Transcript Music Composition: Integrating Musical Elements

Music Composition:
Integrating Musical Elements
-Like painting, writing, and other forms of artistic
expression, composing music involves making decisions.
-The composer must decide what he or she wants to say
and the best musical means to express it.
-Among the most fundamental decisions composers face
are those concerning musical elements – the basic
building blocks of music.
-These elements include form, melody, timbre, and
rhythm.
Musical Decisions About Form
-Composers often begin by choosing a work’s form.
-Form – the structure and design of a composition, incorporating repetition,
contrast, unity, and variety.
-Form gives shape and direction, but it does not control the feeling or message the
musical work expresses.
-That is a function of the composer’s skill and creativity.
***Example***
12-bar blues have a certain form – 3 lines
1. State the problem.
2. Repeat the first line.
3. Resolve the problem.
This organization would be A-A-B
Musical Decisions About Melody
-Melodies may be flowing or angular, narrow or wide-ranging, short or long.
-many, many different options
-Melodies are almost always built on one musical scale or another.
-Major scale - determined by the first and third pitches (the third is “larger”)
-Minor scale – also determined by the first and third pitches, but the third is smaller
-Minor Scale – a sequence of eight pitches built on the pattern of one whole step, one half step, two whole
steps, one half step, and two whole steps.
***Activity***
You probably know the French folk song “Frère Jacques”. Listen to the first part of the song and
notice that is sounds “happy”.
This is because the melody is in major.
Now listen to it when the melody is performed in minor. Which note had to change? How did
that change make the music sound?
-One way composers achieve variety is by changing the melody from major to
minor.
-Composer Gustav Mahler used a variation of “Frère Jacques” in the third
movement of his Symphony No. 1 in D Minor.
-Mahler changed the mode from major to minor and made the folk song into
a musical composition.
-Mahler was known for his beautiful melodies in the world of classical
music.
-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5A5tFyXQio
-symphony – an extended work for orchestra with several contrasting movements.
-mode – type of scale
Making Musical Decisions About Timbre
-Like painters, composers choose a palette of colors – in this case “tone
colors” or timbres – for a work.
-Timbres vary with the sound sources
-these include (but are not limited to) conventional instruments,
electronic instruments, and human voices.
-Composers may elect to use a single instrument, ensemble, orchestra,
band, chorus, or some combination of these.
-Conventional instruments may be tuned differently, or played in an unusual
manner.
-Their sound may also be recorded and manipulated electronically.
-Some inventive musicians go beyond the predictable sources, relying on conch
shells, plastic pipe, and other unconventional “instruments”.
-Others experiment from instruments from non-Western cultures
-Example – the pipa – the Chinese lute (remember…
from the Ancient China notes…)
-Composer Bright Sheng – born in Shanghai, China in 1955
-learned to play piano as a young boy.
-Went to the Shanghai Conservatory for Music and moved to New
York City to study with Leonard Bernstein after he graduated.
-Later earned his doctorate in composition from Columbia
University
-The diversity of his experiences and study enabled him to reflect
the music of both Chinese and Western cultures.
-Written by Bright Sheng for pipa and cellohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2YR4SSrptQ
Making Musical Decisions About Rhythm
-When composers decide if a piece of music will be fast or slow, they are
making decisions that involve time and rhythm.
-As an art form, music cannot exist independently of time.
-More important to composers than real, or “clock” time is a concept
known as “felt” time.
-”felt” time – an aspect of music that controls the listener’s sense of
how much time has passed.
***Activity***
Without looking at your watch, decide which of these two pieces “feels” longer:
-Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQsgE0L450
-”Badinerie” from the Orchestral Suite No. 1 by J.S. Bach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ufehp7gULA
Which words describe the character of each selection?:
Slow
Calm
Spirited
hurried
detached
short sounds
strong pulse
tension
repose
Which words characterize both selections?
Which piece of music feels longer?
fast
weak pulse
smooth sounds
Meter
-In 1991, Whitney Houston sang the National Anthem at Super Bowl
XXV.
-groundbreaking arrangement by John Clayton Jr.
-went from triple to duple meter (usually stays in triple)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bW5Wf_dH7Q
***Activity***
Can you change the meter for a melody you already know? Use “Frère Jacques” again and change the meter from duple to triple.
How would the meter signature (time signature) change based on the new placement of accents?
What words will you shorten or lengthen to make the new meter succeed musically?
Sing and play to demonstrate your success.