Category: musicTheory4
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(musTh 212) Chopin Prelude 4 in e minor somewhat explained
Chopin’s Prelude 4 in e minor is an example of what can be called non-sequential chromatic voice leading. (Roig-Francoli call is non-sequential linar process.) What follows are the main features of the first twelve measures. Implied Tonality. The piece begins on first-inversion tonic triad, and it contains no dominant-t0-tonic progressions. It ends in measure twelve…
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(musth 212) Assignment 1: Chopin, Prelude 4 in E minor
Due Wednesday, 1/12: iLocker: musth212assignment1.pdf To facilitate discussion of this piece on Wednesday, you can email me your answers to parts 2 and 3, and either copy the harmonies to your anthology or make a copy of this sheet to keep. You can also scan your RN analysis and email it to me, but please…
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(musth 212) Implied Tonality
Just a quick review of what it takes to establish a tonality, compared to how a composer implies a tonality. Tonality is established most strongly through harmonic cadential movement from dominant to tonic. Other aspects can contribute to the establishment of a tonal center, including melodic cadences and the use of functional harmony belonging to…
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(musTh 212) Opening Day – Syllabus Highlights
The business-end of things… The Course Web Site If you made it here, you found the course web site. You can simplify things by using the “Classes/Categories” drop-down menu on the right to search for musicTheory4 posts, or more specifically, lecturenotes_musth4 or assignments_musth4. You can also use the Search box to look for a more…
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(musTh 212) Final Exam Grades Posted
Final Exam grades are now up on Gradebook. I’m still catching up on assignment grades. Course grades will be up by Sunday night.
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(musTh 212) Final Exam Review
Terms and Topics to Review for the Final Exam: scales and chords chromatic mediant relationships polytonality and pandiatonicism rhythm and meter, especially complex meters intervals in atonal theory, including: pitch (ordered and unordered) pitch class (ordered and unordered) interval classes pitch-class set analysis, (and here) including: normal order prime form interval vector serialism and 12-tone…
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(musTh 212) Lecture Notes: Chance Music
Chance music runs contrary to the prevailing 20th-century tendency towards greater and greater control over musical materials. There are many words that are mostly interchangeable to refer to chance: indeterminacy, aleatory, and improvisation are the most used. I will mostly used indeterminacy. There are three ways that music can be indeterminant: Indeterminacy with regards to…
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(musTh 212) Lecture Notes: Minimalism
Minimalism began as a general reaction to post-WWII modernism, atonality, and integral serialism. As such, there are certain traits that one find in minimalist pieces, but the technique is not uniform (just as there are many ways of composing 12-tone music, for example). Characteristics of minimalism: diatonic/modal pitch content use of repetition short rhythmic cells/patterns…
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(musTh 212) Lecture Notes: Timbre/Texture, Electronic
Speaking historically, there are two main approaches to composing electronically. One approach is to manipulate recorded sounds – natural sounds, or simply any sound recorded on tape. This approach is called Concrete Music (musique concrete) because the composer is manipulating actual sound, rather than notation (an abstraction, or representation of sound). The other approach involves…
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(musTh 212) Lecture Notes: Timbre/Texture, Acoustic
Some Definitions Timbre refers to tone color. Tone color can be a property of an individual instrument, or of an entire ensemble. Texture is another one of our fuzzy terms. (“I know it when I see it.”) It generally refers to the relationship between individual parts at a given moment in a composition. The line…