Special Piece

For my lovely singers who are taking on the extra challenge, here is your link to the piece.

The Arrow and the Song

It is unfortunately an SSA arrangement, instead of the two-part that we will be using, but all of the harmonies are there. You may just have to work to pick them out. Make sure to use your solfege!

American Styles

On the quiz tomorrow I will ask you to identify the musical style of each piece and the famous musician who developed that style.

1. Folk Songs

1. Bluegrass

1. Blues
1. Bessie Smith

1. Ragtime
1. Scott Joplin

1. Dixieland Jazz
1. Jelly Roll Morton
2. Louis Armstrong
3. Duke Ellington 

Nationalist Composers

Tchaikovsky - Russia
"Finale" from the 1812 Overture
Note: I will be playing this piece starting at the 3:00 mark

Edvard Grieg - Norway
Peer Gynt Suite "In the Hall of the Mountain King"

Jean Sibelius - Finland
Finlandia

Antonin Dvorak - Czech
New World Symphony 2nd Movement

Richard Wagner - Germany
"The Ride of the Valkyries" from Die Walkure

Fryderyk Chopin - Poland
Revolutionary Etude

 Composing a song is like cooking a recipe. Today we are going to get an idea of the musical flavors that the New German School was interested in.

1. Form (what are we going to make?)
1. Vocal Forms
1. Operas
1. Big story, big voices, big orchestra, big sets, big costumes, dramatic acting
2. Wagner coined the idea of a complete musical work or a Musical Drama 
3. Leitmotif - a short musical theme used to introduce a character. A good example of a leitmotif is Darth Vader's Theme from Star Wars. 
2. Instrumental Forms
1. Piano Forms
1. Concerto
1. Piano soloist plus orchestra
2. Etudes
1. Short pieces by Chopin and Liszt meant to show off their skills
2.  Revolutionary Etude by Chopin
3. Rhapsodies
1. A form of piano music in which the composer can do literally whatever he or she wants, made popular by Liszt.
2.  Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 by Franz Liszt
4. Nocturne
1. A musical composition that is inspired by or attempts to evoke the night. Chopin’s nocturnes are the most famous.
2. Chopin Nocturne op. 9 no. 1 
2. Orchestral Forms
1. Symphonies
1. Beethoven elevated the Symphony to the supreme form for a composer.
2. After his death no one could come up with anything as revolutionary or powerfully emotional as Beethoven’s symphonies and most did not even attempt to write symphonies.
3. Berlioz was the only acception and managed to created beautiful, richly original symphonies like his Symphonie Fantastique. 
4.  “March to the Scaffold” from Symphonie Fantastique 
2. Tone Poems
1. Liszt reacted to the fear surrounding the attempt to create a symphony that would surpass Beethoven by creating a new genre of orchestral music, the Tone Poem
2. A tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single movement that illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other non-musical source.
3. it seeks, like opera, a union of music and drama.
2. Tonality (flavors)
1. Music at this time is becoming increasingly atonal, or chromatic.
2. What is tonality?
1. Tonality is a heirarchy of notes, intervals, and chords that sound more or less stable, or pleasant to the ears.
2. Do is the most stable note
3. Consonance: chords or intervals that sound stable or pleasant to the ears
4. Dissonance: chords or intervals that sound unstable or unpleasant to the ears
5. Diatonic: 
1. Notes contained within the do-based scales (do is pronounced doe)
6. Chromatic: 
1. Notes that fall outside the do-based scales
7. Comes from the greek word chroma for color
3. Instruments (ingredients)
1. Piano
1. The most important composition tool.
2. The most popular and lucrative solo instrument of the time period.
3. Berlioz some how got by without knowing how to play.
2. Voice
1. Roles for operatic voices are becoming increasingly dissonant and difficult
2. The number of people who have the natural talent and the skill to fulfill the requirements of the roles decrease quite sharply during this time

Late Romantic Composers Lecture Notes

The Late Romantic Composers

1. Johannes Brahms
1. 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897
2. German Traditionalist and Romantic
1. Worked for Robert Schumann at the New Journal for Music
2. Was deeply in love with Clara, Robert’s wife but remained unmarried until his death
3. Compositional Ideals
1. Take what was best of the Classical composers and imbue them with a Romantic idiom
2. Composed using Baroque and Classical forms with a very tonal language
3. Labeled old-fashioned by the New German School
4. Brahms Piano Concerto no. 1
2. New German School
1. Three Composers who almost single-handedly brought about the Late Romantic era and set the path of music for the future
1. Characterized by disdain for the old-fashioned nonsense of the Classicists and 
2. Hector Berlioz
1. 11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869
2. French Romantic
1. Was such an emotional person that he would burst into tears while reading the Odyssey
2. Was never trained as a composer, he taught himself almost everything he knew
3. Was highly respected by Wagner and Liszt but scorned by most of French society as being too new
3. Composer
1. Was greatly influenced by Beethoven’s mad genius
2. Based most of his compositions on stories by Goethe, Homer, or Shakespeare
3. Symphonie Fantastique “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath”
1. A work about a dream he had in which he killed his lover
3. Franz Liszt 
1. October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886
2. Hungarian born, but the leader of the New German School
3. Virtuoso Pianist
1. Considered by many the most brilliant pianist of all time
2. Had a professional rivalry with Paganini, a virtuoso violinist and they would often try to outdo each other
3. Turned the piano on its side so that everyone could admire his handsome profile as he played
4. Played the most difficult passages with ease and grace
1. Liebestraum No. 3 Nocturne
4. Romantic
1. Had many torrid affairs with rich married women
2. Deeply fascinated with mysticism and the religious life
3. became a Franciscan tertiary and lived as a monk in his later years
5. Composer
1. Invented the Symphonic Poem
2. Thematic transformation
3. Started experimenting with harmony
4. Transcribed orchestral and opera scores for solo piano
4. Richard Wagner
1. 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883
2. Personal Life
1. While he disagreed with Brahms, they were very good friends, but he disdained Mendelssohn, who had the same ideas as Brahms, probably because Mendelssohn was Jewish by descent
2. Married Liszt’s daughter after having an affair with her while she was married to someone else
3. Composer
1. Primarily known for his operas, or what he called “Musical Dramas”
2. stories were based off of German and Norse Mythology like Die Niebelungenlied and The Flying Dutchman
3. hugely demanding vocal roles requiring a “heroic” or extraordinary singer
4. Loved the BIG SOUND and its power to induce rage, love, and all sorts of emotions
5. The Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walkure
4. Innovations
1. sought to create a total cohesion between all the parts of his musical dramas
2. He had “leitmotifs” for each of his characters or ideas
3. Extremely chromatic, atonal music with thick, complex textures
4. Tristan und Isolde considered by some to be the start of “modern music”
1. Prelude Tristan und Isolde

Romantic Timeline Lecture Notes

Romanticism: a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th and 19th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual

1. Timeline overview
1. 1850-1920
2. Ends in 1920 because of the post-war era
3. Before the Romantic, we have the Classical era
4. What is going on at the same time in music?
1. Nationalism
2. Development of American music

1. Modernism come next
1. Ideas of the time
1. Reaction to the new social norms of the Industrial revolution
2. Reaction against the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment and against the scientific rationalization of Nature
3. The Expression of emotions is the preeminent ideal of all romantic composers and literary figures
4. Searching for completeness and coherence in a quickly shifting world
5. Student Revolutions in France
6. At the very end of it, the Great War, WW I
2. Romanticism
1. Literature
1. E.T.A. Hoffman’s tales of heroism and idealized stories from the medieval era combined with his fascination with magic and sorcery
2. Art
1. Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix
3. Philosophy
1. Idealized the heroic individual
2. Morals come from within, from the human soul
3. History is seen as being shaped by a Zeitgeist
4. Henry David Thoreau -
1. American philosopher and naturalist who emphasized the role of Nature and the importance of the individual
5. Immanuel Kant
1. German philosopher who argued that all moral direction and experiences are shaped by the rationalizations of the subjective human mind

Strings Listening Examples

On Tuesday, January 20th I will quiz you on the instruments of the String family. To listen to the what the instrument sounds like, click on the name of the instrument you wish to hear.

Strings

1. Violin
1. Czardas by Vittorio Monti
2. Viola
1. The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams
3. Cello
1. "Prelude" from Cello Suite No. 1 by J. S. Bach
4. Double Bass
1. "Elephant" from The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens
5. Guitar
1. Asturias by Isaac Albeniz
6. Harp
1. Fantasie for solo harp by Camille Saint Saens
7. Harpsichord
1. Tocatta in G minor by Alessandro Scarlatti

Woodwind and Brass Listening Examples

On Tuesday, January 13th I will quiz you on the instruments of the Woodwind and the Brass families. To listen to the what the instrument sounds like, click on the name of the instrument you wish to hear.

Woodwinds

1. Flute Group
1. Piccolo
2. Flute
2. Single Reeds
1. Clarinet
2. Saxophone
3. Double Reeds
1. Oboe
2. English Horn
3. Bassoon

Brass

1. Trumpet
2. French Horn
3. Trombone
4. Tuba

Welcome!

Welcome to 7th grade music!
Are you ready for an exciting new year of discovery and adventure?

In 7th grade music class this year we will be learning many new things about music, building off of everything we learned in 6th grade last year. We will learn how to read music by understanding notes, rests, musical punctuation, and the solfege scale, and we will use this knowledge to compose and arrange our own songs. We will learn to recognize the instruments of the orchestra by sight and by sound. We will follow the development of music during the late Romantic period, learn about the major composers from that era and listen to their masterworks. We will study the voice and how to use it as an instrument to make music alone and with others. We will also have the opportunity to perform in concert with the 4th and 6th graders at the end of the semester. This blog will help keep you updated on what we are learning in music class and will have some materials to help reinforce what we have learned.