Encounters with Music History
Introduction
Encounters with music history can change your life.
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As a result of ongoing encounters with musicologists studying German Renaissance and Baroque
music, Romantic composer Johannes Brahms wrote several landmark works using techniques,
forms, and melodies that had little to do with the prevailing style of his era.
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As a result of his encounter with medieval polyphony from Notre Dame Cathedral, minimalist
composer Steve Reich found inspiration and affirmation for his techniques of pattern
repetition, counterpoint, continuous variation
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As a result of his encounter with ancient Greek writings on music and theater, avant garde
composer Harry Partch abandoned equal temperament and created musical systems based solely
on the overtones of a single fundamental pitch
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As a result of their encounter with early blues recordings by Robert Johnson, “Blind
Lemon” Jefferson, and others, a whole generation of 1960s musicians
began to take rock music in new directions
The nine assignments you undertake this semester provide various encounters with music
history. These encounters offer the most important means to help you achieve the goals for
this course—
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to acquire basic research skills as you gather, evaluate, and interpret primary sources
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to communicate your research in varied styles and media
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to study important western musical styles and composers (up to 1750) through reading, score
study, and aural analysis
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to develop listening skills needed for stylistic analysis
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to look at events and cultures that influenced musical styles and composers
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to discover how the past touches and influences the present
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to achieve these goals with enough rigor to prepare you for graduate school entrance exams
or music education certification exams
Further, each assignment offers a unique encounter with music history, a cluster of
activities focused on a particular historical topic. That should come as no surprise given
the striking changes that occur in musical styles, techniques, and institutions as we move
through time. Nonetheless, as the year progresses you will find that we return again and
again to the same basic tools—readings, research, discussion, paper preparation,
listening, and score study. This page looks at each tool and describes its importance,
both within the discipline of music history and for your development as musicians.
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Readings & Research Tools
Reading remains a primary avenue for learning about music history. Figuring out what
to read requires developing a knowledge of important research tools (information literacy).
Your textbook provides one important source of information, but serious scholars use a wide
variety of sources (with special emphasis on primary sources). In your Encounters you will
encounter many of the principal resource types used for music research, and most of these
require that you use the library’s print or online resources. The lists below offer
a preview of these types with explanation of each
one.
Primary & Secondary
Sources—A primary source is any resource that puts you in
direct contact with the thing you are studying, without anyone else’s interpretation,
editorial decisions, or other judgments getting in the way. Primary sources can include
musical scores (in the original version), letters and other writings by composers and
other musicians, criticism, programs, advertisements, instruments, works of art,
buildings, and so on. By contrast, in a secondary source a later scholar
interprets the facts and organizes them in a coherent narrative. Of course, depending
on the subject of your study, the same source could be either primary or secondary.
If you are studying performance practices during Beethoven’s lifetime, then
a Gramophone review of a CD recording of Beethoven’s music on pianoforte
is a secondary source. That same review becomes a primary source, however, if you are
studying changing reactions to Beethoven’s music. As you look at the sources in
each category below, bear in mind that any source could be primary or
secondary—depending on the subject of your research.
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Primary Sources
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Musical scores—Any scores, in a format as
close as possible to the composer’s original, are considered primary sources,
perhaps the most important primary sources in music research. The composer’s own
autograph score is the true primary source for any work, but a printed edition supervised
by a conscientious editor is an acceptable substitute. Be careful, though—some scores
include expression markings and fingerings added by the editor; such interpretations can
turn these scores into secondary sources.
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Score anthologies—As
the name suggests, these are collections of musical compositions. Your music history book
comes with a score anthology; so do many period histories. Other anthologies are organized
by repertory. The Liber usualis is the most comprehensive collection of Gregorian
chant melodies, and 20th century “fake books” provide valuable compilations
of jazz and pop song classics. To the extent that anthologies give you scores in a format
as close as possible to the composer’s original, they are primary sources.
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Scholarly Editions of Early
Manuscripts and Printed Sources—A surprising number of music anthologies
from the Middle Ages and Renaissance still exist, though in many cases there is only one
copy. Many of these anthologies have been microfilmed, and large music libraries possess
a large collection on microfilm or microfiche. For the rest of us, however, scholarly
editions serve a valuable purpose. In a typical scholarly edition, the editor provides
as much information as possible about physical features and condition of the book or
manuscript; a historical sketch describing how it came into existence and the various
editions it went through; a comparison of each piece with other versions of the same
piece in other sources; and commentary on each piece in the book. And, of course, the
scholarly edition transcribes every score into modern notation. If you can’t get
to the original, this is the next best thing, and it counts as a primary source.
In our Renaissance unit, we’ll look at Hewitt’s scholarly edition
of Canti B.
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Source Readings—Any
book with the phrase “source readings” in the title provides a collection
of primary sources—usually writings by composers and other musicians. These
are especially valuable because they include in a single volume writings that would
otherwise be very difficult to find and collect. Women in Music
and Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History are good examples of the genre.
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Criticism—Music
critics have been around for a long time, writing for journals, magazines, and newspapers.
Some of them have even been composers—Schumann, Berlioz, and Cage to name a few!
Regardless of authorship, criticism is a valuable primary source that allows us to
understand how a composer’s contemporaries regarded their works. However, criticism
is not a primary source when it is not written during the composer’s lifetime.
For example, in Beethoven research a review of a modern pianist playing Beethoven is
considered a secondary source.
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Documentary
Biography—A primary source goldmine! For several important
composers, scholars have assembled all of the primary documents related to a
composer’s life—birth certificate, letters, payment receipts, contracts,
newspaper articles, concert programs, and so on—into a single collection. If you
are studying Josquin, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schubert, and several others, you must
consult these significant sources.
Back to Primary & Secondary Sources
Secondary
Sources & Research Tools
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Music Encyclopedias & Dictionaries—While
these are secondary sources, they provide excellent starting points for quick answers
to questions or for serious research projects. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians is without question the place to start any research project,
especially since every article contains a bibliography that lists other important primary
and secondary sources. Old encyclopedias and dictionaries can be primary sources,
however—in a study of Renaissance music, the Dictionary of Musical Terms written
by 15th century composer Tinctoris is a primary source.
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Scholarly
Journals—Periodical publications like the Musical Quarterly or
the Journal of the American Musicological Society demonstrate the scholarly
interests, research methods, and writing style of contemporary musicologists. While
these are secondary sources, they take you to the cutting edge of
modern musicology.
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Online
Databases—How do you find out if there are scholarly journal articles
on your topic? Databases allow you to search for articles and reviews published in
scholarly journals, magazines, and other periodical publications. The most important
database for music research is The Music Index.
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Biography—Biographies
can be primary sources if they are written by a composer (autobiography) or by friends
and acquaintances of a composer (Robert Craft’s writings on Stravinsky, for
instance). Most biographies are secondary sources, however, though the really
good ones will quote primary sources at length (Thayer’s Life of
Beethoven, e.g). Biographies tend to cover both the events of a composer’s
life and the development of their musical style, with careful attention paid to the
most important compositions.
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Period Histories—These
extremely useful secondary sources provide excellent background material for the
study of any composer or style. A period history looks carefully at the important composers
and musical styles from a specific period of music history, either Middle Ages,
Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, or 20th century. Typical titles are Music
in the Baroque Era or Music of the Renaissance. Especially good are the
period histories published by W.W. Norton and Prentice Hall.
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Social Histories & Cultural
Studies—Reflecting a recent trend in musicology, these books look
not only at composers and their music but also at the social institutions that support
music and at the cultures in which music exists. Some, including Fenlon’s The
Renaissance, focus on a specific period, while others, notably Raynor’s
Social History of Music & Music and Society Since 1815 are broader
in scope. These secondary sources are especially helpful for the Music 343 paper.
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Stylistic
analysis—This specialized genre offers research tools that deal
with helpful considerations and techniques for the description and analysis of
musical styles. Representative works include histories of musical styles and
LaRue’s Guidelines for Style Analysis.
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Performance
Studies—What did early music performances sound like? What makes
Ella sound different than Lady Day? These questions fall in the realm of performance
studies. Due to the 20th century early music revival, many books are now available
that describe how music was performed in past eras of music history. For the Music
343 paper it is extremely important to know about past performance practices. Despite
their age, Dart’s Interpretation of Music and Donington’s Interpretation
of Early Music provide good overviews, but there are many current books that go into
much more detail. These are generally secondary sources, though there are primary
source treatises
written in the Renaissance and Baroque that deal precisely with these issues.
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Other Sources
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Recordings and Recorded Anthologies—You
would think that audio and video recordings would be just as important as the written
score, since they translate the score into the sounds we call music. But performance
introduces an element of interpretation that may or may not take us closer to the
composer’s intentions; therefore recorded performances of written scores are
considered secondary sources. Important exceptions include performances that
involve the composer as director, performer, or consultant, or where an improvising
musician creates the music spontaneously, as in jazz recordings. In these cases,
recordings become primary sources. Recorded anthologies can provide a valuable
collection of works that would be difficult or expensive to find individually. Examples
include the Norton Anthology of Western Music, The Best of DooWop, and
the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz.
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Web Pages—Web sites
have become increasingly important sources of information in recent years. Especially
useful are sites that make primary source materials available. However, these sources
must be used with care. Not only are they secondary sources, the majority of
music web pages merely summarize information you can find in more authoritative,
comprehensive sources. Why take leftovers when you can go to the banquet?
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Music
Magazines—These publications are rarely useful to the serious
scholar. Whether the magazine is Opera News, BBC Magazine, High Fidelity,
American Stereo Review, Downbeat, Electronic Musician, or something similar,
these are secondary sources geared towards the interests of a particular
niche market. If you are studying Bach, Handel, Mozart, or Beethoven, these magazines
usually say nothing that you can’t find in more authoritative sources. On the
other hand, if you are studying 20th century opera production techniques, the
development of commercial MIDI keyboards, the early music revival from the 1960s
to the present, or interviews with Miles Davis, then Opera
News, Electronic Musician, High Fidelity, and Downbeat (respectively) become
extremely valuable, and often primary, sources.
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Historical
fiction—Based on historical figures, but often very loose with the
facts, many of these works have found their way onto best-seller lists over the last
several decades. Barbara Lachman’s Journal of Hildegard of Bingen is
exceptional in its faithfulness to the historical record, while Peter
Shaffer’s Amadeus, though a stunning, challenging piece of theater,
stretches most of the facts to make Salieri’s guilt plausible. No matter
how well done, historical fiction can make us think, but it is not a tool for serious
musical research.
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CD-ROM
“Companions”—The primary value of these multimedia
packages lies in their ability to put side-by-side the recording, analysis of
the music, and background information on the composer, the style, and the culture.
In most cases these are secondary sources, as with the the Norton CD-ROM
Masterworks or the ECS packages we will use this year. Nonetheless, when the
composer helps to create the CD-ROM (Subotnick’s All My Hummingbirds
Have Alibis), or when many significant historical documents are included
(Dvorak’s New World Symphony), then the CD-ROM can be considered
a primary source.
Back to Primary & Secondary Sources
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Online Discussion
Scholarly work may seem like a lonely endeavor, but serious advances in music research
require the participation of a community of scholars. In the section on Course Goals,
the syllabus mentions that “our ideas and interpretations (hypotheses) must be
tested by the scholarly community.” No matter how compelling a scholar’s
arguments may be, they are not accepted as valid until that scholar’s ideas and
interpretations are evaluated and tested by other experts in the field.
To keep alive that sense of the “community of scholars,” your encounters
with music history will from time to time ask you to engage in online discussion of
selected topics. These discussions will ask you to make your best judgments on a topic
and to evaluate the judgments of other students in this course. This process of
community interaction provides an important means of coming closer to the “truth”
of the matter.
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Paper Preparation
This paper demands serious research, and serious research takes time—one-night
wonders won’t help you understand what musicologists do. It takes time to do
background research and preparation, to assemble all necessary sources, to study
primary sources carefully, and to develop your own understanding and interpretation
of those sources—to grasp their meaning as fully as possible. At the same time,
big projects work best when you break them down into small, manageable steps. Several
of your encounters with music history will guide you through some important steps in
preparing your paper. After all, your paper will be better if you spread the work out
over two or three months. Click
here for more information about the paper itself.
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Listening
Why listen?
Would anyone care about U2, the Beatles, Miles, or even N Sync if they couldn’t
listen to their music? Listening remains the most immediate means of grasping musical meaning,
and yet this very immediacy lies at the heart of an unusual paradox. We readily grasp
music’s meaning at an intuitive or emotional level, but to bring our understanding
to a conscious level and to communicate musical meaning in words can be extremely
difficult. Hearing is not enough to accomplish these goals. This task requires
active listening, and the Listening Reports that accompany each Encounter will
help you develop necessary skills.
What is style?
Active listening can mean many things. In music theory it can mean identifying
intervals, harmonic progressions, or phrase relationships. In this course it means
attempting to place a work in its historical context by listening for all its
features, especially those that contribute to our sense of its style. Style,
simply put, is the characteristic
way a musical work (or body of works) uses the elements of music—melody, texture,
rhythm, color, harmony, dynamics, form, and so on—to create a unique, identifiable
sound. We can talk about the style of a particular work, of a composer, of a school, of
a nation, or of an entire era, but in each case we listen carefully for the characteristic
elements of that
style. A well-developed sense of style enables us to determine a work’s place in
music history and to understand how music changes over time.
Listening for style features
Style listening requires that you give full attention to all elements of music.
When you first begin to listen for style features, however, it’s natural to focus on
one or two elements that are easy for you. To avoid falling into this trap, use the handy
checklist below. The list also includes questions and terms to help steer you in the
right direction. Don’t hesitate to look it up or ask if you’re uncertain what
these words mean—it’s crucial that you understand.
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Melody—high or low? moves by step or leap? wide or narrow range? regular phrases?
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Texture—thick or thin? active or static? monophonic? polyphonic
(with imitation?)? homophonic (homorhythmic or melody & accompaniment?)?
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Rhythm—beat or non-beat? meter? tempo? rhythmic patterns? how does time pass?
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Color—bright or dark? light or heavy? specific instrumental colors? register?
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Harmony—diatonic or chromatic? scale? stable or unstable? simple or complex chords?
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Dynamics—loud or soft? accents? sudden or gradual changes?
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Form—repetition? contrast? return? variation? overall shape? specific forms?
What is a Listening Report?
An integral part of each Encounter, Listening Reports help you practice listening s
kills and prepare for listening quizzes while you explore the music we study. These
reports should be written while you listen. For an example of proper format,
click here
to see a sample of Listening Report No. 1.
Listening Report Format?
For each piece you listen to:
a. identify the title and location (library and call number) of the recording
b. identify composer and title (for the entire piece and for each individual section)
c. describe style features—write 2-3 sentences on each movement or number
d. answer any questions in the Encounter
e. indicate number of times (1X, 2X, etc.) you listen to any piece required for quiz
preparation
How much listening?
The amount varies from 2 to 3.5 hours of music per report; plan on at least 2 hours.
Basic guideline—listen to one complete LP or CD (or the equivalent) for each hour assigned.
Where to listen?
You can use listening facilities in Buehler Library, or you
can use your own listening equipment.
What to listen to?
For most reports, specific pieces are required, but after that you can choose any
recordings (or live performances!) that fit the current Encounter. Start with music
from NAWM so you can follow the score while you listen. A primary goal is to experience
as much music as possible. Therefore, you can only count one playing of each
piece in your total listening time. (Exception: You can count multiple listening for
any piece that is scheduled for a listening recognition quiz.) Recordings can be found
in Buehler Library. (NAWM recordings are on Reserve there.) You can also use appropriate recordings
of your own.
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Score Study
Listening may provide more visceral pleasure than score study, but looking at scores is
just as important as listening—and for the same reasons that listening is so crucial.
In fact, listening to a performance and mentally reading through a score are not necessarily
two different things. Highly trained musicians can “hear” the lines in the score
and assemble them in their heads, and that skill is one of the ultimate goals of ear-training
and sight-singing exercises in music theory. Even if you have not yet reached that level of
sophistication in your own listening, score study remains an invaluable tool in music history.
Remember, in most cases the score is the primary source, and the score can often help
you spot style features
that are difficult to hear, aspects of texture, rhythm, or form, for instance. Further, each
score has a “look” that is just as distinctive as the sound of its music.
Sensitivity to the visual appearance of a score offers another important tool for the
analysis of musical style. Each unit exam will include score excerpts that will test your
developing ability “make sense” of written scores.
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Page created 6/12/01 by Mark Harbold—last updated 8/25/02.