Back from Spring Break... one month to go.
As we finish up the semester, we'll take closer looks at Texture, Harmony and Timbre as elements of music as well as work on the Checklist to get you ready for the two required listening assignments. In the textbook, we'll cover the music of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, and hopefully have time to listen to some music from the last 50 years of popular music.
The Music Player has new music -- music from the time periods covered in our reading material. These pieces are featured in the Listening Guides in Parts 6, 7 and 8 of the textbook. Read the Listening Guide for each piece as you listen.
By the way, the Player contains five recordings that fall outside the required reading material. The pieces are the excerpts from Brahms, Verdi and Puccini and the Gillespie/Parker composition.
If you'd like to continue to listen to the music from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque eras, here's the original Music Player.
Here's the Definition List (PDF file) for the second quiz.
Don't forget Wednesday's look at the CDs which come with our textbook. They are dual format CDs which means that you can listen to them in a regular CD player or treat them as CD-ROMS and install the Listening Guide software on your computer. (Suggestion... install the software. It makes it easier to know "what to listen for" when listening to music that may be new to you.)
By the way, the listening guides we saw in class were for: "Billie’s Blues" sung by Billie Holiday, "Notjustmoreidlechatter" composed by Paul Lansky and "Farewell" from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, composed by Tan Dun. All examples are on CD 4.
Did you like trying out the Acid software today? If yes and you have a Windows computer, you can install the free version of the program on your own computer if you want. Check out the Acid Links section of this page.
MAC users -- see if you have Garage Band installed on your computer for something similar.
As we finish our look at music notation, here's the music for the three movements of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 15 in C. (Try listening to the beginning of the first movement while following along with the music you received in class.)
Traditionally, movements in a piece like this are referred to by their tempo markings and these three movements are marked "Allegro", "Andante" and "Rondo Allegretto". You should know what Allegro and Andante mean from your studies and here's what Allegretto means.
By the way, Rondo does not refer to the tempo of the last movement, it refers to the form of the movement, i.e. how the movement is organized. Here's what rondo means. In some of those definitions of Rondo you'll see something like this -- ABACADA. This is a diagram of the form of the movement and we'll start learning how to diagram the form of popular songs right after we finish the first quiz.
More about Mozart and a short excerpt from the sonata where you can listen to the beginning of the first movement and follow the music on the screen.
We'll come back to Mozart and listen to more of his music later in the semester.
One last word you should know -- here's what sonata means.
We'll have our first quiz on Feb. 16. Check the Practice Material link in the "From the Classroom" section of this page for some material you can use to review for the test.
As a follow-up to our discussion on Style in Monday's class, here are some definitions on the Web for Classical Music and Popular Music. (I think we'll need to have more detailed definitions, but these are a start)
As we begin the first full week of the semester, we'll start looking at Music Notation and the basics of Intelligent Listening.
If you want, take a look at those links in the From the Classroom section of this page to get a preview, and maybe even try out the Note Tester too.