MUSIC 344
Encounters with Music History
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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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344 Syllabus
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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344 Syllabus
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.
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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 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 344 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 344 paper it is extremely important to know about past performance
practices. These are generally secondary sources, though there are
primary source treatises 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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344 Syllabus
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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344 Syllabus
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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Melodyhigh or low? moves by step or leap? wide or narrow range?
regular phrases?
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Texturethick or thin? active or static? monophonic? polyphonic (with
imitation?)? homophonic (homorhythmic or melody & accompaniment?)?
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Rhythmbeat or non-beat? meter? tempo? rhythmic patterns? how does
time pass?
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Colorbright or dark? light or heavy? specific instrumental colors?
register?
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Harmonydiatonic or chromatic? scale? stable or unstable? simple
or complex chords?
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Dynamicsloud or soft? accents? sudden or gradual changes?
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Formrepetition? contrast? return? variation? overall shape? specific
forms?
What is a Listening Report?
An integral part of each Encounter, Listening Reports help you practice
listening skills 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 Irion 202, at the Media Center
(CSTC 109), 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.) Recording
can be found in Irion 202 or the Media Center (CSTC 109). (NAWM recordings
are on Reserve in both locations.) 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 2/06/01.