PART 1: VIDEO INTRO

If you heard someone say, "I went to the carwash today,  to…. " you could finish their sentence without hesitation.  Their comment set up an expectation that leads to a logical conclusion: "...to get my car washed."  But if they said, "I went to the carwash today, to... get some mashed potatoes!" you'd probably be pretty stunned.  Musical logic is exactly like the logic of speech in which the speaker sets up expectations in the mind of the listener--expectations which may or may not be met. Here's an example. Listen to this musical phrase, which, for argument's sake, will be the equivalent of "I went to the carwash today, to..."

What you heard above was an incomplete phrase, a phrase without a concluding harmony--without the last chord, but with expectation of it. Try this phrase now, which completes the thought logically with a full cadence:

Now listen to this phrase, and see if you don't feel it's like getting mashed potatoes at a carwash!

The musical term for what you heard above is a "deceptive cadence"-- and that it surely is, because you were deceived in your expectations. Technically, the deceptive cadence occurs at approximately the 10-second mark in the RealAudio example--you can watch the time-counter in the lower right corner of the Player to follow along.  Mozart proceeds to play upon the deception of that cadence by adding a string of three more surprising harmonic progressions after that (at 16", 19" and 22" respectively,) which keep the listener suspended in a state of expectancy.  See if you don't sense this when you listen to the example.

In the three examples above you first had a harmony which felt incomplete, then another which felt complete, and finally one which took a strange twist. All three examples show that harmony is something we have an innate sense for--it has a logic that we can understand instinctively.

Pitches can be sounded horizontally, as in melody, or vertically, as in harmony. Any time you have two or more pitches sounding simultaneously you have harmony. Harmonies can be consonant (implying rest, repose, or finality), or dissonant (implying tension, or movement toward a goal).

The concept of what constitutes a consonance or dissonance is not a fixed one and has in fact changed over time.  I'll give you two examples of how relative and changeable consonance and dissonance can be.

 

Lots of Rock songs make use of the second and the major seventh in a 'consonant' context, meaning that they do not need to be resolved.  And Rock music has even evolved a kind of cliche of ending a song on a major seventh, something that would have been unthinkable even 75 years ago!

Ideas of consonance and dissonance are also not shared between cultures.  In Eastern cultures (Chinese, for example) the systems of harmony as well as tuning, and the instruments used are all quite different from what has evolved in the West. Because of this, non-Western music can sound dissonant, strident, or out-of-tune to listeners unaccustomed to it.

So consonance and dissonance have changed over time, and are different from culture to culture. The writer and composer Ernst Toch put it well: he described the quality of consonance and dissonance as relative, the way a chilly wind in Florida would seem like a tropical breeze in Alaska!

SCALE, MODE, KEY, TONALITY

Scales are an ordered succession of pitches that provide the basic underlying structure for the melody and harmony of a piece. You may remember the embedded scale examples in the first lecture of this course. These were just a few examples of the many scales that are available to composers.

The Major mode is formed by assembling notes in the following pattern:
MAIN NOTE—Whole step—Whole step—Half step—Whole step—Whole step—Whole step—Half step

The Minor mode is formed by assembling notes in this pattern:
MAIN NOTE—Whole step—Half step--Whole step-Whole step—Half step—Whole step—Whole step

You can try both of these scale patterns out at a piano, starting on any note you want. In this way you’ll see how scales can be generated in any key (for example, a C Major scale starts on C, a D Major scale starts on D, c minor scale starting on C, d minor scale starting on d, etc.) Here is an example of both a major and minor scale.

Just to give you a quick idea of the differences in character, listen to them in context. Ex.11 is Major mode, while Ex. 12 is Minor:

In the 17^th and 18^th centuries specific keys had very specific emotional associations and composers would choose keys in order to exploit this. For example, the key of F (a natural key for horns, which were used for the hunt) was often chosen for pieces with a pastoral or outdoor flavor. The key of c minor was associated with grandeur and solemnity.

Scales are hierarchical, with each tone having a certain rank in the overall pecking order. The beginning note of the scale (called the "tonic") is the most important note of the scale because your ear tends to gravitate toward it. The tonic is sometimes called the "home" pitch and there is definitely a sense of the homing instinct in all of us—even those who think they’re not innately musical. If you don’t believe me, listen to this example and see if it doesn’t drive you crazy!

What you picked up on in the above example is the sense of "tonality." Your ear gravitated to a certain pitch as a logical conclusion to what you had heard. You had a sense that a specific note (i.e., the "tonic") represented "home base" and you were waiting to here this:

The fifth note of the scale (called the "dominant") is next in importance in the hierarchy of a key and is usually followed by the tonic. Now listen to the full cadence (Ex. 15) and contrast it with a deceptive cadence (Ex. 16):

Deceptive cadences are about as easy to locate as a daisy in a summer field.  Try to find a couple in the music you like to listen to.  There is one, for example, in the Suzanne Vega song, Luka.

The fourth is called the "subdominant," while the seventh note is the "leading tone" (because it has a strong tendency to lead to the tonic). Listen to what happens when the leading tone is not followed by the tonic:

Again, you were expecting a resolution because the leading tone tends to draw the ear to the following tonic pitch.

Once again, you can see how music is like a language with its own grammar and syntax that you instinctively pick up.

?  Do you have a question about the movement of the Dominant to the Tonic, and the Leading Tone to the Tonic?  Do these concepts feel a bit too abstract to you?  Then click here to hear more about it.

 

TEXTURE-

Texture refers to the blend of melodies, harmonies, timbres and compositional techniques in a piece of music. (Timbre is the particularly distinct quality of an instrument’s tone.) Some of the textures we'll be looking at include:

• monophony (one voice or pitch at a time)

• homophony (melody and accompaniment)

• polyphony (several melodies going at the same time, or the same melody superimposed upon itself).

Monophony really needs no further explanation from what is given in the textbook--it is a single line.

Homophony as a term is used in two ways:

1. to refer to chordal pieces such as hymns, which you might sing at church (where all voices move in the same rhythm together)
2. to refer to pieces with a melodic line prominent over an accompaniment. A lot of rock and folk music is homophonic in this sense (think of a voice over some strummed chords). Mozart and Haydn also wrote in a homophonic style, meaning that they featured a melody over a simple accompaniment.

As for Polyphony—this is where things get really interesting! As a harpsichordist I'm partial to this type of music—some of the most important music ever written for harpsichord was written in the polyphonic style. Polyphony is also sometimes called counterpoint, and there are two types: non-imitative and imitative.  Non-imitative counterpoint means that two dissimilar melodies are going on at the same time (kind of like when two people speak at once).  In imitative polyphony, which was cultivated during the Baroque era, all parts use the same melody, but staggered, and varied.

Polyphony isn’t only found in the music of Bach or Handel. You can find a superb example of polyphony in the last number (during the screen credits) of Allan Meckler's score to Pocahontas, a movie I was introduced to by my kids! This song uses "non-imitative counterpoint," meaning that it takes two separate and distinct lines and twines them together. First you hear the male singer introduce the main melody; then the female singer introduces a second, distinct melody. By the time they start to sing together, if you listen carefully you realize that they are each singing their own melody—and it works perfectly when both melodies are sung at the same time. If you've got the movie, go ahead and cue it up to the end-- see if you can hear the counterpoint.

By contrast, we have "imitative counterpoint" in the canon, "Freres Jacques" which we all learned as kids. In this famous song each of the singers in the piece sings the same melody (unlike the example above when there were two different melodies sung.)  In a canon (also called a round) one voice starts the melody; after a prescribed period of time the next voice begins to sing the same melody; after a further period another voice may begin singing the melody, and so on, staggering the entrances of the melody. In canon, the entire piece is generated by that one melody and any harmonies are only a result of the melody staggered between the voices.

In the Two Part Inventions by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) we have a polyphony that is kind of a free blending of imitative and non-imitative. It’s a lot like canon because it uses the same idea of staggering a melody, but it is not as strict as a canon because it contains other material as well. Here are three excerpts from the Two Part Invention in d minor: In Ex. 18 we have a bit of the right hand; Ex. 19 is a bit of the left hand; and Ex. 20 is both hands together.

One interesting feature of much polyphonic music is the use of "inversion."  An inversion means what it implies: a melody is turned upside down note for note, interval by interval, so that, for instance, every pitch that went up by a third, will now go down by a third. You generate a completely new entity from the original, but there is a mirrored kinship between the two. It’s sort of like the reflection of the mountain in the lake.

The Two Part Inventions are clever pieces, but they are child’s play compared to some of the polyphonic tricks that Bach pulled off in his other works. One of the most eye-popping feats in all of polyphony was a piece written by Bach called The Musical Offering. This work is a compendium of all sorts of polyphonic miracles including inversion, augmentation (doubling all the note values), diminution (halving all the notes values), and running melodies backwards!  Bach was such a master of polyphony that some people believe he must have had a mathematical mind. How else, they reason, could he have thought up such complicated music which works so naturally and effortlessly!  We'll spend some time with this remarkable piece when we study Bach later.

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