Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- To what extent do you think the emotional content of a piece of popular music may result in great differences of opinion among listeners of different generations? Do you and your parents listen to the same music? Do your parents listen to the same kind of music their parents listened to?
tonaL center A composition written mainly in one scale is said to be in the key that bears the name of the tonic, or tonal center, of that scale. A piece in the key of F major uses the scale of F major, although in longer, more complex works, such as symphonies, the piece may use other, related keys in order to achieve variety. The tonal center of a composition in the key of F major is the tone F. We can usually expect such a com- position to begin on F, to end on it, and to return to it frequently to establish stabil- ity. Each return to F builds a sense of security in the listener, while each movement jac16871_ch09_224-253.indd 234 12/11/17 9:02 PM 235
MUSIC
away usually builds a sense of insecurity or tension. The listener perceives the tonic as the basic tone because it establishes itself as the anchor, the point of reference for all the other tones. After beginning with A in the familiar melody of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (Figure 9-4), the melody immediately moves to F as a weighty rest point. The mel- ody rises no higher than D and falls no lower than C. (For convenience, the notes are labeled above the notation in the figure.) Most listeners will sense a feeling of completeness in this brief composition as it comes to its end. But the movement in the first four bars, from A downward to C, then upward to C, passing through the tonal center F, does not suggest such completeness; rather, it prepares us to expect something more. If you sing or whistle the tune, you will see that the long tone, C, in bar 4 sets up an anticipation that the next four bars attempt to satisfy. In bars 5 through 8, the movement downward from D to C, then upward to A, and finally to the rest point at F suggests a temporary rest point. When the A sounds in bar 8, however, we are ready to move on again with a pattern that is similar to the opening passage: a movement from A to C and then downward through the tonal center, as in the opening four bars. Bar 13 is structurally repetitious of bar 5, moving from D downward, establishing firmly the tonal center F in the last note of bar 13 and the first four tones of bar 14. Again, the melody continues downward to C, but when it returns in measures 15 and 16 to the tonal center F, we have a sense of almost total stability. It is as if the melody has taken us on a metaphoric journey: showing us at the beginning where “home” is, the limits of our movement away from home, and then the pleasure and security of returning to home. FIGURE 9-4 “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The song is a Negro spiritual written by Wallace Willis some time before the emancipation of the slaves in America (1862). Willis was a freedman, a Choctaw, whose music was recorded by the Jubilee Singers, students at Fisk University, in 1909. Both Anton Dvořák and Eric Clapton are credited with incorporating the melody in their music. jac16871_ch09_224-253.indd 235 12/11/17 9:02 PM 236 ChAPTER 9 The tonal center F is home, and when the lyrics actually join the word “home” in bar 4 with the tone C, we are a bit unsettled. This is a moment of instability. We do not become settled until bar 8, and then again in bar 16, where the word “home” falls on the tonal center F, which we have already understood—simply by listening—as the real home of the composition. This composition is very simple, but also subtle, using the resources of tonality to excite our anticipations for instability and stability. PERCEPTION KEY “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” 1. What is the proportion of tonic notes (F) to the rest of the notes in the composi- tion? Can you make any judgments about the capacity of the piece to produce and release tension in the listener on the basis of the recurrence of F?