetic it sounded? How does it sound here?
Remember, the piece if called “A Midsummer Night's DREAM” – are they falling asleep here? Then at 5:24, those magical opening chords come back as if to say “and that's how it ends: was it really just a dream?”
Technically, this is like an added bonus track that composers often use to wrap things up a little more neatly. It's not what we expect so it adds to the enjoyment by being a little more unpredictable: maybe it puts a different “spin” on what we've heard. It's called a “CODA” which is the Italian word for tail, as in the “tail-end.”
When you were children, ever have somebody read you a bed-time story to send you off to sleep? And you fell asleep before it was over? Maybe that's what's happening here: Mendelssohn has finished the story and carefully closes the book so as not to wake you.
- Dr. Dick
Music as a Language: Putting it Together, Note by Note
Music is often called “a universal language” even though it's not a language you would speak. Because it can communicate without words, it often connects with people around the world who might not be able to talk to one another but it could still be understood.
The only problem is, what the music “means” is another thing – it's not as direct as spoken language and so it doesn't translate into anything really specific. You can't come up with a musical equivalent of “What is the answer to Test Question #4” that will get you the answer you're looking for. But if you want to comfort someone, if you want to inspire someone, if you want to make some kind of emotional connection with someone who doesn't speak your language, chances are music may be a good way to start.
Of course, if you use words with music – and most popular music is vocal: songs that set words to music and then is sung – it may communicate better. But if someone who's living in Cairo doesn't speak English, they're still not going to know exactly what those words mean. And vice-versa.
If people know the story of Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” in whatever language they speak, I think they'll “get” the meaning behind Mendelssohn musical work inspired by it.
If people can appreciate the Octet for Strings, they can do it whether they speak German, English, Spanish or Vietnamese – and everybody can sit in the same room and enjoy the music together even if they're able to talk to each afterward.
*** ***** ********* ***** ***
However, there's another way I like to think of music as a language.
A language is based on sounds that are written down. A writer uses letters, a composer uses notes. A writer strings letters together to create words; a composer strings notes together to create musical motives or ideas, like the opening of Beethoven's 5th. (They can also be bunched together to make chords, a dimension that spoken language or writing cannot achieve).
You can put words together. This is called a sentence.
You can do the same thing with notes. This could be a melody.
You can also just keep stringing words together to make longer and longer sentences but they can start getting out of hand not making a lot of sense especially if you don't use any punctuation so the voice never knows where one idea stops and another one begins because then I went and had lunch and slept through math class the sky is really cloudy today and now I'm rally in trouble because like don't you get the same kind of feeling I have no idea where this is going.
If you had a melody like that – one that doesn't go anywhere or has no shape to it – it would drive a listener up a wall. Writing a sentence like that won't earn you any points in English class, either.
*** ***** ******** ***** ***
Sentences can also then be strung together to make paragraphs. There are many ways you can do this, and you can create a sense of style depending on how you use your words and sentences, how you choose your vocabulary, how you write so the reader's “inner voice” rises or falls with the line – these are similar to ways that composers would write a musical line and indicate how musicians would perform it.
So, if combining letters creates words which in combination creates phrases and sentences and paragraphs, you can think of notes creating musical ideas which combine to create melodies (or something comparable – it may not be a real whistleable “tune”) which has a kind of musical punctuation called a “cadence” which could either be a comma or a period – or maybe a colon, semi-colon or dash. Whatever.
In fact, in music a phrase that ends in a comma answered by a phrase that ends more conclusively with a period is actually called a “period.”
You can put some periods together to create the equivalent of a musical paragraph. This would be a “section.”
Sections combined to create larger sections which, the more they grow, can form a complete piece. A song might be fairly simple and be over in less than three minutes. A symphony, concerto or a string quartet could be more complex, have three or four separate movements and could take a half hour or more to perform. Some symphonies can be 45 minutes or longer – Gustav Mahler wrote one that's about 90 minutes long!
Just like in music, writers can keep stringing these “paragraphs” together, too, until they end up with an essay, a short story or book. Some books might be 45 pages long and have maybe 5 or 10 chapters. How long is Herman Melville's “Moby Dick” and how many chapters does it have? Marcel Proust wrote a novel that's published in separate volumes – seven, originally, though usually in three volumes that would make great doorstops – and in all consists of some 3,200 pages! (The man would never be happy on Twitter!)
*** ***** ******** ***** ***
You can create forms in words or music that are like rules in a game: there are procedures you can use that create different results. That's what makes the difference in card games, whether you're playing solitaire, cribbage or poker. It's like figuring out the patterns and sequences of patterns you need to know in order to play certain video games: by mastering them, you attain a higher level.
Music can work the same way. So can poetry.
There are many ways of grouping words, phrases and sentences to create a poem. There are different kinds of poems: some are defined by mood, others by structure.
The simplest poetic structure would probably be the couplet with two lines that rhyme. Or you can have four lines called a quatrain with alternating lines that rhyme. You can combine quatrains into longer strings to create more free-flowing poems.
Or you can have a longer, more involved form like the sonnet which is generally considered a more intellectual form with an involved rhyme scheme. You can also have something a little less intellectual like... well, a limerick: regardless of its subject matter, it still follows a predictable pattern of rhythms and rhymes.
In music, there are all kinds of ways to combine these units that are comparable to words and sentences and paragraphs into larger and larger forms.
But sometimes it is more than just what you hear on the surface. There are underlying principles that move the music forward, at least in Western Music.
One underlying principle is “unity & variety.” You don't want everything sounding the same because pretty soon it gets boring with nothing to keep your attention. A little variety and you have something new and different to listen to. What's really interesting is creating variety but still keeping it unified with certain fingerprints that make it sound similar but not the same. Other times, you'll want outright contrast: you have one idea that's soft and lyrical but maybe your next idea will be louder and more dramatic sounding.
Another underlying principle is “statement & digression.” You state a theme and then digress from it – through variety or contrast. The thing is to be consistent enough to be building up a listeners expectations but then doing just enough to give the listener something a little unexpected to keep the interest from flagging.
You can expand this by turning the “digression” into something that becomes increasingly unstable. But to create a satisfying ending – not necessarily a happy ending but a logical conclusion – you might want to come back to that opening statement to give it a kind of closure, rounding it off to make it feel like it's come full circle. That would make it “Statement, Digression & Return.” This is what much Western Music has come to expect but lots of composers (especially 20th Century ones) decided it wasn't all that necessary.
One basic musical form is a three-part form described as A-B-A. The A-Section is one idea, the B-Section another, the return of the A-Section brings it to a close by bringing back the opening material. This would be “Statement - Digression - Return.”
*** ***** ******** ***** ***
Now, a unit of measuring notes in the amount of space it takes to write them down is called a “measure” or a “bar” (a “bar” is a place where notes like to hang out). European music usually moves in groups of 4 measures and these would be balanced by another group of 4 measures. Not that it HAS to, but it usually does. In context, you get so used to that and that's what you expect: you might sense when the composer's bending or breaking the rules by doing something unexpected. You may not know it, but maybe you sense something is a little different.
If you have a three-part form – A-B-A – it could be (4+4) + (4+4) + (4+4) or a total of 24 measures.
There are all kinds of ways you can expand on these simple forms.
You could take that A-B-A piece and turn it into a just one 24-measure section of a larger A-B-A form where each section is now a complete A-B-A form itself. That would make it an expanded piece that's now 72 measures long.
The trick is to make it sound not quite so square, all this 4+4+4+4... It's not quite the same as saying you can only have 8 words in each sentence, but it can become pretty dull – or just predictable. If there isn't some way of varying the material inside those measures, the listener would soon tune out.
Now, if you're writing a larger piece, that 72 measure piece could be one of four movements. For contrast, each movement would probably use a different form. They might also be in contrasting tempos and moods.
If you have a melody and then repeat it with slight changes, you have a form that's called Variations. You can vary the theme in different ways so as it goes along, things get a little farther afield from the original. Again, the idea is not to be too boringly close to the theme itself but to bring in as much variety as you can and still have it be recognizable as the original (it's in there, somewhere).
Another form is kind of a variation on this A-B-A idea. It's called the “Sonata” Form and it's usually used for the bigger first movement of a piece.
In this case the opening A-Section is really a bunch of sub-groups that would include a couple of contrasting themes. Using lower-case letters for the sub-groups, it might be described as (a+b).
Then the Capitol B-Section is based on those two contrasting themes (in no particular order) where a composer might play one off against the other or take them apart bit by bit and mix them up so maybe you're not really sure what's developing here. The opening part seemed pretty stable: but now what's going on? It can become very dramatic, too, and feels unstable.
Then the return of the opening A-Section is like a resolution of this instability: you are now hearing something familiar and the tension that had been building up – this uncertainty – feels like it's been released. Both themes, the “a” and the “b,” will come back again in their proper order and then wrap things up very neatly.
So the opening A-Section with its two (or more) themes is called the “Exposition” because the composer is stating his basic material (in writing, passages that are “expository” state facts or material that you need to figure out a character or a plot detail – it may not be action in the plot but it may be important to understanding the plot).
The middle B-Section which develops this material more dramatically is called the “Development” (in a story, this is where "the plot thickens"). When it gets more dramatic and unstable in some way, the point where it resolves into what you've been expecting is sometimes called the “denouement” (day-noo-MAH(n)), a French term that basically means it's the Climax and after that point, things work themselves out into some kind of resolution.
This restatement of the themes from the opening section is called a “Recapitulation” and we often abbreviate that to “Recap,” just like something somebody does at the end of a presentation to remind you what the initial points of discussion were. So that would mean you're dealing with Exposition [A(a+b)] + Development [B(a/b)] + Recapitulation [A(a+b)]. (That would make that last sentence a “recap,” too.)
And that, in a nut-shell, is one of the major forms of classical music! The Sonata Form.
At least that's the idea – there are lots of variations on what a composer can do with this concept but that's basically it.
*** ***** ******** ***** ***
No matter what the style is, though, most of Western Music follows similar concepts of
Unity and Variety – a theme is presented (creating a sense of unity getting started) and then you hear some contrast (different or entirely new but maybe with some aspects of unity). An idea or gesture in the music comes back and you sense that it belongs there (unity) but you also sense that it's a little different the way it's used this time (variety). Maybe what you expect isn't what actually happens – that might be more “variety” than “unity.” If you hear a variation on a melody, that would be “unity” but if it's not the same, there's some “variety” with that.
So when you're listening to a piece of music, think of it as a text with words – not necessarily a story, because not every piece of music is “about” something – that's put together with words (musical ideas or gestures – like the rising idea that opens Mendelssohn's Octet) that creates phrases with punctuation – where do you feel the music takes a breath or comes to something of a pause (maybe not a stop); how does the composer keep going so the music continues to flow past these breathing places, this punctuation, these periods?
Listen to how this gesture – or the next one – comes back and unifies the musical line. What kind of contrast is there with the next line? Is it subtle or is it more obvious, like the three ideas from the opening of the overture Mendelssohn wrote to “A Midsummer Night's Dream” - how does he differentiate the music we associate with the fairies and sprites from the music associated with the mortal couples and then the comic “rustics” complete with a guy who hee-haws? If you can distinguish between these themes and pay attention to them when they keep recurring – like following the players in a sport game – you're doing exactly what the composer wants you to do: to be aware (consciously or subconsciously) of the form.
Because the Overture to “A Midsummer Night's Dream” is in Sonata Form. For all its telling a story, for all the different characters and dramatic relationships the music is describing, it's still a fairly strict “Sonata Form.”
Referring back to the post on "Right Brain / Left Brain," this sense of structure makes it an abstract or a “left brained” idea.
The music's ability to describe the events of a story is very subjective or a “right brained” idea.
And so in this case, the piece can be appreciated on both an abstract and a subjective level.
That's one of the hallmarks of music – at least Western Music (music from non-Western cultures may follow different underlying principles). No matter what the surface may sound like, however the individual composer's style is realized, underneath that sound is a basic foundation in these basic principles of “unity & variety,” “statement & digression” that helps to create a context for the grouping of these notes, phrases and sections that can be abstract (giving pleasure to the mind) or subjective (giving pleasure to the heart) and with any luck, both.
Now, with those thoughts, listen to that overture - reposted in this video - from a different perspective.
- Dr. Dick
The only problem is, what the music “means” is another thing – it's not as direct as spoken language and so it doesn't translate into anything really specific. You can't come up with a musical equivalent of “What is the answer to Test Question #4” that will get you the answer you're looking for. But if you want to comfort someone, if you want to inspire someone, if you want to make some kind of emotional connection with someone who doesn't speak your language, chances are music may be a good way to start.
Of course, if you use words with music – and most popular music is vocal: songs that set words to music and then is sung – it may communicate better. But if someone who's living in Cairo doesn't speak English, they're still not going to know exactly what those words mean. And vice-versa.
If people know the story of Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” in whatever language they speak, I think they'll “get” the meaning behind Mendelssohn musical work inspired by it.
If people can appreciate the Octet for Strings, they can do it whether they speak German, English, Spanish or Vietnamese – and everybody can sit in the same room and enjoy the music together even if they're able to talk to each afterward.
*** ***** ********* ***** ***
However, there's another way I like to think of music as a language.
A language is based on sounds that are written down. A writer uses letters, a composer uses notes. A writer strings letters together to create words; a composer strings notes together to create musical motives or ideas, like the opening of Beethoven's 5th. (They can also be bunched together to make chords, a dimension that spoken language or writing cannot achieve).
You can put words together. This is called a sentence.
You can do the same thing with notes. This could be a melody.
You can also just keep stringing words together to make longer and longer sentences but they can start getting out of hand not making a lot of sense especially if you don't use any punctuation so the voice never knows where one idea stops and another one begins because then I went and had lunch and slept through math class the sky is really cloudy today and now I'm rally in trouble because like don't you get the same kind of feeling I have no idea where this is going.
If you had a melody like that – one that doesn't go anywhere or has no shape to it – it would drive a listener up a wall. Writing a sentence like that won't earn you any points in English class, either.
*** ***** ******** ***** ***
Sentences can also then be strung together to make paragraphs. There are many ways you can do this, and you can create a sense of style depending on how you use your words and sentences, how you choose your vocabulary, how you write so the reader's “inner voice” rises or falls with the line – these are similar to ways that composers would write a musical line and indicate how musicians would perform it.
So, if combining letters creates words which in combination creates phrases and sentences and paragraphs, you can think of notes creating musical ideas which combine to create melodies (or something comparable – it may not be a real whistleable “tune”) which has a kind of musical punctuation called a “cadence” which could either be a comma or a period – or maybe a colon, semi-colon or dash. Whatever.
In fact, in music a phrase that ends in a comma answered by a phrase that ends more conclusively with a period is actually called a “period.”
You can put some periods together to create the equivalent of a musical paragraph. This would be a “section.”
Sections combined to create larger sections which, the more they grow, can form a complete piece. A song might be fairly simple and be over in less than three minutes. A symphony, concerto or a string quartet could be more complex, have three or four separate movements and could take a half hour or more to perform. Some symphonies can be 45 minutes or longer – Gustav Mahler wrote one that's about 90 minutes long!
Just like in music, writers can keep stringing these “paragraphs” together, too, until they end up with an essay, a short story or book. Some books might be 45 pages long and have maybe 5 or 10 chapters. How long is Herman Melville's “Moby Dick” and how many chapters does it have? Marcel Proust wrote a novel that's published in separate volumes – seven, originally, though usually in three volumes that would make great doorstops – and in all consists of some 3,200 pages! (The man would never be happy on Twitter!)
*** ***** ******** ***** ***
You can create forms in words or music that are like rules in a game: there are procedures you can use that create different results. That's what makes the difference in card games, whether you're playing solitaire, cribbage or poker. It's like figuring out the patterns and sequences of patterns you need to know in order to play certain video games: by mastering them, you attain a higher level.
Music can work the same way. So can poetry.
There are many ways of grouping words, phrases and sentences to create a poem. There are different kinds of poems: some are defined by mood, others by structure.
The simplest poetic structure would probably be the couplet with two lines that rhyme. Or you can have four lines called a quatrain with alternating lines that rhyme. You can combine quatrains into longer strings to create more free-flowing poems.
Or you can have a longer, more involved form like the sonnet which is generally considered a more intellectual form with an involved rhyme scheme. You can also have something a little less intellectual like... well, a limerick: regardless of its subject matter, it still follows a predictable pattern of rhythms and rhymes.
In music, there are all kinds of ways to combine these units that are comparable to words and sentences and paragraphs into larger and larger forms.
But sometimes it is more than just what you hear on the surface. There are underlying principles that move the music forward, at least in Western Music.
One underlying principle is “unity & variety.” You don't want everything sounding the same because pretty soon it gets boring with nothing to keep your attention. A little variety and you have something new and different to listen to. What's really interesting is creating variety but still keeping it unified with certain fingerprints that make it sound similar but not the same. Other times, you'll want outright contrast: you have one idea that's soft and lyrical but maybe your next idea will be louder and more dramatic sounding.
Another underlying principle is “statement & digression.” You state a theme and then digress from it – through variety or contrast. The thing is to be consistent enough to be building up a listeners expectations but then doing just enough to give the listener something a little unexpected to keep the interest from flagging.
You can expand this by turning the “digression” into something that becomes increasingly unstable. But to create a satisfying ending – not necessarily a happy ending but a logical conclusion – you might want to come back to that opening statement to give it a kind of closure, rounding it off to make it feel like it's come full circle. That would make it “Statement, Digression & Return.” This is what much Western Music has come to expect but lots of composers (especially 20th Century ones) decided it wasn't all that necessary.
One basic musical form is a three-part form described as A-B-A. The A-Section is one idea, the B-Section another, the return of the A-Section brings it to a close by bringing back the opening material. This would be “Statement - Digression - Return.”
*** ***** ******** ***** ***
Now, a unit of measuring notes in the amount of space it takes to write them down is called a “measure” or a “bar” (a “bar” is a place where notes like to hang out). European music usually moves in groups of 4 measures and these would be balanced by another group of 4 measures. Not that it HAS to, but it usually does. In context, you get so used to that and that's what you expect: you might sense when the composer's bending or breaking the rules by doing something unexpected. You may not know it, but maybe you sense something is a little different.
If you have a three-part form – A-B-A – it could be (4+4) + (4+4) + (4+4) or a total of 24 measures.
There are all kinds of ways you can expand on these simple forms.
You could take that A-B-A piece and turn it into a just one 24-measure section of a larger A-B-A form where each section is now a complete A-B-A form itself. That would make it an expanded piece that's now 72 measures long.
The trick is to make it sound not quite so square, all this 4+4+4+4... It's not quite the same as saying you can only have 8 words in each sentence, but it can become pretty dull – or just predictable. If there isn't some way of varying the material inside those measures, the listener would soon tune out.
Now, if you're writing a larger piece, that 72 measure piece could be one of four movements. For contrast, each movement would probably use a different form. They might also be in contrasting tempos and moods.
If you have a melody and then repeat it with slight changes, you have a form that's called Variations. You can vary the theme in different ways so as it goes along, things get a little farther afield from the original. Again, the idea is not to be too boringly close to the theme itself but to bring in as much variety as you can and still have it be recognizable as the original (it's in there, somewhere).
Another form is kind of a variation on this A-B-A idea. It's called the “Sonata” Form and it's usually used for the bigger first movement of a piece.
In this case the opening A-Section is really a bunch of sub-groups that would include a couple of contrasting themes. Using lower-case letters for the sub-groups, it might be described as (a+b).
Then the Capitol B-Section is based on those two contrasting themes (in no particular order) where a composer might play one off against the other or take them apart bit by bit and mix them up so maybe you're not really sure what's developing here. The opening part seemed pretty stable: but now what's going on? It can become very dramatic, too, and feels unstable.
Then the return of the opening A-Section is like a resolution of this instability: you are now hearing something familiar and the tension that had been building up – this uncertainty – feels like it's been released. Both themes, the “a” and the “b,” will come back again in their proper order and then wrap things up very neatly.
So the opening A-Section with its two (or more) themes is called the “Exposition” because the composer is stating his basic material (in writing, passages that are “expository” state facts or material that you need to figure out a character or a plot detail – it may not be action in the plot but it may be important to understanding the plot).
The middle B-Section which develops this material more dramatically is called the “Development” (in a story, this is where "the plot thickens"). When it gets more dramatic and unstable in some way, the point where it resolves into what you've been expecting is sometimes called the “denouement” (day-noo-MAH(n)), a French term that basically means it's the Climax and after that point, things work themselves out into some kind of resolution.
This restatement of the themes from the opening section is called a “Recapitulation” and we often abbreviate that to “Recap,” just like something somebody does at the end of a presentation to remind you what the initial points of discussion were. So that would mean you're dealing with Exposition [A(a+b)] + Development [B(a/b)] + Recapitulation [A(a+b)]. (That would make that last sentence a “recap,” too.)
And that, in a nut-shell, is one of the major forms of classical music! The Sonata Form.
At least that's the idea – there are lots of variations on what a composer can do with this concept but that's basically it.
*** ***** ******** ***** ***
No matter what the style is, though, most of Western Music follows similar concepts of
Unity and Variety – a theme is presented (creating a sense of unity getting started) and then you hear some contrast (different or entirely new but maybe with some aspects of unity). An idea or gesture in the music comes back and you sense that it belongs there (unity) but you also sense that it's a little different the way it's used this time (variety). Maybe what you expect isn't what actually happens – that might be more “variety” than “unity.” If you hear a variation on a melody, that would be “unity” but if it's not the same, there's some “variety” with that.
So when you're listening to a piece of music, think of it as a text with words – not necessarily a story, because not every piece of music is “about” something – that's put together with words (musical ideas or gestures – like the rising idea that opens Mendelssohn's Octet) that creates phrases with punctuation – where do you feel the music takes a breath or comes to something of a pause (maybe not a stop); how does the composer keep going so the music continues to flow past these breathing places, this punctuation, these periods?
Listen to how this gesture – or the next one – comes back and unifies the musical line. What kind of contrast is there with the next line? Is it subtle or is it more obvious, like the three ideas from the opening of the overture Mendelssohn wrote to “A Midsummer Night's Dream” - how does he differentiate the music we associate with the fairies and sprites from the music associated with the mortal couples and then the comic “rustics” complete with a guy who hee-haws? If you can distinguish between these themes and pay attention to them when they keep recurring – like following the players in a sport game – you're doing exactly what the composer wants you to do: to be aware (consciously or subconsciously) of the form.
Because the Overture to “A Midsummer Night's Dream” is in Sonata Form. For all its telling a story, for all the different characters and dramatic relationships the music is describing, it's still a fairly strict “Sonata Form.”
Referring back to the post on "Right Brain / Left Brain," this sense of structure makes it an abstract or a “left brained” idea.
The music's ability to describe the events of a story is very subjective or a “right brained” idea.
And so in this case, the piece can be appreciated on both an abstract and a subjective level.
That's one of the hallmarks of music – at least Western Music (music from non-Western cultures may follow different underlying principles). No matter what the surface may sound like, however the individual composer's style is realized, underneath that sound is a basic foundation in these basic principles of “unity & variety,” “statement & digression” that helps to create a context for the grouping of these notes, phrases and sections that can be abstract (giving pleasure to the mind) or subjective (giving pleasure to the heart) and with any luck, both.
Now, with those thoughts, listen to that overture - reposted in this video - from a different perspective.
- Dr. Dick
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Mendelssohn & Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream (The Overture)
One summer, when Mendelssohn was 17, he was reading Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.To explain what the play's about in 25-words-or-less is pretty difficult, but there are two couples who get lost in the woods on a summer night, trying to sort out their relationships. The forest is also the realm of sprites and fairies (see left) where the king (Oberon) is having trouble with his own relationship. Oberon tries to get one of his spirits (Puck, in picture with both arms raised) to help him but he gives him only some vague instructions. An unexpected encounter with the two mortal couples only makes things more complicated. Then you add a bunch of comedians who are trying to rehearse their play - part of the festivities for the Duke's wedding - and it just gets even stranger... But it all works out in the end as Puck manages to correct his mistakes.
It inspired Mendelssohn to turn this story into a piece of music.
It opens with a kind of "Once upon a time" sound, this series of almost still chords, before it breaks off (at 0:28) into the scurrying, whispered sounds of the sprites. There are some hesitant chords (as if someone's stopping to look around) at 0:56 & 1:10 before the Mortal Couples (see right) burst in at 1:16. The Fairies return at 1:46 and then we hear some tenderer music as the couples try to work things out (well, one of the girls is in love with a boy who doesn't love her) at 2:13. There are a couple of fanfares at 2:44 - echoes of the distant city? reality? the approach of the Royal Wedding? Then suddenly - bang! at 3:09, in come "the rustics," a troupe of "mechanicals" (the rough 
comedians) who've come to rehearse their play. This is the comic relief of the story - the leader of the comedians is a guy named Bottom who gets transformed into a man with a donkey's head later in the play (see left) with amusing consequences for Oberon's wife (that's the illustration that covers the 'video'). What's that sound at 3:14, 3:17 and again at 3:27? Hee-haws? Hmmm, you think...?The fanfares return at 3:32, but this time seem to be more likely associated with the Duke and his impending wedding or perhaps the fairy court of King Oberon... then the fairies are scurrying about again at 3:57 and those hesitant chords mean they're probably on the look-out for... well, trouble, probably.
And so in 4 minutes of music, Mendelssohn introduces you to three sets of characters in Shakespeare's play: the fairies, the two mortal couples and the "rustics," each one turned into musical ideas you can keep separate by the way they differ from each other.
After that, things go off and get mixed up - there's some genuine pleading going on at 5:41 - before we hear everything (in Part 2) almost just like it was at the opening again.
Part 1
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This time (in the 2nd clip, posted below), the fairy music begins at 0:39 (no hesitant looking-around, though), the couples' love-music comes back at 1:17 (but not bursting in) with the distant fanfares at 1:46 before the Rustics come romping back for another appearance at 2:11 (the hee-haws at 2:16); more mortals' music at 3:17 with fanfares at 3:20 with another scurrying by from the fairies at 3:40. It sounds like we're working toward a quiet "happily ever after" ending by 4:36 and then we end with the same chords we heard, once upon a time, at the beginning of the piece (now at 5:24) and that's how it ends. Just like a dream.
Part 2
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Not bad for 17!
- Dr. Dick (who's not seen 17 for many years...)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The Ages of Music: How Composers Make a Living
It seems every century, things change – not that certain things don't change more often than that like decades and generations or even the seasons of a year.But in music – and in many of the other arts – there are changes in the sound or style of music almost every one hundred years which we divide into “periods” since 1600 called Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern, though no one's come up with a name for the “most modern” music that's being written today in a New Century.
(In this time-line - above - the dark vertical lines represent centuries: composers' names in blue belong to the Renaissance Age (before 1600); the green ones to the Barqoue Age (1600-1750); yellow represents the 50 years of the Classical Age (1750-1800); the pink ones, the Romantic Age (1800-1900).)
The only one that doesn't happen in a '00 year is the change between the Baroque Period of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel and the Classical Period of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Josef Haydn. That happened around 1750, the year J.S. Bach died. It should've happened in 1700, you'd think, but maybe it's because things moved more slowly in those days... things certainly move faster, now!
These changes do not necessarily mean the new one is an improvement or better than the older one, just different. Things also tend to move in cycles or waves, returning to something that's comparable or similar in basics – not the same, but with similar basic traits.
These changes don't happen somewhere between December 31st, '99 and January 1st, '00. It may take a few years before any significant shift happens or, once it's started before it finishes.
For a period of several decades, things seem basically the same. Sure, every generation changes a little but then it begins reaching a time where these changes become more pronounced, developing toward something else. Then a bigger change occurs when people begin thinking “that's going too far” and something new happens, usually as a reaction. In many ways, you could say this is going back to “earlier values” and then the process starts over again.
THE CYCLES OF THE YEARIn one sense, a year is a cycle of seasons – out of winter, it begins to get warm; once it's gotten too hot, then it starts cooling off and we're back to winter again. The major changes are between Winter and Summer. The transitions in between are Spring and Fall (or Autumn). The “starting points” are the Summer and Winter Solstices which occur around June 21st and December 21st. The changes start happening around the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes around March 21st and September 21st. (A solstice means the highest or lowest point the sun reaches in the sky; an equinox means when the length of day and night are the same or equal.)
That doesn't mean you go to bed on March 20th when it's winter and you wake up on March 21st and it's spring. Sometimes it takes weeks to notice it's really “warmer.” Sometimes you get weather that “feels like” spring in January. This year we had cooler weather when it was supposed to be summer. Just the other week, it suddenly started feeling like it was already Fall. But who knows, we may still have a few hot days left before the leaves change color and fall.
So a similar kind of cycle can be seen on a longer span – over decades and generations. Ask older members of your family like your parents and grandparents what it was like when they were growing up and if they remember the differences between the '50s and the '60s, the '70s and the '80s, and how the '90s differ from the first decade if a new century.
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COMPOSERS & SOCIETY
One thing that also changed with the centuries is the attitude toward composers in our societies.
In Mendelssohn's time, composers made a living from their music in what could be called a “capitalist” approach: in other words, they made their money from performances of the music and from people buying the printed music. The more popular a composer, the more performances his music got and the more printed music was sold. Now, he didn't always get money every time a piece was played but if he was involved in the performance as the conductor or the soloist, he would be paid a fee.
This is how most composers “work” today – not in a 9-to-5 job like someone going to an office but they earn money from someone paying them to write a piece for them. This is called “a commission.” They get paid for the performances and also when their music is performed even when they're not involved in it because their publishers have a system of royalties which means a certain amount of money goes back into the composers' pockets (and the publishers, too). The more popular a composer is, the higher the commission fee; and more performances brings in more royalties.
THE AGE OF THE COURT MUSICIANThe century before Mendelssohn and Beethoven (whose first significant mature works were starting to be published around 1800), most composers were employees. They were part of a staff employed by aristocrats. A powerful nobleman (like a king) had a “court” or body of lesser noblemen around him. In order to entertain these people, this powerful nobleman employed an orchestra, maybe also an opera theater. (See illustration, left, of an 18th Century Court concert.) Less wealthy aristocrats maybe employed only a few musicians like a string quartet.
After this Age of Aristocracy had begun to diminish, some aristocrats were not as wealthy as before and maybe only had one musician they employed. Even in the 1820s, a Count Esterhazy hired a pianist named Franz Schubert to play the piano for them and their guests during a couple summers, teach their daughters how to sing and play music, and write music for them to perform and listen to.
Fifty years earlier, a wealthier cousin of this Esterhazy family who was a Prince, not a Count - (see photo of his estate, left) - maintained a full orchestra as well as a whole opera company and his resident composer and conductor was Franz Josef Haydn who wrote symphonies and operas for his employer. Haydn had one of the greatest music jobs in Europe then, writing for a music loving prince who spared no expense to have one of the finest orchestras around.It wasn't always like that. Mozart never could find a good job. In fact, he couldn't even find a bad one, so he went to the most musical city in Europe – Vienna – and tried making a living as a “free-lance” musician, composing and performing for concerts and trying to get his operas performed by the Emperor's court. Most of his money came from the concerts but if it was a bad year, he worried about his finances and often wrote letters to friends begging them to loan him money. Near the end of his life, he got a small job with the Emperor, writing music for the dances at the court. It wasn't much money but it was steady and the pieces he wrote were just short dances that had to have popular appeal: it wasn't like writing symphonies, concertos or operas. He was technically “under-employed” and definitely needed a second job to keep things solvent.
THE CAPITALIST COMPOSER
Beethoven was the first major composer who earned his living as a “free-lance” composer like Mozart. Most composers in his time were still employed by the nobility. But as the Industrial Revolution changed the European economic system, a new class began to emerge: the Middle Class. And some of these became wealthy merchants – the Upper Middle Class. Some of them could even be wealthier than someone with an aristocratic title. Even people of the Middle Class could have enough money to want to live well and imitate the “Lifestyles of the Rich if not Famous.” They too could employ a musician or three or four and pay a composer to write music for them which would be performed at their homes to entertain and impress their guests.
More often, Middle Class homes might have the members of the family performing for each other and their friends. A daughter who could sing and play the piano was a daughter who could make someone a better wife. Very often, every one in the family could make music in some way: but many people enjoyed performing for their friends or sitting with them and listening to the music. It was amateurs like this who would buy the sheet music that would add to the composer's income.
The difference between professional and amateur today usually implies "amateur" is not as good as a professional musician's level of playing. That's not always true. The German words were better - a professional was a "Kenner" (someone who "knew" music) and an amateur was a "Liebhaber" (literally "love-haver," someone who "loved" music but didn't make a living by it). Even the word "amateur" comes from the Latin word for love, "amo, amat."
Instead of an orchestra being paid for by a prince, professional orchestra musicians now formed orchestras that sold tickets so people of the Middle Class could attend public concerts without needing to be invited to a nobleman's palace to hear it. Musicians earned money paid for by ticket sales.The public concert was a new idea in the 1770s in England where the Industrial Age had started earlier than it had in Germany. By 1800, it was a very important part of Beethoven's life. And with Mendelssohn, a member of the next generation, it was his primary way of earning a living.
COMPOSERS IN THE 20th CENTURY
This cycle of employment also came around again. In the 20th Century – at least by the end of World War II – most composers in the United States were employed by Universities. Instead of court orchestras, it was a University Orchestra. Some of them had “resident string quartets” which meant the four players taught students and performed as the official representative of the college or university. Even in the 1970s when I was teaching at the University of Connecticut, there were two composers on the faculty (not including a few others like me who also composed) and we had a resident string quartet. Teaching was their “day job” which allowed them to compose or perform as well.
Many creative artists still need this "day job" to support their having the time to be able to create, whether it's write a book, paint a picture, compose or perform.
While much of that university situation hasn't changed a lot, some composers starting in the 1980s didn't NEED to teach at a university to earn a living. So today, a composer like Jennifer Higdon who used to teach at the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia, can now live entirely on her income as a composer. She receives lots of commissions for new works, her music is performed frequently around the world and she has a number of works that have been recorded.(In this post, over at my blog Thoughts on a Train, I write about her violin concerto, premiered earlier this year: it includes a video chat between her and the violinist she wrote it for and she also talks about what it's like being a creative artist living in Philadelphia.)
Two years ago, the Harrisburg Symphony played a big new Percussion Concerto of hers. You can hear some of her music in a few months, here in Harrisburg. The Cypress String Quartet will play a piece she wrote for them at Market Square Concerts on January 24th and a week later, the Harrisburg Symphony will play a shorter orchestral work of hers. Every piece of music she writes now is paid for – these are called “commissions” – and though she still maintains a teaching relationship at Curtis, she doesn't have time to teach as much as she used to: she doesn't need to keep her “day job” to earn a living.
Still, it's interesting to note that though composers today may not be employed by wealthy noblemen, they often depend on wealthy individuals and companies and foundations to "underwrite" their creativity. A corporation donates money to a baseball team to build their stadium earns them "naming rights" so that stadium is now called "The [Insert Corporation Here] Stadium."
BACK TO THE OLD DAYS: THE CHURCH AS PROVIDERToday, many churches employ musicians - most often, the choirs are made up of volunteers but the organists and choir directors are paid positions. Going back even more centuries in the past, though, before Bach and Mozart, composers were employed not by universities or aristocrats but by churches. Even Bach, who died in 1750, spent the last decades of his life as the music director of the major church in Leipzig. But he had also worked for various counts and smaller noblemen earlier in his career.
But since music began to be written down over a thousand years ago, the primary employer of the musicians then was the Church. They wrote music for church services (the choir was the resident ensemble) for the congregation to hear (the audience who in another century would be “the court”).
So composers go from being employed by someone (or something) to being self-employed. Right now, we're in a free-lance system. Who knows where it will go by the year 2100?
- Dr. Dick
Friday, September 4, 2009
Into the Magic World of Fingal's Cave
I'd used these two videos in an earlier post, but I want to post them here again in a slightly different context.
We can't really take a field trip to a little island off the coast of Scotland to see what Felix Mendelssohn saw when he was 20, sailing up to the mouth of this big cave in the Hebrides Islands.The place is called “Fingal's Cave,” facing out to the stark northern sea of the Atlantic Ocean.
But second hand, you can – courtesy of a tourist who posted this YouTube video. It probably hasn't changed much in the 180 years since Mendelssohn saw it and wrote down a musical idea that became an overture known as “The Hebrides” or “Fingal's Cave.”
It's a weird place – in the photograph above, see the strange column-like rocks? It looks like the carved columns you might see in a cathedral (see photograph, left, of the inside of Salisbury Cathedral in England). This is the way ancient lava cooled: it's not carved by man.Inside the cave, it's like a cathedral where the waves from the sea echo and roar.
The original Gaelic name for the Cave means “Cave of Melody.”
Listen to the sound of the waves. When the tour-boat arrives and the walk into the cave, somebody's playing bagpipes inside. Around 3:00 into the video, the high tide starts coming in and the waves begin to rise. See how they rise and swirl? What kind of sound do they make?
At 5:07, the cameraman is inside the cave, looking out to the sea. Listen to the waves.
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How would you translate that sound into music?
This is how Mendelssohn turned his experience, visiting that strange and magical place, into a piece of music.
This is the musical version of “Fingal's Cave” played by a student orchestra in Belgium and in this video what you see is the orchestra and the conductor from a fixed point in the back. But listen to how the music in the lowest sounds you hear reflects the sounds of the waves you saw in the first video.
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Now, turn off the volume on the first video, the one taken at the cave, and skip ahead to about 3:00 into it. Let the first video play silently and watch it while you listen to the audio from the orchestra playing the piece of music that was inspired by standing in that very same cave and listening to those waves roll in and out almost 200 years ago.
- Dr. Dick
Monday, August 31, 2009
Celebrities in Music
Today, popular music is full of celebrities who are idolized by cheering fans.It may seem hard to believe that in the 19th Century, the concert virtuoso – a musician who played at an extremely high level, called “virtuosity” – was regarded as a cultural icon much like rock stars are today. People clamored to buy tickets for their performances. After the performance, the musician could be met by a cheering crowd who would lead him back to his hotel through the city streets.
PAGANINI
Vienna went crazy for the violinist Paganini when he performed there in the 1820s. He was tall, pencil-thin, had long hair and could do things on the violin that no one else ever imagined doing. Some said he had sold his soul to the devil in order to play like that. He dressed in
black to accentuate his thinness. He often showed up in a black carriage drawn by black horses. It helped that he was a phenomenal violinist but the rest sold tickets and brought him fame.(Just a side note: this fame or notoriousness backfired on him. The story about selling his soul to the devil? When he died, he refused last rights not because he didn't believe in God but because he didn't believe he was going to die just then. Unfortunately word got around it must have been because he'd sold his soul to the devil. The priest would not allow his body to buried in 'consecrated ground' which was about the only place you could be buried. His coffin remained in the basement of his house for five years while the landlord rented out his old rooms. Then they put it in the basement of a nearby hospital. His son finally took the coffin back to his home town but they were not allowed to enter the city, so they stored it in the tower of a friend's country estate. The gardener charged tourists money to view the corpse. ” People claimed to hear a violin playing in the middle of the night. His body was moved around a few more times, sometimes being buried in a garden but not a real cemetery. It took 36 years and a decree from the Pope to allow him to buried properly in a cemetery! So much for “Rest in Peace”...)
People often describe other great artists performing on other instruments as “The Paganini of the Double Bass” or something like that. In fact, today, you could call Paganini the “Michael Jackson of the Violin.” He did things that no other artist could do. While Michael Jackson would “moon-walk,” Paganini might play an especially difficult passage using a certain technique that only he could play, and the audience would break into applause or cheers.
LISZTFranz Liszt as a young concert pianist was the first pianist to perform with his profile to the audience. Before that, the sat with their backs to the audience. Why did Liszt make this change? Well, for one, he was a very handsome man and young ladies in the audience would want to see this. He also felt that, as he played emotional music, audiences wanted to see the expression on his face when he played it.
In fact, Liszt would come out to the piano wearing gloves. After he'd sit down, he'd take these gloves off in such a way, young ladies would “swoon.” In those days, a woman showing her ankle in public was considered “erotic,” so perhaps the idea of peeling off gloves like this implied something erotic.Think of Michael Jackson and his habit of wearing just one glove. Or the different kinds of physical moves that singers and dancers would make that might be considered “sexy.” It may seem pretty tame compared to some guy coming out and peeling off a pair of gloves, but lots of other things have changed between the middle of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 21st!
OTHER CELEBRITIES
Johann Strauss Jr., known as "The Waltz King" in Vienna, had so many fans not just asking for his autograph but for a lock of his hair, a very common celebrity souvenir in the 19th Century. It was said he joked about going bald to satisfy his fans, so he got a black Newfoundland dog whose hair was similar in color and texture to his own. Whether the dog went bald or not, I have no idea.
Composers were celebrities, too. Fans of Beethoven had gathered to hear his concerts. When he wrote “Wellington's Victory” to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon's troops in Spain in 1813, everybody wanted to hear it, everybody talked about it. Beethoven was a “popular” composer in a way a composer of symphonies and quartets could NOT be. But people went out and bought his music so they could play his sonatas in their own homes or they'd buy tickets to go hear an orchestra play his latest symphony. And in that sense, Beethoven was able to use this popularity to earn more money.
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MENDELSSOHN as a MUSICAL IDOL
Mendelssohn, though not the virtuosic showman that Liszt and Paganini were, also had his fans. One of them was Queen Victoria of England. When he first met the young Queen and her husband, Prince Albert, in 1842, she sang some of his own songs for him to show how much she enjoyed his music. People flocked to hear Mendelssohn's concerts when he would perform a piano concerto or conduct the orchestra whether he was in England or in Germany. Works like the “Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream” on a program would guarantee more tickets would be sold.
When Mendelssohn was in Leipzig, ill and dying, the news that he was close to death brought large crowds of people out into the streets around his house, a vigil as people waited for the inevitable. When they heard that he had just died, hundreds of people stormed the house and tried to get into the room where he was lying. Friends had to push people out of the room so that Mendelssohn's own family could get into the room themselves (the children had been asleep at the time) so they could have a private last moment with him.
At the funeral service, a chorus of 600 sang a chorale by Bach and a chorus from his oratorio, St. Paul. That night, a thousand people, many carrying torches, accompanied the casket to the train station. Wherever the train stopped on its way back to Berlin, in the middle of the night, the train was greeted by hundreds of people singing tributes to Mendelssohn. (Just writing this now, I'm thinking of ha
ving watched news coverage of the funeral of Senator Edward Kennedy).(At left is the statue of Mendelssohn standing in front of the Leipzig concert hall where he conducted the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Erected in 1892, it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1936. It was not replaced until October, 2008, but relocated to the front of the St. Thomas Church which had once been Bach's church.)
A performance of one of Mendelssohn's recent works, the oratorio Elijah, had been long been scheduled in Vienna, to take place ten days after his death. But instead of being a joyous musical occasion, their first chance to hear a new work by “the master” that had been highly acclaimed after other performances, it became a memorial tribute. The musicians' stands were all draped in black, the singers were dressed in black, the conductor's podium where Mendelssohn would have stood was draped in black with a laurel wreath resting on the score. The man who conducted the performance stood on a podium lower than that in deference to Mendelssohn's memory. It was a solemn occasion and people wept openly.
Queen Victoria, after writing a personal letter to Mendelssohn's widow, wrote in her journal:
“We were horrified, astounded and distressed to read in the papers of the death of Mendelssohn, the greatest musical genius since Mozart & a most amiable man. He was quite worshipped by those who knew him intimately & we have so much appreciated & admired his wonderfully beautiful compositions. We liked & esteemed the excellent man & looked up to & revered the wonderful genius & the great mind, which I fear were too much for the frail delicate body. With it all, he was so modest & simple...”
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RICHARD WAGNER: DEALING with the GOOD & the BAD
One of the great composer-celebrities of his time was the composer Richard Wagner (pronounced in German, VOG-n'r). He was far from being “modest & simple.” He was controversial because he wrote difficult “new” music that not everybody liked. There were fans who loved his music and felt it was definitely the direction music should be going in (more modern) and those who hated what he composed and felt he was destroying music completely.He was extremely egotistic and a very unpleasant person to deal with. He had an affair with a woman who was the daughter of Franz Liszt and the wife of a conductor who championed Wagner's music. She had two children by Wagner even before she left her husband. They lived together for years and had another child before the divorce became final and they could legally marry.
He had been charged with treason during the 1848 revolution in the Kingdom of Saxony where he lived and had to flee for his life to avoid arrest. If he ever returned to Saxony, he would have been arrested and possibly executed.
He was outspokenly anti-Semitic and wrote many articles full of nasty accusations against Mendelssohn because he had been born a Jew. In fact, after he died, Mendelssohn's fame began to diminish as Wagner continued to campaign against what he called “Jewishness in Music.” Many of the heroic characters in his cycle of four operas called “The Ring of the Niebelung” - based on ancient German legends similar to those in Tolkein's “Lord of the Ring” (different ring, though, but same
idea) – are represented by stereotypes of German culture: the villains are characterized with stereotypes of Jewish culture.(You can read more about Wagner's anti-semitism and the impact of anti-Semitism on Mendelssohn life in this post.)
Years after Wagner's death in 1883, Hitler was one of those fans who loved Wagner's music and believed in the same political and anti-Semitic attitudes. When he came to control the political party known as the Nazis, he imposed Wagner on them as a cultural ideal (even though many of his government's leaders slept through the operas he forced them to attend). And so Wagner has long been associated with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
Until recently, it was forbidden to perform Wagner's music in Israel. In 2001, Jewish conductor Daniel Barenboim added a piece by Wagner to a program when he was conducting a Berlin orchestra during an Israeli tour. It created an international furor. Anyone programming Wagner's music in Israel today would still face considerable controversy.
People who love the music usually have difficulties separating the man and his personal philosophies from the music.
When Michael Jackson died recently, much of the media attention focused on negative aspects of his life – the child molestation accusations and trials, the strangeness of his behavior and all the little details and flaws of a person that might get in the way of saying “this was a great artist.” And yet he was a great singer and dancer and one of the most celebrated popular musicians during his lifetime. How much should this personal life determine how history views him? It's not an easy question.
It's not that Wagner's “negative issues” are comparable to Michael Jackson's. But it raises a question about how you separate Life from Art.
Something to think about.
- Dr. Dick
Background: Classical & Popular Music
It's difficult to say when “Music” divided into “Classical Music” and “Popular Music.” There was always some music that was more popular than others but there was never the distinction made between one or the other until the 20th Century.
A TEDIOUSLY BRIEF SUMMARY of the HISTORY of MUSIC
The history of music deals primarily with music that has been written down. The process of notation that we know of today, though, looking at a piece of music you can play on a piano, did not really develop until into the 14th Century, changing gradually over the next several centuries before it became standardized in the 17th Century.
By the 9th Century, musicians in the Christian churches of Europe began using symbols adapted from the old Jewish system of marks and symbols that, like letters, had to be learned – one symbol meant a particular pattern of notes; another symbol a different pattern of notes. It was a kind of musical short-hand placed underneath the text in smaller characters. The cantor would memorize these so he could reproduce the musical declamation of a line of sacred text. Otherwise, it was handed down from generation to generation and learned by rote.
Today, we can only assume (or guess) what these symbols might have meant so long ago and how they changed over the centuries.
But there was always music.
People sang when they worked in the fields. People danced when they celebrated a successful harvest. This music, though, was never written down. It was also passed on from generation to generation by rote. Parents would sing it, their children would hear it and then sing it so their children would hear it. This is called “the oral tradition.” It is the same way legends and poems, the rituals of daily life and the beliefs of the early religions survived from one generation to the next before there was a system for writing it down.
When the music for the Roman Catholic church service – especially for the sacred texts of the liturgy (the texts and music used during the service) – was being written down, they probably adapted songs that people knew from their daily lives. A melody associated with the harvest might become the basis for a chant sung to words of the liturgy (perhaps the Sanctus or the Lord's Prayer). Musicians in the 12th Century playing for a celebration of the harvest might take a fragment of something everybody knew from church and turn it into a dance. The priests might think that was inappropriate (or scandalous or downright heretical) but there probably was some kind of back-and-forth between music used in the sacred part of ones life and in the secular or everyday part of ones life.
The music for the church was completely vocal – religious texts that were sung. Instruments were rarely allowed. The music of the people – therefore called “popular” - was both sung and played on instruments.
THE FUNCTION OF MUSIC
Music had two basic functions – the sacred music of the religious service and the secular music that was associated with every-day life. This secular music was usually “practical.” It accompanied a function – whether it was celebrating the hunt or helping women
pounded grain into flour. A song for one thing would not have been sung for a different function.
It wasn't mean to be sung for entertainment: it was sung to help make the work go more easily. In travel films today, you can see women in an African village pounding grain singing something rhythmic to help coordinate the continuous flow of their actions. People might add new text – advice women might want to pass on to their daughters, for instance, or maybe village gossip – in between a refrain about making bread. It helped pass the time.
Later, as people in Europe wanted to be entertained, music was sung or played after dinner. Dances now had no particular practical use beyond enjoying the movement of dance – not just about celebrating the harvest. Some of these were folk-dances from the country-side; others may have been specifically urban dances: they all had specific patterns, rhythmic sounds and national identities. Considering all the kinds of popular dances we have today, they had many different kinds of dances that became popular thousands of years ago.
Eventually, many of these in the 13th or 18th centuries, for example, became more stylized dances, like the 18th Century Minuet (right). This eventually became “art music” that eventually could be played in a concert that no one would have actually danced to. Music was now no longer “functional” but became “entertaining,” what is often called “decorative art.”
The music that survived from these very old times was the music that was written down. This was music to be played for feudal lords of the Middle Ages and their society of aristocrats. Rather than being as earthy as the music the townspeople might have danced to, drinking in a tavern, they became more representative of their economic class, more 'refined,' along with what was more acceptable social and moral behavior.
POPULAR & CLASSICAL
And so “popular” music – music of the people – developed more freely. “Art” music developed along similar lines but for a different demographic, as people in marketing would say today.
Popular Music is something we can listen to easily because we understand its context - we ARE its context.
Art Music usually requires an "introduction" because we're not part of its immediate or original context. Art Music usually demands more concentration to understand it.
Until the Industrial Revolution, there were basically two classes of people: those who ruled and the people they ruled. There wasn't much chance for people from the lower level to move into the upper one. Wealth and power were handed down through the family: a child would inherit the money and attitudes of his family. These became the noblemen of Europe, the aristocrats.
Even before the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism started creating a Middle Class, people who worked in as merchants or later in factories could rise to a higher economic status by hard work and become managers or owners of new factories. People in the town who sold the material the factories made became merchants who could make their money when other people bought their merchandise. Some made more than others. This money, too, and the ownership of factories and stores might be passed from generation to generation but it was more fragile and less restricted than the inheritance of the aristocracy.
And once people had money and became wealthy, they wanted to “show off” this wealth by building nicer houses, wearing better clothes and, imitating the aristocrats, developed a liking for art and music. A merchant of the “upper middle class” could have his portrait painted or employ a string quartet or maybe a small orchestra just like a prince could.
Felix Mendelssohn's father Abraham was a wealthy banker. They had a large home with a salon or music room that could seat a large number of people where they gave concerts for their friends on Sunday afternoons. Many of these performers were the Mendelssohn children: both Fanny and Felix played the piano and composed music (Felix also played the violin and the viola); Rebekkah sang and Paul played the cello. But they also had other friends who would come and play with them and, for several performances, Abraham might hire an orchestra or singers. Keep in mind that Felix's grandfather had been a philosopher and his great-grandfather had been a simple peddler.
Most people couldn't afford to do that, so instead orchestras went “public” and people would buy tickets to go hear them in concerts. Musicians now could make a living playing in an orchestra that made its money by selling tickets.
DIY MUSIC
Lots of people enjoyed music and enjoyed making the music themselves. It was considered standard for young ladies to be able to play the piano and sing to provide their husbands and families with "live entertainment" in the days before radio, television or sound-systems. In a novel like Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," many scenes describe the daughters of the Bennett family entertaining their friends after dinner.
As the 19th Century progressed into the more democratic 20th Century, it was not necessarily an either/or class-oriented system, which type of music people could enjoy. Factory workers might have been accused of "putting on airs" if they went to concerts to hear Beethoven just as wealthy people would have been accused of "going beneath their station" if they were caught in the taverns and cabarets to listen to gypsy music or what became jazz.
Today, there is no reason anyone can't like any kind of music they want to.
In the 19th Century, composers probably made more money from the sale of their sheet music to amateur players who would gather in their homes to play the music for themselves and each other. They weren't thinking of the concert hall: just their own enjoyment of the music they played.
Musicians who were better than the average orchestra musician might become soloists and play a “concerto,” standing in front of the orchestra. The best became famous and people would buy tickets to hear their favorite performers. Some became so famous, they became “celebrities.”
You can read more about them in this post.
- Dr. Dick
A TEDIOUSLY BRIEF SUMMARY of the HISTORY of MUSIC
The history of music deals primarily with music that has been written down. The process of notation that we know of today, though, looking at a piece of music you can play on a piano, did not really develop until into the 14th Century, changing gradually over the next several centuries before it became standardized in the 17th Century.
By the 9th Century, musicians in the Christian churches of Europe began using symbols adapted from the old Jewish system of marks and symbols that, like letters, had to be learned – one symbol meant a particular pattern of notes; another symbol a different pattern of notes. It was a kind of musical short-hand placed underneath the text in smaller characters. The cantor would memorize these so he could reproduce the musical declamation of a line of sacred text. Otherwise, it was handed down from generation to generation and learned by rote.Today, we can only assume (or guess) what these symbols might have meant so long ago and how they changed over the centuries.
But there was always music.
People sang when they worked in the fields. People danced when they celebrated a successful harvest. This music, though, was never written down. It was also passed on from generation to generation by rote. Parents would sing it, their children would hear it and then sing it so their children would hear it. This is called “the oral tradition.” It is the same way legends and poems, the rituals of daily life and the beliefs of the early religions survived from one generation to the next before there was a system for writing it down.
When the music for the Roman Catholic church service – especially for the sacred texts of the liturgy (the texts and music used during the service) – was being written down, they probably adapted songs that people knew from their daily lives. A melody associated with the harvest might become the basis for a chant sung to words of the liturgy (perhaps the Sanctus or the Lord's Prayer). Musicians in the 12th Century playing for a celebration of the harvest might take a fragment of something everybody knew from church and turn it into a dance. The priests might think that was inappropriate (or scandalous or downright heretical) but there probably was some kind of back-and-forth between music used in the sacred part of ones life and in the secular or everyday part of ones life.The music for the church was completely vocal – religious texts that were sung. Instruments were rarely allowed. The music of the people – therefore called “popular” - was both sung and played on instruments.
THE FUNCTION OF MUSIC
Music had two basic functions – the sacred music of the religious service and the secular music that was associated with every-day life. This secular music was usually “practical.” It accompanied a function – whether it was celebrating the hunt or helping women
pounded grain into flour. A song for one thing would not have been sung for a different function.It wasn't mean to be sung for entertainment: it was sung to help make the work go more easily. In travel films today, you can see women in an African village pounding grain singing something rhythmic to help coordinate the continuous flow of their actions. People might add new text – advice women might want to pass on to their daughters, for instance, or maybe village gossip – in between a refrain about making bread. It helped pass the time.
Later, as people in Europe wanted to be entertained, music was sung or played after dinner. Dances now had no particular practical use beyond enjoying the movement of dance – not just about celebrating the harvest. Some of these were folk-dances from the country-side; others may have been specifically urban dances: they all had specific patterns, rhythmic sounds and national identities. Considering all the kinds of popular dances we have today, they had many different kinds of dances that became popular thousands of years ago.
Eventually, many of these in the 13th or 18th centuries, for example, became more stylized dances, like the 18th Century Minuet (right). This eventually became “art music” that eventually could be played in a concert that no one would have actually danced to. Music was now no longer “functional” but became “entertaining,” what is often called “decorative art.”The music that survived from these very old times was the music that was written down. This was music to be played for feudal lords of the Middle Ages and their society of aristocrats. Rather than being as earthy as the music the townspeople might have danced to, drinking in a tavern, they became more representative of their economic class, more 'refined,' along with what was more acceptable social and moral behavior.
POPULAR & CLASSICAL
And so “popular” music – music of the people – developed more freely. “Art” music developed along similar lines but for a different demographic, as people in marketing would say today.
Popular Music is something we can listen to easily because we understand its context - we ARE its context.
Art Music usually requires an "introduction" because we're not part of its immediate or original context. Art Music usually demands more concentration to understand it.
Until the Industrial Revolution, there were basically two classes of people: those who ruled and the people they ruled. There wasn't much chance for people from the lower level to move into the upper one. Wealth and power were handed down through the family: a child would inherit the money and attitudes of his family. These became the noblemen of Europe, the aristocrats.
Even before the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism started creating a Middle Class, people who worked in as merchants or later in factories could rise to a higher economic status by hard work and become managers or owners of new factories. People in the town who sold the material the factories made became merchants who could make their money when other people bought their merchandise. Some made more than others. This money, too, and the ownership of factories and stores might be passed from generation to generation but it was more fragile and less restricted than the inheritance of the aristocracy.
And once people had money and became wealthy, they wanted to “show off” this wealth by building nicer houses, wearing better clothes and, imitating the aristocrats, developed a liking for art and music. A merchant of the “upper middle class” could have his portrait painted or employ a string quartet or maybe a small orchestra just like a prince could.
Felix Mendelssohn's father Abraham was a wealthy banker. They had a large home with a salon or music room that could seat a large number of people where they gave concerts for their friends on Sunday afternoons. Many of these performers were the Mendelssohn children: both Fanny and Felix played the piano and composed music (Felix also played the violin and the viola); Rebekkah sang and Paul played the cello. But they also had other friends who would come and play with them and, for several performances, Abraham might hire an orchestra or singers. Keep in mind that Felix's grandfather had been a philosopher and his great-grandfather had been a simple peddler.
Most people couldn't afford to do that, so instead orchestras went “public” and people would buy tickets to go hear them in concerts. Musicians now could make a living playing in an orchestra that made its money by selling tickets.
DIY MUSICLots of people enjoyed music and enjoyed making the music themselves. It was considered standard for young ladies to be able to play the piano and sing to provide their husbands and families with "live entertainment" in the days before radio, television or sound-systems. In a novel like Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," many scenes describe the daughters of the Bennett family entertaining their friends after dinner.
As the 19th Century progressed into the more democratic 20th Century, it was not necessarily an either/or class-oriented system, which type of music people could enjoy. Factory workers might have been accused of "putting on airs" if they went to concerts to hear Beethoven just as wealthy people would have been accused of "going beneath their station" if they were caught in the taverns and cabarets to listen to gypsy music or what became jazz.
Today, there is no reason anyone can't like any kind of music they want to.
In the 19th Century, composers probably made more money from the sale of their sheet music to amateur players who would gather in their homes to play the music for themselves and each other. They weren't thinking of the concert hall: just their own enjoyment of the music they played.
Musicians who were better than the average orchestra musician might become soloists and play a “concerto,” standing in front of the orchestra. The best became famous and people would buy tickets to hear their favorite performers. Some became so famous, they became “celebrities.”
You can read more about them in this post.
- Dr. Dick
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