HUMA 118-M06 Journal - Music, Movement and Memory
Instructions
Please choose ONE of the two prompts to answer. You are not required to address both.
You may select based on your own interest; all that is asked is that you engage your mind and respond with insight and complete thought. Tip: The “Featured Listening” sections in your textbook may help you to apply musical terms accurately as you analyze and reflect on these prompts.
Prompt 1 (Historical):
Claude Debussy originally wrote his prelude, “La Cathédrale engloutie” (The Engulfed Cathedral) for piano. Prepare to answer the questions below by completing the following steps:
Review the story (Links to an external site.) on which Debussy’s piece is based.
Now listen to a recording of Debussy’s “La Cathédrale engloutie” and reflect on his depiction of the engulfed cathedral with reactive visualizer.
Next, without sharing the story it is based on: have a friend or family member listen to this piece .
Respond to the following two prompts:
Your Impression:
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Did Debussy’s music give you the impression of the cathedral emerging from and then sinking back into the water?
How would you describe the sound of the water as Debussy put it to music?
What aspects of the music helped you imagine the old tale?
Your friend’s or family member’s impression:
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Write a short explanation of their response to the piece.
Did another kind of story come across?
What mood was communicated?
Prompt 2 (Exposing Music’s Value in Unfamiliar Works):
Select two musical pieces from your course study to date that you had never heard before, and that left a memorable impression on you, to compare. Analyze and report on their musical characteristics.
Then answer the following questions:
Why did you select each piece for this comparison? What made each memorable?
How are the characteristics of these pieces similar or different?
Have these compositions/pieces influenced you to explore other types of music in what you listen to daily?
Select two musical pieces from your course study to date that you had never heard before, and that left a memorable impression on you, to compare. Analyze and report on their musical characteristics.
Erlkoning by Franz Schubert
I really loved this piece and I will definitely continue listening to it even after this class. I could feel the tense mood of the piece through the playing of the piano and singing of the vocalists. Some aspects that stood out to me include the variation of dynamics from piano all the way to forte. When the king is trying to woo the boy, the player plays very softly but when the boy is complaining to his father the pianist plays very loudly. The voices also help to distinguish between the characters in the song. The father comes in with a deeper voice whilst the son sings in tenor. The texture of the music is mostly polyphonic but I really loved it even though I tend to be drawn to the homophonic textured pieces. Listening to this piece was almost like watching a movie, I could visualize the chase and at the end when the pianist ends suddenly it gave a sense of death. The piece is a through composed song and very brief.
The Moldau by Bedrich Smetana
This is a piece about the flow of the river Moldau. The piece starts with the flutes and gradually builds up adding other instruments which gives it such beautifully rich tone color. Smetana was able to achieve all these things by the use of different instruments in the piece. I could almost see myself going along with the river all the way to the end of its trail. He used the triangle to symbolize wedding bells that signified the river passing by a wedding, he used horns to symbolize reaching the city. The use of variation in dynamics is also very noticeable in the piece, there are dramatic shifts in dynamics throughout the piece. The rhythm of the music also changes from slow to fast back to slow and so forth. The music is lively at certain points and calm at others. There is also some form of repetition in the piece which shows that the piece is in ternary form.
Then answer the following questions:
1. Why did you select each piece for this comparison? What made each memorable?
I chose these pieces because they really stood out to me. I even wished that someone had introduced me to such music earlier. This music puts you in the middle of the scene because of the use of impressionism and expressivity. I felt like I was right there watching the activities as if they were happening in real life.
I selected the two pieces for comparison because there are some similar characteristics of music in the compositions. Erkloning is memorable because of the story line and the dramatization via use of piano and voice. The Moldau was memorable because of use of repetitive tunes that were easy for me to remember.
2. How are the characteristics of these pieces similar or different?
The two pieces are similar because they both use a lot of impressionism and they use a lot of dramatic dynamics. Another similarity is that they both end in a sudden manner.
The pieces are different because Erkloning is a vocal piece whilst The Moldau is instrumental. Another difference is the instrumentation. Moldau uses an orchestra but Erkloning uses the piano only.
3. Have these compositions/pieces influenced you to explore other types of music in what you listen to daily?
Yes. I am now listening to more classical pieces. My ears have been exposed to beautiful music thanks to this class.
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