Music,

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MU111
Music, Why Bother?
(Please sit in front 5 rows take syllabus and a
clicker)
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Gabriel Faure Nocturne No. 6 in D-flat
Major Op. 63
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I voluntarily listen to more than 20 minutes of
classical music/week A. No B. Yes
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Music Why bother?
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LB link
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Music Why bother?
Reason 1(the obvious one) to bother
Music offers aesthetic experiences
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Reason 2
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Why to bother 2 We construct our identities
through music
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Three Big Questions

1. How do people listen to and respond aesthetically
   to music?

II. Music Is it a universal language?

• What does music (even music without words) mean?
• How is musical meaning communicated?

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• How do people listen/respond to
• music?

A. 2 Modes of Listening

1. Immersive (sensual) (A)

2. Analytical (B)
B. Music as Aesthetic Object AND Abstract
Pattern in Sound
C. A Structural/Analytical Hearing Pachelbel
Kanon
1. Ground Bass or Ostinato Bass
2. Canon
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Reason 3 Music has the formal/structural
elegance of mathematics
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II. Music, The Universal Language?

• Music is a universal language.
• Agree
• Disagree

• Heroic, Valiant
• Soothing, Cheerful
• Sad, Mournful
• D. Funny, Farcial

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II. Music, The Universal Language?

• Responses not innate or universal but learned
• (culturally contingent)
• Reason 4 Music is linked intimately to CULTURE

• Thinking about the past tells you about music
• Thinking about music tells you about the
  past
• Reason 5 Music is linked intimately to HISTORY

• Heroic, Valiant
• Soothing, Cheerful
• Sad, Mournful
• D. Funny, Farcial

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III. What/How does Music Mean

• Music is a language of the emotions one of its
• principal effects is to move listeners
  emotionally.
• Agree
• Disagree

1. Formalist

B. Referentialist
C. Expressionist
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Why Bother with Music?

• 1 Music offers aesthetic experience--powerful
  ways to
• experience the world (art--think Corellis
  Mandolin)

• 2 Part of what we are how we construct our
  identity
• (psychology/sociologythink Frasier)

• 3 Abstract formal beauty (math-think Pachelbel
  Kanon)

• 4 Related to cultures (anthropology-think
  Balinese lullaby)

• 5 Implicated in history (history-think Medieval
  vs. rock)

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http//www.colby.edu/music/saunders/MU111