- Blog comments to Porgy and Bess posting on listening to Gershwin
- "Exotic Richness of Negro Music and Color of Charleston, S.C., Admirably Conveyed in Score of Catfish Row Tragedy" by Olin Downes (New York Times October 11, 1935)
- "Dramatic Values of Community Legend Gloriouosly Transposed in New Form with Fine Regard for Its Verities" by Brooks Atkinson (New York Times October 11, 1935)
- "Rhapsody in Catfish Row" by George Gershwin (New York Times October 20, 1935)
- "Porgy and Bess--A Folk Opera (a review)" by Hall Johnson (link on blog)
- "The Complicated Life of Porgy and Bess" by James Standifer (link on blog)
- Grove Music Online entry on George Gershwin
- Encyclopedia Britannica Article on George Gershwin
- your JSTOR/MLA/American History secondary source article (and further research perusals)
- List of Musical terms (link on blog, Alice Crawford-Berghof)
- Opera Terms (link on blog)
- Lecture Notes (2/27--see info on gospels/shouts, in particular)
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
musical notes
Please post comments with "musical terms" that you find of interest (include definitions, if you've gone that far and note which source you've taken the term from). These are the sources we have in our "common" library so far:
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14 comments:
composer, stanza, score, cadence, resonance
Libretto: the text of a work (as an opera) for the musical theater
The libretto subtitle was crucial for me during the PnB viewing to understand the lyrical components of their singing, and to be able to read the unique vernacular spoken. I like the libretto.
Duration- term for describing sounds as being long or short
Mood-created partly through the rhythm of a song
For me, i kept feeling like the mood in Porgy and Bess kept changing because some songs were high beat and fast and some were slower paces.
Time signature - a sign used in music to indicate meter and usually written as a fraction with the bottom number indicating the kind of note used as a unit of time and the top number indicating the number of units in each measure
Normally, music consists of one beat, four beats to a bar, and four bars to a phrase (In some cases it can also be 8 or 16 bars to a phrase - this is more commonly placed in the techno genre). But some genres like Polka or Waltzes have 2, or even 3 beats to a bar. Interesting!
Sacha Morales:
Here are some words I found: atonality, complex rhythms, incidental tones, and grand opera.
Complex Rhythms: well the word basically sums up the definition, but rhythm is the beat of the music, and complex rhythm could be different time signatures, changing from 3/4ths time to 6/8ths time or it could be overlapping parts that create complexity within the piece. In the opera, I think that complex rhythmes come about when their is stress in the characters, such as Clara looking for her husband in the storm.
A few words: Tone, score, scale, lyrics, instrumental
The ones that I thought were important when I watched the opera was the tone, lyrics and instrumentals. The tone allows for the creation of emotion - if it's a high pitched tone it'll be more happy, if it's a deep tone it'll signify mystery, sadness or drama.
The lyrics enable the viewers to see what they're saying and the meaning behind it, much like the libretto, but they flow with the music and the message of the music.
Instrumental music is important because it enables the movement of plot as well as character development without speaking words. The instrumental can be classical or "folk classical" depending on the genre, and is a major factor I think when trying to evoke sypmathy, excitement or sadness.
good starts--anyone have something on "contrapuntal"? either a place where it describes Gershwin's music or a definition?
contrapuntal - having two or more independent but harmonically related melodic parts sounding together
this is throughout several parts in Gerswhin's opera when, without the subtitles, one would not be able to distinguish the difference between their voices. bess's voice in particular sometimes does not stand out but rather blends in with the rest of the cast.
On Britannica, Jazz is "musical form, often improvisational, developed by African Americans and influenced by both European harmonic structure and African rhythms. It was developed partially from ragtime and blues and is often characterized by syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, often deliberate deviations of pitch, and the use of original timbres."
Timbres: characteristic tone colour of an instrument or voice.
pitch: the ability to identify by ear any note at some standard pitch or to sing a specified note
Shannan’s list of Musical Terms-
All Definitions are from www.musicgrove.com (I would need to paraphrase the definitions for my essay)
Following are form Porgy and Bess - A Folk Opera by Hall Johnson Tonal investiture
https://eee.uci.edu/08w/29011/home/hall_johnson+1+.pdf :
Accent - The prominence given to a note or notes in performance by a perceptible alteration in volume. It is also the lengthening of duration or a brief preceding silence of articulation.
Measure- A term in American usage equivalent to ‘bar’ in English usage when referring to a metrical unit rather than ‘bar-line’. For ‘bar-line’ the American term is ‘bar’.
Bar- In Western notation a vertical line drawn through the staff to mark off metrical units. Hence also the metrical unit thus indicated, which in American usage is called ‘measure’.
Blues- predominantly black American folk music of the 20th century, which has a history and evolution separate from, but sometimes related to, that of jazz. From obscure and largely undocumented rural American origins, it became the most extensively recorded of all traditional music types. It has been subject to social changes that have affected its character. Since the early 1960s blues has been the most important single influence on the development of Western popular music (see POPULAR MUSIC; POP).
Jazz and French Creole - Although elements of a jazz style developed in several urban centres of the USA, the earliest examples of the genre arose in New Orleans, and therefore the city is generally regarded as the birthplace of jazz. The appearance of this style derived from many sources (church music, syncopated coon songs, ballads, folksongs, military brass bands, work songs, blues etc.) and from the many races that inhabited New Orleans (African, Spanish and French creoles and whites of European origin, mainly Italian).
Three-four rhythm- three beats per measure
four -four rhythm- four beats per measure
Vaudeville - A French poem or song of satirical or epigrammatic character common in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its use in the French theatre (comédie en vaudevilles) led in the 19th and 20th centuries to a broader application of the term as a name for theatrical entertainments similar to modern musical comedy or music-hall variety shows. The term itself is the result of the cohesion and confusion of two genres of French song which have separate origins. The earliest, the vau de vire, was a popular, satirical song originating in Normandy in the 15th century; the voix de ville was a courtly song of Parisian origin, the spelling of which in the earliest known reference (‘vaul-de-ville’, 1507) is already confused with that of the Norman genre. The existence of three villages in Lorraine, all named Vaudeville, adds to the confusion of etymology.
Following from Exotic Rishness of Negro Music and Color of Charleston, S.C., Admirably Conveyed in Score of Catfish Row Tragedy. By Olin Downes http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=302&COPT=U01EPTQmSU5UPTAmREJTPTFBQ0Q@&cfc=1:
Baritone in Jazz- In general musical terminology the vocal part or range lying below the tenor and above the bass; the word is also used as a qualifying adjective to distinguish those members of certain families of instruments (especially wind) that play in that range (e.g., baritone horn; see SAXHORN). In jazz argot “baritone” (also shortened to “bari” or “bary”) is used alone to mean the baritone saxophone (see SAXOPHONE), and sometimes to mean the player of that instrument.
Baritone in Opera-A male
voice in compass and depth between the tenor and the bass, with a normal compass of about A to f' which may be extended at either end.
Key In tonal music (see TONALITY), the abstract arrangement of musical phenomena such as melodies, harmonies and cadences around a referential or tonic pitch class. While the French ton and the German Tonart stress the importance of the tonic, the English term has a broader meaning: as a metaphorical ‘key’, the tonic ‘unlocks’ or clarifies the arrangement of pitch relations that underlies the music. A tonic thus unifies and coordinates the musical phenomena within its reach: in the key of C major, for example, there is an essential ‘C-ness’ to the music.
Score- The noun ‘score’ means: (a) a form of manuscript or printed music in which the staves, linked by bar-lines, are written above one another, in order to represent the musical coordination visually (see §3(vi) below); (b) a page, volume, fascicle or other artefact containing a complete copy of a musical work; and (c) by extension, a piece of music customarily written ‘in score’, i.e. in the form of a score as defined under (a) above.
Loudness- The subjectively perceived strength of a sound. There is a complex relationship between this psychophysical quantity and objectively measured attributes of the sound wave. The loudness of a sound is most directly related to the intensity, which is the energy transmitted by the sound wave across unit area per second; it is also influenced by the duration and the frequency spectrum of the sound, and by the context in which the sound is heard.
Scale -A sequence of notes in ascending or descending order of pitch. As a musicological concept, a scale is a sequence long enough to define unambiguously a mode, tonality, or some special linear construction, and that begins and ends (where appropriate) on the fundamental note of the tonality or mode; a scale, therefore, is usually thought of as having the compass of one or more octaves.
Intonation- The treatment of musical pitch in performance. It is usually thought of as the acoustical and artistic accuracy of pitch in singing or playing, but it has an indispensable role in musical expression through the deliberate inflection of pitch to shade and colour melody, to create excitement or tension, or as a means of characterizing a particular repertory or style of performance. In contrasting the intonation of the violin virtuosos Joachim and Sarasate (quite different, as one may hear on recordings), Bernard Shaw (1893) could have been describing the intonational art of much of the world’s music: ‘[T]he modes in which we express ourselves musically …, though in theory series of sounds bearing a fixed pitch relation to one another, are in practice tempered by every musician just as the proportions of the human figure are tempered by a sculptor’. The sounding of a given series of musical intervals is subject to the laws of acoustics, but undergoes also an elusive, more or less subtle shaping (Shaw’s ‘tempering’) not unlike the shaping of precise rhythmic values by tempo rubato.
Resonance -A large amplitude of oscillation built up when a vibrating system is driven by an outside periodic force of frequency close to a natural frequency of the system. It plays an important part in the operation of almost all acoustic systems. In musical instruments, resonances are crucial in the generation or stabilization of pitched sounds and are frequently employed to enhance sound radiation; on the other hand, a strong resonance can be a problem if a uniform response is required over a wide frequency range.
Shannan's post:
My bad lol that was a super long post.
Although this post involves a lot of terms about music i think it strays from then term Jazz istelf. Although jazz was a term coined by its makers i feel as if i just fits perfectally...much like the later offset of jazz blues. What i find most interesting about jazz (which is no my favorite type of music) is that it set the scene for all music to come, rock, goespel, rap, punk etc etc. If you examine a simple jazz tune they all have a simple pattern that everybody can feel and keep up with, then there is the lead, the improv, which would be comparable to a lead guitarrist. Something else i noticed once was that all the songs that we hold as "classic rock songs" you know the most famous ones the ones that everybody knows...look almost identical to jazz blues... the other thing....Blues is Jazz with a slower tempo and a minor feel...Goespel is jazz with a major faster tempo...Punk is Goespel extremly fast and a mix of major and minor...Rock is blues with electric guittars, sex, and drugs, and there are millions of branches from rock (folk etc) and modern day rap is blues with a heavier bass and a sense of repetition.
A bass is a male singer who sings in the deepest vocal range.
Since a lot of the words are already defined, I tried to find terms that have no been mentioned yet. Well, to the best of my ability.
Aria: A closed lyrical piece for solo voice (exceptionally, for more than one), either independent or forming part of an opera or other large work; in the 17th and 18th centuries it was also sometimes applied to instrumental music. Strictly, its Italian sense may be rendered as ‘style, manner or course’, as of a melody. In Italian vocal music of the 16th and 17th centuries it was a closed form, normally strophic, with or without instrumental accompaniment. The term derives from the Latin aer, meaning ‘air, atmosphere’, and in the writings of theorists of the 14th and 15th centuries implies ‘manner’, ‘way’ or ‘mode.'
Vibrato: Only when orchestras became larger, and were thus better able to reinforce the strength of the singer’s voice, did vibrato gradually and progressively establish itself. The way in which singing technique developed to cope with larger orchestras and concert halls resulted in more powerful singing, which in turn often produced a clearly audible and continuous vibrato. In several cases this development also led to uncontrolled wobble.
Dynamics: Sounds we identify as loud or soft
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