Week 13 discuss
Week 13 discuss
1. How do you listen when there is no melody?
For myself, I believe that I create a melody where there is none. In a situation as simple as a conversation, the melody is the driving force or “reason” for a composition. This reason can simply be suggested as the plot or point of the conversation. In music, even with complex and atonic compositions such as Stravinsky, it is clearly possible to listen for the repetition of a phrase or tonal quality that may help one forward through the piece of music. The crescendo and decrescendo of the music, the contrapuntal nature of complex compositions, even the division of an orchestra into sectional pieces of a song are all methodology in which to create the climax, a climax found to be stronger under the influence of a melody that does not exist until discovered. Beauty is in the “ears” of the beholder.
2. Why did Schoenberg abandon tonality and develop serialism?
With the introduction of the new age of music of his time came the “emancipation” of tonality and dissonance. Schoenberg developed the “twelve-tone” system to bring order to what was leading to be chaos. For Schoenberg, realized by most of the world later, the unity provided by serialism was the purpose and meaning of what romantics had so eagerly sought after.
1. How do you listen when there is no melody?
For myself, I believe that I create a melody where there is none. In a situation as simple as a conversation, the melody is the driving force or “reason” for a composition. This reason can simply be suggested as the plot or point of the conversation. In music, even with complex and atonic compositions such as Stravinsky, it is clearly possible to listen for the repetition of a phrase or tonal quality that may help one forward through the piece of music. The crescendo and decrescendo of the music, the contrapuntal nature of complex compositions, even the division of an orchestra into sectional pieces of a song are all methodology in which to create the climax, a climax found to be stronger under the influence of a melody that does not exist until discovered. Beauty is in the “ears” of the beholder.
2. Why did Schoenberg abandon tonality and develop serialism?
With the introduction of the new age of music of his time came the “emancipation” of tonality and dissonance. Schoenberg developed the “twelve-tone” system to bring order to what was leading to be chaos. For Schoenberg, realized by most of the world later, the unity provided by serialism was the purpose and meaning of what romantics had so eagerly sought after.