Recordings to illustrate Musical Elements Pitch
Duration
Pace
High Sounds Debussy Syrinx (flute) Saint-Saens Carnival – The Aviary Prokofiev P&W The Bird (flute) Britten Interlude from Ceremony of Carols V (harp) Vaughan Williams Sinfonia Antartica mvt ii Scottish Drum and Fife Music Mozart Magic Flute: Queen of Night Birdsong Long sounds/ Smooth melodies Beatles Sergeant Pepper (end) Stockhausen Stimmung Saint Saens Carnival - Swan Ravel La Valse Vaughan Williams Mass in G minor (opening) Khachaturian Spartacus (Onedin Line) Indian Raga (drone in bass) Mediaeval dances (drone in bass) Fast/ Busy/ Light Getting Faster (accelerando) Rimsky-Korsakov Flight of the Israeli Folk dances Bumblebee Zorba the Greek Holst Planets – Mercury Rodney Bennett Murder on the Orient Mussorgsky Pictures at Exhibition: Express Ballet of Unhatched chicks Gershwin An American in Paris Chopin Minute Waltz Boulez Le Marteau sans Maitre (i) Hungarian Panpipes (Gyorgy Szonfai)
Low Sounds Saint-Saens Carnival – Elephant (d bass) Tchaikovsky Symphony 4 (opening) Wagner Siegfried Act 2 (opening) Ravel Mother Goose (beauty and the Beast) Prokofiev P&W grandfather (bassoon) Tibetan monks singing Foghorn Double bass break in jazz Short sounds/ Angular melodies Britten Simple Symphony (playful pizzicato) Most Webern Vivaldi 4 seasons: Winter Ravel String Quartet movt ii Saint Saens Carnival: fossils Bartok String Quartet no 2 mvt ii Spanish guitar esp. Flamenco; lute pieces Evelyn Glennie – variety of percussions pieces Slow/ Peaceful and heavy Getting Slower (rallentando) Debussy L’Apres-midi d’un faune Villa Lobos Little Train of the Caipira Holst Planets –Saturn Mussorgsky Pictures at Exhibition: Bydlo (heavy wagon) Blake Walking in the air Wagner Mastersingers march Purcell Brass Music for Funeral of Queen Mary Sibelius Swan of Tuonela
Textures
Dynamics
Echoes
Silence Timbre Melody (how pitch is organised)
One Line Sparse Melody and accompaniment Dense Polyphony (several melodic Plain song Britten 4 sea interludes – Class singing repertoire Liegeti Volumina lines woven together) Debussy Syrinx (flute) Dawn Solo songs from shows films Penderecki Threnody Elizabethan madrigal (vocal or Britten’s Metamorphoses Stockhausen Study no 2 Solo instrument and piano e.g. Reich Music for Large fantasy (instrumental) (oboe) Grofe Grand Canyon Suite: Dvorak violin sonatina ensemble Bart Oliver: Who will buy Bach Unaccompanied Bach (violin, Dawn J Williams Close Encounters Organ fugue e.g. Dorian viola or cello) Bartok Concerto for Orchestra Bedford Star’s End (sparse/ Unaccompanied British folk (iii) dense) song Last Post Loud Getting Louder (Crescendo) Quiet Getting quieter (diminuendo) Wagner Ride of the Valkyries Ravel Bolero Debussy Clair de lune Haydn Farewell Symphony Beethoven Symphony 7 mvt 4 Ravel Daphnis and Chloe: Dawn Debussy La fille aux cheveux de lin (Ends of many pieces get louder or Britten 4 sea interludes – Storm Saint Saens Carnival: Aquarium quieter!) Strauss J Thunder and lightning Polka Vaughan Williams Pastoral Symphony Sousa Liberty Bell (Monty Python) (mvt 1) Steel Pans (although not invariably Delius On hearing 1st cuckoo loud) Clavichord and viol music Bagpipes (e.g. Scottish, Irish or Honneger Pastorale d’Ete Hungarian) Africa mbira (thumb piano) music Didgeridoo Purcell: Dido and Aeneas: witches’ echo chorus and dance Monteverdi Gabrieli: Music for St Mark’s Venice Pop uses echo effects, especially Pink Floyd, U2 The Shadows (Apache) Haydn Symphony 104 Minuet Sullivan Pirates of Penzance: With cat-like tread Anything! Pentatonic Copeland Appalachian Spring African and Japanese melody Folk melodies esp. Scottish Amazing Grace Javanese/ Balinese gamelan
Modal V Williams Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis Mediaeval and Renaissance dances Some pop!
Major Commonest western scale, use ‘happy’ pieces of class singing repertoire
Minor Don’t equate with ‘sad’ there are many vigorous pieces by Haydn and Bartok! Dvorak Slavonic dances closely juxtapose major and minor phrases
Non-Western scales Indian music Chinese music (any number of notes in any arrangement)
Melodic character Smooth, angular, sweeping, circular, repetitive, broad, predictable
Chords Any two or more pitches sounded together Pulse, Metre and Rhythm
Consonance Relaxing sounds Modern hymns are mostly consonant!
Structure
Ostinato (repeated Patterns) Orff Carmina Burana Reich Music for Mallet instruments Oldfield Tubular bells Peals of bells Bass riffs in pop and reggae
Music which tells a story
Prokofiev; Lieutenant Kije and Cinderella Stravinsky; Petrushka and Firebird Rossini La boutique Fantasque Kodaly Hary Janos Copeland Billy the Kid Saint Saens Danse Macabre Tubby the Tuba Peter and the Wolf
Rhythmical/ Pulsatile
Metre: Two. Four beats per bar
Stravinsky Petrushka Danse Russe Khatchaturian Sabre Dance All pop Handel Water Music African drumming Andean Folk Music e.g. Cacharpaya Stravinsky Rite of Spring: dance of adolescents
Sousa Marches Most pop Pavanes (Elizabethan) Gavotte (Baroque)
Megan Davis Oct 2000
Dissonance Harsh, tense sounds, needing, but not necessarily receiving resolution Strauss Early Schoenberg and Berg Stravinsky Rite of Spring – Dance of Adolescents Rimsky Korsakov characteristically used consonances for good characters, dissonances for evil ones. So did his pupil Stravinsky in Firebird e.g. Ronde des Princesses with Dance of King Katschei Five beats per bar
Syncopation
Holst Planets: Mars Dave Brubeck Take Five
Joplin Rags Traditional jazz
Chorus/ Ritornello/ Rondo (ABBA or ABACADA) Many pop songs Call and response African music Vivaldi Concerti
Arythmical/ non-pulsatile
Three beats per bar
Changing time signatures
Varese Poeme Electronic Stockhausen Kontakte Gregorian chant Buddhist chant Messiaen Oiseaux exotiques
Strauss Waltzes Edelweiss Viennese Landler Galliards (Elizabethan) Minuet (classical)
Stravinsky Petrushka (fight) Bartok Miraculous Mandarin
Ternary (ABA) first and last same or similar Prokofiev Classical Symphony; Gavotte Blake Snowman Walking in the air Handel Messiah Rejoice Greatly Haydn/ Mozart Minuets and trios
Irregular groupings of beats, accents Samba, rumba, calypso (Steel pans) Bartok Kodaly folk base music e.g. Mikrokosmos
Variations/ Mutations Miss Marple signature tune and incidental music Lloyd Webber Variations (cello) Britten Young persons guide Strauss Til Eulenspiegl Elizabethan Virginals music e.g. The Woodes so wilde