Chapter 6: Music THE ART OF BEING HUMAN 9TH EDITION Aim of Chapter: To introduce students to the basic elements of music, major periods and styles, and some works by important composers and performers of the past and present. Our focus will be on identifying the major music movements of the twentieth century. In particular, we will discuss the ideas and artists of folk, ragtime, jazz, rock, pop, and hip-hop music and note their influences upon society. Chapter 6: Music

MUSIC The shaped sounds between silences We exist within two kinds of audio environments: one is unplanned, random, and sometimes maddening—especially in densely populated cities; the other is planned and under the control of human beings. It is music, the shaped sounds between silences. Much music, especially that of early cultures, imitates sounds of the natural world, which some used to believe were the voices of their gods. The text whimsically suggests that the tradition of music may have begun when someone thought: “Why wait for the soothing call of a morning bird when I can make that sound myself?”

BASIC ELEMENTS OF MUSIC Tone Scale The basic element of music is a tone (or note), a sound produced by the human voice or an instrument that maintains a given frequency of vibration. The scale (which is not the same in all cultures) is a sequence of tones, or frequencies, from low to high. At first both Western and non-Western scales comprised five tones. This is the pentatonic scale. Western scale now has seven tones and is called the diatonic scale. The basic Western scale is CDEFGAB. The key is identified by the first note of the particular seven-tone progression being used. On concert programs most musical offerings are listed along with the key that begins the piece: for example, Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op.125. Keys can be major (using whole tones)

BASIC ELEMENTS OF MUSIC Rhythm, found in most early cultures for its vital importance in ritual dances, may well have preceded the discovery of tones. At any rate, it’s hard to imagine music without any rhythm at all, though modern composers often seek to free themselves from the limitations of rigid rhythms, just as modern poets seek to free themselves from the constraints of meter. In Western cultures, melody is usually a sequence of tones working as a unit and played or sung more than once. If a work is a long sequence of tones in which a given unit is never repeated (as in modern opera), some listeners complain that “it has no melody.” To the Western ear music of non-Western cultures uses unfamiliar progressions of tones and therefore lacks melody. But all music has melody, whether a given unit of tones is repeated or not. This means some music requires closer listening. Romantic composers, such as Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff, are said to be masters of melody, because their music offers sequences of tones that are lushly orchestrated and repeated often. When people complain that Rhythm Melody

BASIC ELEMENTS OF MUSIC Harmony and the Orchestra Silence Harmony, the simultaneous production of tones by voices or instruments, is usually a key factor in melody, but not all music has harmony. During the Middle Ages, plainsong, prayers and chants sung in unison by monks and clerics, was dominant. Harmony began to be popular in the Renaissance, as composers experimented with varieties of musical instruments and vocal patterns. The invention of harmony made possible an explosion of musical styles and genres, such as opera and the symphony. Silence, which shapes musical sound, is important to discuss. You might even want to extend the subject to include the question of who makes more of an impression in a group— the noisy extrovert who dominates the conversation or the person who says little but knows everything that’s going on.

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE ART SONGS - shorter musical composition Schubert’s The Trout Songs: • The birth of song may be traceable to the rhapsodist’s singing of such works as The Iliad. By the time of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, the song had become a respectable component of the concert repertoire. It could be created in a relatively short span of time for singers who needed material, and it was a way of earning money. The classic songs of the great composers are referred to as “art songs,” and Schubert is considered the master of the genre, his work distinguished for its enormous volume, the almost perfect structure of many of them, the purity of his melodic lines, the passionate drama often contained, and the dazzling piano accompaniments.

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE FOLK SONGS Commemorative song Work Song Accumulation Song Scoundrel Song Narrative Song Protest Song The folk song endures for the group solidarity it engenders. During the ’60s, America saw an intense revival of folk music, influenced strongly by an unpopular war and the need it served to help American youth ward off feelings of alienation and isolation. The chapter treats these categories of folk songs: commemorative, work, accumulation, scoundrel, and narrative. Bob Dylan was a major folk artist of the period, and, though the folk song is not as popular anymore (for reasons which are worth asking classes about), it is still around, notably in work by Ferraby Lionheart and the protest songs of Ani Difranco.

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE SPIRITUALS – emotional release The spiritual was originally created and sung by slaves stolen away from their homeland and in need of religious solace. Once mainly belonging to the African American community, it spread to the same ’60s generation that rediscovered other folk songs. Two of the more widely sung were “We Shall Overcome,” which did much to unite the races against war and prejudice, and “Amazing Grace,” which could effect a bonding of as many as 10,000 people at once (especially as sung by Judy Collins).

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE RAGTIME – syncopation Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag Ragtime emerged in the early years of the twentieth century from African American musical traditions influenced by European styles. Originally ragtime tunes heard by Scott Joplin were probably variations on old plantation songs, minstrel-show cakewalks, and lively banjo melodies played on riverboats by small combos. They were also played in the brothels by African Americans unable to work in more genteel establishments but longed to show they were capable of finer material. Joplin wanted to show that African American music did not have to be played in the rapid tempi demanded by white listeners. Influenced by the European waltz and the quadrille, his own ragtime pieces were written to be played in an unvarying two-quarter time.

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE JAZZ – improvisation Thelonious Monk Charles Mingus Jelly Roll Morton Charlie Parker Louis Armstrong Duke Ellington Wynton Marsalis Jazz was born when African American musicians went to New Orleans to study European genres, combining them with songs of the fields and the rhythmic songs of slaves as they rowed. The typical African scale had five, not seven, tones, to which New Orleans music added half-tones they called “blue notes.” From ragtime the musicians borrowed syncopation, and from Bach, improvisation. Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Charlie Parker, among other notables, were known to improvise on a stated theme for ten to fifteen minutes. Duke Ellington was a pioneer in putting jazz compositions on paper as carefully constructed as symphonic works, and he is the one who also brought jazz to Carnegie Hall. George Gershwin carried jazz to the concert stages of the world after the rousing success of his Rhapsody in Blue. Today jazz is equally at home in intimate clubs not only in New Orleans but throughout the world and in the concert hall. Wynton Marsalis, classically trained at Juilliard, straddles both worlds successfully. Now the director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, he is also the first jazz composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music.

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE BLUES – “Half tones” or “blue notes” W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues Bessie Smith Muddy Waters The blues originated in the music sung by slaves after a hard day in the fields, as an outlet for depression. Then it was taken over by the jazz industry, which saw in the five- tone scale and the blue notes a means of expressing sadness. Most blues songs deal with the tragedy of love. Bessie Smith was one of the leading blues exponents, singing such now famous lines as “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.”

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE POP MUSIC – origins Big Bands Irving Berlin Frank Sinatra The popular song, which flourished in the ’30s and ’40s (and, to some extent, into the ’50s), the so-called big-band era, has mostly been replaced by rock today; but the best of them can be regarded as classics of American music. Their numbers even include “God Bless America,” after all, not to mention “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and, a bit more recently, “Both Sides Now.” They were three-minute definitions of the emotional life of a great many—and still resonate whenever they are sung by such performers as Harry Connick, Jr. and Barbara Cook. Frank Sinatra was the great stylist of the popular song, and the text focuses on his big hit, “One for My Baby,” as an example of the genre. This song captures loneliness as few others do.

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE ROCK – fusion of rhythm, blues, gospel & country Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones Gillian Welch “Elvis Presley Blues” . Rock—and its multitude of associate forms—occupies the last section of this chapter; and it isn’t there because of its widespread appeal. It has become solidly ensconced as a means of defining the current state of the human psyche, the universal state. It is Dionysian in the extreme, and that contemporary phenomenon, the rock concert, is an excuse for people of all ages and from all social strata to let themselves go. Complaints that the lyrics are nearly impossible to understand (which quite a few will tell you isn’t true) are beside the point. The music actually is the message here. The chapter focuses on Bill Haley and “Rock Around the Clock,” Little Richard, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and U-2.

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE HIP HOP – broad term that defines a lifestyle with musical expression RAP – half sung, half spoken music with a steady beat supporting rapid-fire words Michael Jackson Beastie Boys Lady Gaga Our research tells us that rap can be traced to the Bronx in the ’70s, evolving out of “toasts, dub talk, and improvisational poetry delivered over music at weddings, proms, and other celebrations.” Becoming commercialized by such exponents as Beastie Boys, it has garnered, perhaps unfairly, a reputation for being misogynistic and suggestive of murderous and suicidal impulses. Can a case be made for rap as valid poetry?

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE WORLD MUSIC Diversity, Regional Style Representative of many cultures World music: China is an interesting example, as is Africa. Despite the growing influence of Western music, especially rock, which used to be banned, traditional Chinese music is still prevalent and still heavily percussive.

VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE AVANT-GARDE MUSIC A break with the familiar Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire . The avant-garde: • Stravinsky: can be credited with changing the direction of modern music, beginning with The Rite of Spring ballet and its atonality (not to mention its shocking sexual content, discussed in chapters 8 and 15. • Schoenberg: reduced the size of the symphonic orchestra to 15; used dissonant, contrapuntal music and bizarre harmonies. His Pierrot Lunaire was intended as a mental equivalent of mental disturbance. • Varese: his statement “I refuse to submit to sounds that have already been heard” about says it all both for him and a good deal of the avant-garde. (If you possibly can, bring in a recording of a Varese composition and play just a bit of it!) • Stockhausen: identified with serialism, a musical technique by which the composer disregards all theories of pitch, harmony, and key, creating his own version of musical notes. Three female composers are noted: Cathy Berberian, Joan La Barbara, and Greetje Bijma. All three use both traditional and electronic instruments, dispensing with ordinary notes and, in their songs, ordinary words.

Discussion Open discussion/reflection on the ideas and artists of folk, ragtime, jazz, rock, pop, and hip-hop music and their influences upon society.