MHS 123 Essay Topics PDF
Document Details
Uploaded by FascinatingJasper4849
MHS
Tags
Summary
This document contains essay topics for a music class, likely secondary school level. The topics involve global cultural contact and its impact on musical creation, the role of performers in music-making, the use of electronics in music composition, and how music can be used to address social and political issues.
Full Transcript
Essay Topics(two will appear on the exam, you will answer one) D iscuss the different ways that global cultural contact has impacted musical creation around the world. What cultural, economic, and/or political factors have facilitated this contact, and how have...
Essay Topics(two will appear on the exam, you will answer one) D iscuss the different ways that global cultural contact has impacted musical creation around the world. What cultural, economic, and/or political factors have facilitated this contact, and how have composers used the musical practices of other cultures to develop their own compositional styles? Support your answer with specific references to the works of at least three different composers, representing at least two different continents. Performers have been an important part of music making in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Choose three performers, performing ensembles, and/or music institutions we have examined during the second part of the semester and discuss the following: 1) their performance practices—i.e., their particular approaches to making music; 2) how their performance choices can affect the ways that music is understood; and 3) the role of these performers in the creation of new musical works (or, in keeping older musical works relevant). One of the biggest interventions in music composition in the mid-20th century was the use of electronics. Describe how composers and performers from the 1940s through the present have used, experimented with, and even resisted electronics in their music, and consider how electronic music (and styles borne out of electronic music) engaged with race, gender, geopolitics, and broader matters of identity. Support your response with references to at least three composers and/or performers. Discuss the different ways that music has been used to bring awareness to social and political issues. What are the relationships between music, social issues, and politics? What specific techniques (such as melodic construction, form, harmony, word-music relations, etc.) have musicians used in their socially and politically engaged music? Support your answer with examples from works by at least three different musicians. At least one of your examples should be a piece of popular music; at least one of your examples should be a piece of art music. Repertoire: J. Cage: 4’33” ○ Indeterminancy: music as duration ○ Cage is trying to get us to appreciate the natural sounds around, us which are inherently music. ○ Cage is challenging us to think about music as duration rather than literally creating sounds. J. Cage: Sonatas & Interludes, V ○ Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-48) Set of 20 pieces for prepared piano Four sets of four sonatas, each separated by interludes Sonatas in binary form; interludes through-composed ○ Inspired by Indian visual and performing arts Intended to represent the eight permanent emotions of Indian aesthetic theory and their movement toward tranquility: the heroic, erotic, wondrous, comic, sorrow, fear, anger, and odious Sonata no. 5 Binary form 9-bar units, plus a 4.5-bar unit at the end. ○ Subdivisions may include: 4+5 or 2+2+2.5+2.5. ○ What do you hear? There a bunch more percussive sounds ○ Does this sound like you expected it to? Why or why not? I thought it would sound significantly worse. This is actually quite musical. Sounds like gamelan ○ Why prepare your piano? Experiment with different colors J. Cage: Music of Changes ○ Composition for solo piano Composition process based on divination methods of I Ching F ○ our books ○ Square root form: 29 ⅝ x 29 ⅝ ○ Chance operations (coin tosses) to determine durations, tempi, dynamics, sounds (pitches or silence) ○ Precise notation: put together through an indeterminate process, performed as a determinate work. H. El-Dabh: Wire Recorder Piece ○ Based on the zār ceremony, practiced throughout the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. Zār: A healing ceremony/exorcism performed by Islamic women that included singing, dancing, and percussion. ○ Original recordings from zār ceremony, which El-Dabh accessed in disguise, then electronically manipulated to evoke the “inner sound” of the ceremony and singing bodies. ○ Liberatory potential: an act of remembrance and a futurist vision for a modernizing, decolonial Egypt. E. Varèse: Poème Électronique ○ Composed for the Brussels World Fair On exhibit for over six months - ○ Composed for tape alone, installed with 400+ speakers arranged around a pavilion Open musical space. No score, musical events measured in seconds. “Organized sound.” Visual accompaniment, Varése asked to compose the Poème without seeing the visuals prior. The dichotomy between the visuals and the sounds is strange and almost surrealist. Classmates were reminded of brainrot. K. Stockhausen: Gesang der Jünglinge ○ “Composed” in Cologne, after Stockhausen works with Schaeffer. ○ Electronic fantasy, inspired by parable from biblical Book of David. ○ No perfect intervals/octaves ○ Materials used: Electronic sine tones Electronically-generated pulses/clicks Filtered white noise Recording of a boy soprano ○ Two forms of electronic composition reconciled here, though layers are kept distinct. What draws your ear’s attention? Boy soprano - very unsettling Boy soprano + water = drowning? Biblical, dystopian quality Uncanny valley Any certain musical parameters? How might you compare your experience of this with poème électronique? ○ Use of actual sounds is apparent G. Grisey: Partiels ○ Gèrard Grisey (1946-1998) French composer, IRCAM Rejected the term “spectralism” Think-pair-share, excerpt in handout (see below) ○ Partiels (1975) Part of a cycle of works, Les espaces acoustiques (Acoustic Spaces). Based on harmonic spectra revealed through a spectrographic analysis of an E2 played on a trombone. How does this succeed (or not?) in emulating electronic sounds Less beep boop - more womp womp Feels grounded in the sounds of real musical instruments Cat and mouse game between recordings and electronic sounds - maybe its more about the process than the product S haped like electronic music with the sound of acoustic instruments K. Saariaho: L’Amour de Loin - Only “jamais d’amour…” ○ First opera: L’Amour de Loin (2000) Libretto: Amin Maalouf, a French-Lebanese journalist Premiere directed by Peter Sellars Final aria, “Si tu t’appelles…” (death aria (?)) how would you compare this with Grisey? Temporal feeling in the orchestra - enhances the freeze frame feeling of the aria - stasis/atemporality ○ Synopsis Setting: 12th c. Mediterranean Sea, between Aquitaine, France and Tripoli, Lebanon. Three characters: ○ Jaufré Rudel, a troubadour in Aquitaine. Actual real life troubadour ○ Clémence, an exiled French countess in Tripoli ○ The Pilgrim, who travels between the two. tl;dr Jaufré sings a song, the Pilgrim sings the song for Clémence and tells her about Jaufré, who then demands that the Pilgrim takes him to Clémence, but he dies as soon as he meets Clémence. Scene 2 ○ Tripoli: Clémence and the Pilgrim ○ The Pilgrim delivers Jaufré’s song. ○ The song is based on actual troubadour song “L anquan il jorn.” ○ Strophic, sung in Occitan. ○ The Pilgrim sings three verses of this, in French, to Clémence. How does this new setting, with French lyrics amid a spectral instrumental texture, affect you? Compared to the OG? T here are stylistic similarities that reveal the new version was created from the original Droning gesture comes from spectralism Orientalism: ornaments in voice, moments in the harp ○ After the Pilgrim leaves, Clémence repeats a modified verse in the original Occitan. What’s your affective response to this? Why do you think Clémence would sing this in Occitan? G. Crumb: Black Angels - Only mvmts 4-6 ○ For electric string quartet or amplified string quartet ○ 13 images from the “Dark Land” ○ Three parts: Departure, Absence, Return ○ How does Crumb manipulate timbre here? Differences or similarities to Hendrix? Less intense than Hendrix’s Same tremolos in the string part ○ Numerology: 7 (lucky) and 13 (unlucky) ○ Quotation Dies irae Schubert, String Quartet no. 14, II J. Coltrane: Africa ○ Impulse! Records ○ Context: Africa and Decolonization ○ Quartet + brass ensemble ○ Arrangements Eric Dolphy McCoy Tyner ○ “Africa” How does the ensemble maintain interest in the absence of rapid harmonic change? Timbre, range, and register T akes a simple theme and develops it extensively, using the full range of the saxophone S. Reich: Music for 18 Musicians ○ Premiered in NYC by Steve Reich and Musicians ○ Audible, gradual process and harmonic change and rhythmic stasis Reich: Music as Gradual Process (1969) “Even when all the cards are on the table and everyone hears what is gradually happening in a musical process, there are still enough mysteries to satisfy all. […] While performing and listening to gradual processes, one can participate in a particular liberating and impersonal kind of ritual. Focusing in on the musical process makes possible that shift of attention away from he and she and you and me outward toward it.” ○ First recording of the piece was released by ECM label T. Takemitsu: A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden ○ This piece was inspired by a photograph of Marcel Duchamp, in which there was a star shaved into the back of his head. ○ Magic square, pitch material: Title: gives listeners a framework to listen for ○ ○ Key characteristics (of T. Takemitsu’s style) Modal melodies Chromatic background Register and timbre ○ Dream and Number Dream: Inspiration, intuitive, irrational Number: logic, structure, rationality. ○ Influences France: Debussy and Messiaen Japan Initially avoided Japanese influence due to war U. Chin: Acrostic Wordplay - Only mvmts. 4-6 ○ Composed in Europe ○ Performed worldwide ○ Puzzles, games, play ○ Surreal texts ○ Various tunings ○ Wide range of vocal production Tan Dun: Water Passion - Only “Stone Song” ○ Western four-part chorus with soloists ○ Violin, cello, percussion, electronics ○ Mongolian, Chinese instruments and styles ○ Emphasis on elements, particularly water ○ Spectacle ○ “Stone Song” How is Tan interweaving various influences into this section of the piece? Do you find this effective? ○ Mina Yang on Water Passion: “…Tan’s Water Passion, in particular, suffers from the tension between the composer’s stated aspiration to write music that is universal and critics’ projection of Asian themes onto the work…Tan’s St. Matthew Passion does not invoke specific places, histories, or musical traditions, nor does he refer to political figures or events in the surrounding marketing materials. Rather, the composer has communicated on many levels his desire to create music that transcends such human concerns, even the very human drama of Christ’s crucifixion.” H. Westerkamp: Kits Beach Soundwalk ○ Soundwalk (according to Westerkamp): any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment ○ T hemes of the unit: music’s relationship with ecology/the environmental movement, J. L. Adams: Become Ocean ○ Commissioned by Seattle Symphony Orchestra ○ Won a Pulitzer and Grammy in 2014 ○ Part of a trilogy withBecome RiverandBecome Desert ○ Palindrome structure; piece ends where it began 630 bars, material leading up to m315 gets repeated in reverse starting at 316 Small sequences: Winds: 15 units of 42 bars Brass: 9 units of 70 bars Strings: 21 units of 30 bars ○ This piece comments on the importance of the ocean and specifically global warming causing the ocean to rise. M. Monk: Turtle Dreams ○ Basic features of Meredith Monk’s music: repetition, ostinati, extended techniques, non-verbal vocal sounds. ○ Album released through ECM New Series label ○ Monk on her pet turtle, Neutron: “When I first got her I had a lot of dreams about her, very strange dreams. And then I started thinking, how does a turtle think? What would a turtle mind be, and if she’s sleeping, what would a turtle dream be?” ○ My thoughts: We’re fighting in the grocery store Foot cam I love music where you don’t have to be a good singer Pamela Z: Suite for Voice and Electronics - Only “Typewriter” and “Badagada” ○ Pamela Z (b. 1956) Composer-performer, improviser, vocalist, media artist. - Use of computer technology in performance - Gesture-activated controllers - Use of voice - Extended techniques, bel canto - Rep ranges from small works for voice and electronics to sound-art installations. - “Sonic accretion”: Digital looping to build complex, layered textures. - Listen/watch: What do you notice re: vocal technique, looping, and layering? SOPHIE: Faceshopping ○ Genre: Hyperpop Traits: modified vocals, excessive compression and distortion, references to 2000s internet culture SOPHIE: Trans woman, major figure in LGBTQ+ popular music. While she sometimes denied her identity’s influence on her music, many queer listeners find her music to be representative of queer, and especially trans struggle and ascent. A. Zagaykevych: Nord/Ouest - Only mvmt. 3 ○ Three-movement electroacoustic work for folk voice, violin, flute, percussion, theremin, and electronics. - ○ Combines electroacoustic and Ukrainian folk musics, referencing the folklore of the northwestern region of Ukraine. - ○ Listen to a bit of the third movement and think: - What’s your affective response to this combo of electronic and folk musics? - How would you compare this to the folk-influenced compositions that we discussed earlier in the semester? - How would you compare this to other compositions that use electronics that we discussed more recently? Kalush Orchestra: Stefania ○ Technically written about Oleh Psiuk’s mother, but it is really about the war on Ukraine’s affect on families as demonstrated by the music video J. Wolfe: Anthracite Fields - Only mvmt 5 ○ O ratorio about coal miners in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region. - Texts drawn from personal interviews with miners and their families, along with oral histories, speeches, rhymes and local mining lore. - Intended to “honor the working lives” of PA coal miners. - Won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music. - Wolfe: “The politics are very fascinating—the issues about safety, and the consideration for the people who are working and what’s involved in it. But I didn’t want to say, ‘Listen to this. This is a big political issue.’ It really was, ‘Here’s what happened. Here’s this life, and who are we in relationship to that?’ We’re them. They’re us. And basically, these people, working underground, under very dangerous conditions, fueled the nation. That’s very important to understand.” - Five movements. Listen to no. 5: “Appliance.” - What genres do you hear? - Follow along with the text. Do you read this as political? Why or why not? S. K. Snider: Penelope - Only “The Lotus Eaters” ○ “The quintessential NewAm album” -Brittelle - “branch of contemporary classical music that blurs into artsy pop.” - Recorded by Shara Nova and Ensemble Signal, led by Brad Lubman. - Song cycle with text by Ellen McLaughlin. - Story, based on Homer’s Odyssey: a woman’s husband appears at her doorstep after a twenty-year absence and while he doesn’t know who he is, the woman doesn’t know who he’s become. She reads him the Odyssey, and through their mutual waiting finds a way into her former husband’s memory which has been struck by the trauma of war. - Listen to “The Lotus Eaters.” What stylistic and generic characteristics stand out to you? N. Joachim: Ki moun ou ye ○ “Who are you?”, Haitian Creole - Joachim: “For me, it led to, ‘Who am I actually?’ Not just on a performative level, but also as a Black person in spaces where I constantly have to code-switch. It’s a deep question. It isn’t casual.” - Album released on Nonesuch records, songs written on Joachim’s family’s farm in Haiti. - “Ki moun ou ye is a question for both the singer and the listener. Who are we without our grief, our f amily, and our homeland? How can we harness the knowledge of these things to claim and define who we have become?” - Listen, watch, and think: - What genres/styles do you hear? - How would you compare/contrast this with the Snider track? - Is this effective in delivering its message? Score Descriptions for Identification J. Cage: 4’33” ○ Just three sets of tacit J. Cage: Sonatas & Interludes, V J. Cage: Music of Changes G. Grisey: Partiels K. Saariaho: L’Amour de Loin - Only “jamais d’amour…” G. Crumb: Black Angels - Only mvmts 4-6 S. Reich: Music for 18 Musicians T. Takemitsu: A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden U. Chin: Acrostic Wordplay - Only mvmts. 4-6 Terms: Indeterminacy ○ Composer/piece associated: John Cage, Aria (1958) Each color represents a different vocal timbre that is left up to the performer ○ Approach to composition in which the composer leaves some aspects of the music unspecified. Decisions are left to chance, influenced by human actions and/or the environment ○ Music as duration; temporally-organized sound Duration > pitch, as even duration is present in silence “empty containers” Fluxus ○ Composer/piece associated: John Cage, Aria (1958) ○ Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers, and poets that John Cage was involved with during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in e xperimentalart performanceswhich emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. ○ Fluxus (an international, interdisciplinary group of artists which was born out of a class Cage taught) This group emphasized process over product Experimented with indeterminancy Prepared Piano ○ Composer/piece associated: John Cage, Sonatas and Interludes, V Inspired by Indian visual and performing arts ○ Modified piano in which various objects are inserted between a piano’s strings in order to create complex, percussive sounds when the piano is played from the keyboard. ○ The prepared piano has the ability to sound like the gamelan CPEMC (Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center) ○ Piece/Composer associated: Edgard Varèse ○ This is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the US ○ Founders: Milton Babbitt, Otto Leuning, Vladimir Ussachevsky. ○ Symbolized cosmopolitanism, New York as a global intellectual and cultural center, but also prioritized Western values. ○ Site for cultural diplomacy. ○ El-Dabh welcomed, but subject to othering and exclusion. Seen as novel, because of his skin color and nationality - despite the fact that he was the first to experiment with electronic music. Musique Concrète // Elektronische Musik ○ 🔵 ⚪🔴Musique Concrète Based on acoustic sounds from the real world. Tape/wire recorders, “concrete” sensory reality. Term coined by French sound engineer Pierre Schaeffer in 1948 First composition: Concert de bruits, 1948. El-Dabh composed through this medium, but before Schaeffer. ○ ⚫🔴🟡Elektronische Musik Based on electronic, artificially produced, “pure” sounds. Synthesis, sine waves, sounds free from worldly associations. Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Studien (1953-4), earliest sine wave compositions from a studio in Cologne. IRCAM ○ Associated Composer: Grisey ○ Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music. ○ Founded by Boulez in 1977 with support from the French gov’t. (in his words - “a meeting place for scientists and musicians”) ○ Center for electro-acoustic music research, computer music resources, experimentations with instrumental timbre, and spatial effects. Spectralism ○ Associated composer: Grisey, despite the fact that he respected the term “spectralism” ○ A compositional approach that usescomputer-based sound analysisand emphasizes timbre over pitch as the major structural feature ○ Not a style, but a set of compositional techniques. ○ Developed as a reaction against integral serialism. ○ Focus ontimbreand theharmonic series ○ Similar to electronic music, trying to abolish distinctions between parameters. ○ Developed at IRCAM in Paris (see above) Distortion ○ Associated performer: Jimi Hendrix ○ A form of audio signal processing that alters the sound of amplified electric musical instruments ○ Used by Jimi Hendrix in his performance of the Star Spangles Banner at Woodstock in 1969 Black Internationalism ○ Associated performer: Jimi Hendrix ○ p olitical culture and intellectual practice forged in response to slavery, colonialism, and white imperialism. Historical and ongoing collective struggle against racial oppression rooted in global Black consciousness. ○ Connected to John Coltrane’s interest in non-Western musics Modal jazz ○ Associated performer: Coltrane ○ Develops in late 1950s Miles Davis, “Milestones” (1958), “So What” (1959) ○ Framework of scales ○ Slow harmonic rhythm ○ Vamps and pedal points to create open-ended frameworks for improvisation Minimalism ○ Music of pattern and process ○ Reaction against 1950s serialism and chance music ○ Used by/draw association with Steve Reich Phasing ○ A type of gradual process, discovered by Reich, whereby two machines playing tape loops will gradually go out of phase with one another. Come Out(1966) Piano Phase(1967) Clapping Music(1972) Dream and Number ○ A key aspect of Tōru Takemitsu’s musical style Key characteristics ○ Modal melodies ○ Chromatic background ○ Register and timbre Dream and Number ○ Dream: Inspiration, intuitive, irrational ○ Number: logic, structure, rationality. Influences ○ France: Debussy and Messiaen ○ Japan Initially avoided Japanese influence due to war Hyperpop ○ Genre developed over the past decade ○ Traits: modified vocals, excessive compression and distortion, and references to 2000s internet culture ○ Origins: UK underground EDM scene, A.G. Cook and PC Music label ○ Popularity: Mainstream pop music TikTok ○ Heavily associated w/ LGBTQ+ communities and modes of expression Eurovision ○ Est. 1956 by the European Broadcasting Union as an experiment in transnational broadcasting. - ○ Competition wherein each participating nation sends an original song, jury members and public viewers vote on favorite song. - ○ A geopolitical stage, a vehicle for soft power (esp. since 1990s). - ○ Gave us ABBA, Celine Dion, Måneskin, and more. Bang on a Can ○ New music organization founded in 1987 by David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe (pictured left to right) - ○ Borne out of 1987 Marathon concert in NYC, which has since become an annual event (LOUD Weekend). - ○ Mission: Promoting new music to new audiences. - ○ Multiple projects: - Bang on a Can All Stars: Performing ensemble - Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA. Check it out! - Record label: Cantaloupe Music - ○ Aesthetics: Postminimalism meets pop Indie classical ○ Quotes from the slides: T he indie classical controversy “for New Amsterdam, indie classical was not intended to provide a context with which to comprehend its individual albums and compositions, but a term to brand the label’s identity and describe its innovations in the classical music market.” - Will Robin “in the realm of indie classical musical production, this ambivalence toward specialization and expertise manifests not only in criticisms of the academy but also in the embrace of stylistic eclecticism… The supposed diffusion of musical styles in indie classical music is felt to appeal to listeners with no special musical training, unlike the rigorously specialized music of the modernist tradition.” - Marianna Ritchey
