Summary Of How We Listen By Aaron Copland
From the reading “How We Listen”, I found the ideas that Aaron Copland presented are interesting. I was entreated by his explanation of listening to music. There are three layers in listening to music, they are the sensuous plane, expressive plane, and the sheerly musical plane. I found myself mostly in the expressive plane, but lack of the awareness of listening music through a more technical mean.
Music is a form an expression, it cannot be defined by an exact word or description. Certainly, there is background information about how and why a specific piece of music is composed, but why should I describe the music by a definite word? Before I read this article, I am a fan of Tschaikovsky, his romantic music with different melodic lines really …show more content…
I was floating myself with the expressive of the music, but lack of being critical of the performance. The melodies and rhythms are often the lines that I followed the most because it mostly will stick in my head for a long while. At the same time, I also lack conscious to identify harmony and tone color that is being used in the piece. Listening to music is not only about enjoying the music itself, discovering the beauty and meaning behind each piece by my interpretation, but it also about learning and critique the music. How the harmony, dynamic and timbre structure the piece in a certain way? How does harmony make this piece convey a certain emotion? How do all these musical techniques make this piece alive? I believe this is also the true way to learn music, to understand the different eras of classical music. The Baroque Age, Classicism Age, Romantic Age and Modern Age each uses a different technique in composition. For example, Baroque Age has a signature of irregular music, many music definitions were born at that age. Classicism is more about the beauty of structure, while Romantic is about expressing the feeling. Modern Age music is a step out from Classicism and Romanism, is not about structure nor harmony, is more about unique traits and identity. Pieces from modern age often do not sound
Music is a form an expression, it cannot be defined by an exact word or description. Certainly, there is background information about how and why a specific piece of music is composed, but why should I describe the music by a definite word? Before I read this article, I am a fan of Tschaikovsky, his romantic music with different melodic lines really …show more content…
I was floating myself with the expressive of the music, but lack of being critical of the performance. The melodies and rhythms are often the lines that I followed the most because it mostly will stick in my head for a long while. At the same time, I also lack conscious to identify harmony and tone color that is being used in the piece. Listening to music is not only about enjoying the music itself, discovering the beauty and meaning behind each piece by my interpretation, but it also about learning and critique the music. How the harmony, dynamic and timbre structure the piece in a certain way? How does harmony make this piece convey a certain emotion? How do all these musical techniques make this piece alive? I believe this is also the true way to learn music, to understand the different eras of classical music. The Baroque Age, Classicism Age, Romantic Age and Modern Age each uses a different technique in composition. For example, Baroque Age has a signature of irregular music, many music definitions were born at that age. Classicism is more about the beauty of structure, while Romantic is about expressing the feeling. Modern Age music is a step out from Classicism and Romanism, is not about structure nor harmony, is more about unique traits and identity. Pieces from modern age often do not sound