Music 1000A

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Music 1000A

• Dr. Anthony Radford

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Syllabus

• Please read the syllabus
• It can be found in your email and online

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What are you going to learn?
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1. How to Listen.

• Listening is the primary tool for understanding
  and enjoying music. Repeated listening to a
  single piece enables one to hear more and more,
  enhancing understanding and enjoyment.

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2. Musical Concepts and Terms.

• Concepts and terms aid in the process of learning
  to listen attentively.
• Important terms you might have heard before . . .
  Pitch, Rhythm, Timbre, Decrescendo, Cadence etc.

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3. How to enjoy a new musical experience.

• A musical experience is the cumulative result of
  several factors, elements of music working
  together (rhythm, pitch, dynamics tone colour
  etc,) the effect of these sounds and associated
  words and images on the listener and the
  listeners interpretation of this effect based on
  past experiences and understanding.

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Why is this relevant to your life?

• Because knowledge is power.
• Because music is part of everything we do.
• How many of you have seen an . . . Heard an. . .

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Preliminaries

• A great deal of music of all kinds begins not
  with the main song or tune, or other main
  material, but with preliminaries to establish a
  background, usually some kind of pulse, in
  preparation for the material to come.
• Metallica.

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Describe in one word the MOOD of the piece

• Ave Maria Stella by Dufay CD 1 TR 7 written about
  700 years ago.
• Brandenberg Concerto by Bach written 300 years
  ago. CD 2 TR 1
• Tristan and Isolde an opera by Wagner written 130
  years ago. CD 4 TR 17
• Black Angels by George Crumb written recently. CD
  6 TR 18

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Means and effect

• MEANS are tools . . . or put another way musical
  elements which have a certain EFFECT on us.

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MEANS

• When you approach a piece of music, evaluate the
  means (musical elements) by which the composer
  achieves a certain effect.
• Hard work? Or just different?

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The A,B, Cs of Means
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A. Vibration

• High and low frequency.
• Known in music as pitch.
• Some voices/instruments have high or low pitch.

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B. Dynamics

• Dynamics is another word for the scientific term
  amplitude. Simply put it is how loud or soft
  something is.
• In music we use Italian terms to describe loud
  and soft.
• Forte, piano, mezzo piano etc.

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Dynamic terms
Forteloud Pianosoft
Mezzomedium Pianissimovery soft Fortissimovery
loud più fortemore loud meno forteless
loud Subitosuddenly Crescendogetting
louder Decrescendogetting softer Diminuendogetti
ng softer
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C. Tone Colour and Timbre

• Sounds, whatever the pitch, or dynamic have a
  certain quality.
• We call this quality tone colour or timbre.

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D. Duration and Rhythm

• A way of keeping time.
• The main driving force in all music.