Okay, we discussed Baroque music pretty well, but I would encourage everyone to stay on it and read through the Anatomy of the Fugue replete with that amazing Well-tempered Clavier website. http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/fugueanatomy.html
Also we did a precursory look at 12-tone music and atonality. We discussed what caused this kind of music and where it landed--extreme serialism. We now need to return to a more intricate look at the music itself and how it is put together. This will help us understand the styles of various composers and the music language of atonality. I am always interested in everyone's opinions on music particularly 12-tone music. Yet regardless of hate or love or even indifference, the music has an important and vital place in our history and although relegated to an extent to the academy, 12-tone music continues to affect music today.
Schoenberg--master and in some ways creator of the style. Not a 12-tone purist but very mathematical without detracting from Romantic expression. Beautiful, warm music that is not easily understood on one hearing.
Berg--essentially Romantic using a freer approach to the row. The harmony sounds rather tertian at times and he was comfortable jumping out of 12 tone style occasionally. It is in his operas where we find the most gripping, emotional music.
Webern--austere, terse musical language and quite pure with regard to the row. Highly sensitive and precise counterpoint. Quite difficult and oddly appealing. Pointillistic techniques mixed with tone color.
These three make up the 2nd Viennese school!
Reports and 12-tone music--all good stuff.
Are you disturbed by Lulu?
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Now was that von Weber or Webern.?. because "you guys really just didn't understand complexity of Weber's 12 tone music."
ReplyDeleteI think I fall somewhere in the middle with 12-tone music. I don't necessarily hate it, but some parts make me cringe. I don't love it; I am sure there are vocal pieces out there in 12 tone but I won't be the one to pick them for my rep. I understand why it is so influential and I admire the mathmatical structure of it. However, from personal expirience, contructing it is a completely different matter. I found it hard and aggervating. I was frustrated beyond no end and I had to erase many, many times. After I finally finished it, I noticed I had to Eb's in the middle to the same line and I was done!
ReplyDeleteIf I was disturbed with anything in Lulu, it would have been her lack of fashion sense. Really a treble clef dress, how gaudy can you get?
I apologize for any failures in spelling. I have solar nails and sometimes I type too fast.
ReplyDeleteI nearly shed a tear when we listened to a few pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier website. Lame? Soft? Call me what you want. I don't care. Words cannot describe what I felt when I saw Preludes and Fugues broken down to the core.
ReplyDeleteThe site grabbed my previously tired attention from the moment we signed on to the site. However, it was when we listened to the Prelude and Fugue in d minor that I had previously performed a few semesters ago that my emotions went insane. I cannot explain it. When I saw the fugue (which I had disliked before since it was so technically difficult to play and was far beyond my petty piano technique) broken down and analyzed, I finally understood the power of Johann Sebastian Bach and his music. Musicians spend hours upon hours and months upon months perfecting a single piece of music and many times do a fantastic job of re-creating it. Yet, it is just ONE piece! Bach COMPOSED the Well-Tempered Clavier! From ideas in his own head! And mere mortals like myself strain to perform snippets of his work!
The Lulu video didn't disturb me at all. If anyone has read any sophisticated (or even terribly written) literature, traveled abroad to third-world countries, watched television or seen a movie lately, then seeing a woman merely contemplate the effects of a gun while holding it in a person's face is not quite so horrid at all.
Mind you, I'm not advocating such behavior at all.
Lulu was good looking... but not as hot as Nadia Boulanger......man o man... I wished I could have studied composition with her.
ReplyDeleteTo answer one of Matt's previous questions... here's some Indian scales and music:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4lxY4bs5gY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTPxqUtlLdo
I was not disturbed by Lulu. I think putting that type of music into a setting like that, where we had something to watch while we listened, made it seem not so abstract. This really is the type of music we hear all the time, if you stop to listen to most any modern movie. By not sitting in a class, listening, trying to harmonically analyze it, but just watching a scene, and seeing how the music and visuals fit together, that pulls certain other emotions from us that we otherwise would not have dared to let surface because "it's 20th century".
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