Chapter 4: The Four Elements of Music, I. Rhythm
Just for fun, listen to this.
New Feature
See the bottom of each class page for 1) music suggestions from students, and 2) questions from students. As these come it, I will just toss them into these features, but will be looking for ways to incorporate the music and the questions into course context. Thanks for your input.
Assignment
In What to Listen For in Music, by Aaron Copland, read chapters 3 & 4 before coming to this class. As you read, be sure to listen to the musical excerpts provided within the chapters (below on this page). Listen to them as you encounter them.
Glossary of Basic Musical Terms
I found this while pursuing a student question. For your quick future reference, I've added it at the bottom of the link list on the right of each page.
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-elements-of-music-2455913
Listen !
Here are videos of the musical excerpts in the text, followed by listening recommendations.
Excerpts performed and recorded by Adam Matlock.
Chapter 3 (creative process)
Excerpts in Chapter 3
No musical excerpts in Chapter 3
Copland's Musical Recommendations for Chapter 3 (creative process)
NOTE: If links to YouTube put you in the middle of a performance, put your cursor at the bottom of the video screen, and a time line and red dot will appear. Slide the red dot all the way to the left. You can also use this method to jump around in a video.
1) Schubert—Three Songs To read the lyrics for the third song in German and English, look HERE. If you think this lady is quite mad, you are correct. (You can usually find lyrics and translations to any vocal work by using Google to search for the title, like this: "title lyrics translation".
2) Beethoven—Piano Sonata in C, Opus 53 (“Waldstein”)
Alfred Brendel (Philips)
3) Beethoven—Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Opus 131
4) Bartók—Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta; Concerto for Orchestra
Additional, for Chapter 3 (creative process)
Above are examples of works by composers who, according to Copland, are 1) spontaneously inspired (Schubert), 2) constructive (Beethoven), and 4) pioneer (Bartók). Here is the work of a 3) traditionalist composer:
• Bach: Duet for soprano and alto, from Cantata BWV 78 - Wir eilen mit schwachen, doch emsigen Schritten (We hasten with eager yet faltering footsteps.) Bach worked primarily in established forms of church music, such as the cantata, more or less a musical church service. He cranked out over 200 of them, but they none of them sound like just another Sunday at the office. This duet is particularly inventive.
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Chapter 4 (rhythm)
Excerpts in Chapter 4
Page 36
Score for above; click to enlarge.
Copland's Musical Recommendations for Chapter 4 (rhythm)
1) Bach—The Italian Concerto
2) Tschaikovsky—Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique)
For just the second movement, go HERE. Try counting beats at the beginning, thinking about what Copland tells you on page 31.
Additional, for Chapter 4 (rhythm)
• Babatunde Olatunji -- Chant to the Trainman
• Dave Brubeck Quartet -- Take Five
• Buena Vista Social Club -- Candela
Dancing requires that you recognize the rhythm that will fit the band's music.
This means hearing it, and figuring out how many beats in each repeat, but does not required knowing the time signature.
• Norman Greenbaum -- Spirit in the Sky
How many beats to the measure? What's your dance step?
• Ann Murray -- Could I Have This Dance
How many beats to the measure? What's your dance step?
• Jennifer Lopez -- Let's Get Loud
How many beats to the measure? How do you count it? What's your dance step?
• F. G. Project -- Move Dance Be Born
How many beats to the measure? How do you count it? What's your dance step?
"But I don't LIKE this stuff!"
Some of the most complex rhythms in today's music are in rap and hip-hop music. Just to get a tiny insight into how much thought and experiment goes into this kind of music, watch the following video about a pioneer user of music production controllers (MPCs), focussing on one of the most widely used, the Akai MPC3000.
How J Dilla humanized his MPC3000
If you want to know more about music, you need to listen to music that has something to teach you, whether you like that kind of music or not. Doing this can let you hear more in all music, including music that you just happen to like. It's like the people you work with. Some of them you like, some not so much. But if you work well with those you like, and don't try as hard with those you don't ---- well, let's say your can do you job better if you fix that.
For more (and more and more) from Estelle Caswell, the expert and inveterate analyzer of music in the But-I-don't-LIKE-this-stuff! genre, listen to episodes of Earworm (link to first episode).
Caution #1: Parental discretion advised. Language in music excerpts may offend you. (Estelle's language will not.)
Caution #2: You might learn something.
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The Science of Music 2
Sound, sound waves, standing waves.
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Thanks for all messages !
Suggestions, Comments, and Questions from students
From Spring 2019
••• Received March 18
Here is a music question I have pondered but never investigated. Take a saxophone, trumpet, oboe, kettledrum and piano and have them all play a high "C" or some other same note. From a science standpoint, the "C" can be identified. What is it about each instrument that makes it sound different from the others? What do you call those identifying characteristics?
These differences are called "tone color" or "timbre", with the latter French term somewhat more often, but not exclusively, used to talk about the qualities of voices. Copland takes up tone color in Chapter 7, and from Science of Music, Units 2 and 3, we will learn much more.
In short, the fundamental frequency (expressed in vibrations per second, or Hz) of a sound vibration gives you the pitch of a note (Middle C on the piano is 261.6 vibrations per second; the next "C", one octave higher, is at 523.2 Hz. Do you see any relationship between the frequency of these two pitches?)
Tone color comes from other frequencies that a particular instrument adds while it is producing the the intended note. These pitches are commonly called overtones or harmonics, and there can be many of them, producing the complex sounds of various instruments.
••• Received March 23
I needed that collection of musical terms [HERE], but I didn't see any reference for "measure". Poets break things out in two or three beat chunks of hard or soft beats. Iambic pentameter, for example, represents a line of five repetitions of a soft and a hard beat. Does that in any way correspond to measures?
A rare error in Copland's book might confuse first readers. After his very first simple musical score at the top of page 29. He says that it shows, "... one measured unit of 2/4 time." Actually, the score shows two measures of 2/4 time.
A measure (or measured unit, as Copland calls it at first) is the space between two vertical lines in a musical score. For example, the short score on page 43 of Copland contains four measures. Measures of music with a particular time signature (like 3/4, sometimes called waltz time) invite phrasing that repeats with each measure:
ONE two three | ONE two three | ONE two three |...,
can | I have this | DANCE for the | REST of my | LIFE ...
sort of like the (sometimes monotonous) repetitions of iambic pentameter.
Even when poetry is written with a regular rhythm such as iambic pentameter, reading it with that rhythm usually does not capture the beauty or meaning of a poem. In Copland's example at the bottom of p. 30, marks of emphasis are placed above the syllables that the strict rhythm would emphasize:
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
(Read the full poem HERE. Who is the you of the poem?)
When one reads the poem with that rhythmic emphasis, it conveys no emotion. When the reader reads the lines for meaning, the emphases are different, the meaning comes across, but the regular rhythms and rhymes of good poetry add something subtle and magical that the rhythmic reading hides.
Good prose can be the same way. For example, read the quotation at the top of this page, and watch for the poetic devices that make that passage more powerful.
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From Previous Course Offerings
Spring 2018
••• Received March 28
Great contemporary rhythm example — “Uptown Funk” , songwriter: Mark Ronson; artist: Bruno Mars : https://youtu.be/OPf0YbXqDm0
(Student did not sign email)
••• Received March 28
Rhythm: so many songs by Paul Simon, like https://youtu.be/9i3JXGtC_os
(Ellen Gilliam)
••• Received March 28
The Olatunji chant brought to my mind Paul Simon’s album “Graceland” and its Black South African influence. Is it their rhythms that they have in common? Rhythms that are unusual in “western” music?
When a conductor is leading an orchestra does he or she maintain the meter (and dynamics)? I am trying to distinguish between meter and rhythm.
(Mary Barthelman)
We'll talk about this in class. For now, see if these pages help:
1) A little glossary of basic musical terms:
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-elements-of-music-2455913
2) A shorter take on meter versus rhythm:
https://www.quora.com/Music-Theory-What-is-the-difference-between-meter-rhythm-and-time-signature
••• Received March 28
Really interesting about the MPC3000. I was reminded of an interview years ago with Wynton Marsalis (obviously prior to the MPC3000 capabilities) where he was asked about the use of drum machines in music. For context, he related that drumming was (and still is) a communications tool in the jungles, with tribes communicating back and forth through the rhythms. While much of the emotion of the message was handled through volume, the content and the meaning, and also some of the emotion were conveyed on where those drumbeats hit - say slightly ahead of, or slightly behind the beat - and all this in complex rhythms. His point was that [the early] drum machines were programmed to always land on the beat, so in his opinion, any rhythmic message of emotion and content were stripped away.
••• Received March 28
I'm pretty much with you popular music wise, though I did hear a lot in the 90's when youngest was in high school. I really liked the earworm episodes. There is method to the madness!
(Jill Welch)
Yes, more than most people would guess!
••• Received March 29
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is a fascinating piece -- I mentioned it to my musician friend after receiving your quest for suggestions off the classical grid, and he wrote this:
It would be fun to determine the classical influences of Freddy Mercury (you could do that independently and name drop some 19th c. composers, deconstruct modal usage, discuss mixed meter and the correct usage of 18th c. choral part writing).
He was joking, as he is very aware that I would have no idea what he is talking about!!!!! But if you do not know the song - check it out - it is wild.
By the way - the members of Queen met in university, studying physics!
My best,
Nancy Lemieux
Or, here's how we heard it in the movie Wayne's World. (Viewer discretion advised.)
••• Received April 2
Hi Gale:
I thought I'd send along some modern African stuff--most of which reinforces the idea that Copland states in Chapter 5, that "melody is only second in importance to rhythm in the musical firmament." There was way to many examples for me to choose from, but here are five--rhythm they've got.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BeCUZ8igoY Habib Koité from Mali
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuiRU7b8nY " "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CMb-VWr2eM Cheikh Lô from Senegal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukgznh-q8zc Orchestra Baobab from Senegal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJUE03aeaQ4 Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté from Mali
Cheers, Tom Werley
••• Received April 2
Hi Gale,
At Christmas time I've enjoyed the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas Live CD. This particular piece called "Pat A Pan" is not related to a Christmas song but I have enjoyed the rhythm and melody,the highs and lows of the music.
I also enjoy the Greek music composer "Yanni".
See you in class.
Sincerely,
Louise Roy
Thanks, Louise!
Also listen to THIS VERSION, which is how the Christmas carol might have sounded in 1720, when it was first on the Hit Parade. Compare the rhythm of the 1720's version with Louise's favorite. For more about this piece, click HERE.
••• Received April 3
Gale,
I happened upon the most recent episode of the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz and thought it was interesting. The premise is that when we are talking, it’s very much like making music. It’s available in iTunes. Take care, George Ball
Thanks, George. This reminded me of Coplands discussion or reading lines of poetry purely metrically, and then reading for meaning, and how that changes the emphasis.
••• Received
