The Consort of Music -Ohime, se tanto amate
This is really quite a comic operatic piece of music. You have the lovely opening call and response between the men and the women that really extenuates the pitch difference and is really quite pleasing to the ears. It tells a story pretty much entirely through the medium of vocal emotion (along side a bit of acting). There is a lovely pedal that gets held and then striped away. There is lovely use of striping away and layering the separate harmonies trough out the piece. Half way through there is a distinct change in pace and tone of the piece. This is all used to represent the emotions and events taking place on the stage in front of an audience. The piece starts off very much like a kind of conversation split by the sexes. It shows the noticing of one another and then it develops into a courtship ritual. The style of performance and music is characteristic of the era. It's comic and yet in its own way really rather serious and is designed to appeal to the paying upper classes of the period. Throughout the piece we hear the continuous repetition of a chorus of sorts. There is lots of use of perfect cadences finish off phrases in a style also common to the period.
Tavener -The Lamb
This comes under the style of sacred coral music that would have been sung by church and monastery quires. It is homophonic with wavering crescendos and diminuendos that gives it it's creepy feel. It is often in a perfect harmony which is a typical signature of the period it is supposed to suit/earlier pieces of music (as this is actually a 20th century composition). It has repeated themes that come around now and then. There are odd uses of monophonic texture and unison, but most is four part harmony. It is a mixed quire and so has the whole variety that male and female voices can give. Tavener was a British 20th century composer who is famous for his writing of religious music.
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Shostakovich -String Quartet No. 8
First section
As this is a standard string quartet format we get the two violins, a viola and a cello. The opening section if this piece starts very much like a round were each instrument comes in after the last by a set amount but plays the same thing. Rather like an eco that builds up. Because it starts as a round it produces some rather interesting harmonies and clashes. This is an example of repetition. It appears to be in C minor but it has a huge amount of accidentals making it sound rather dissonant. It is an experimental piece of music that plays around with ideas and artistic licence. It is not very pacey and tends to veer towards a dreamy feeling using drowns and long, low resonate notes. It plays around with volume for emotional effect and works a lot around layering. Again the beginning being a good example. The tune unlike most popular tunes is not memorable or catchy, but then it is not supposed to be. It has odd and unexpected jumps and is tonally often very chromatic. There is not much obvious repetition though repetition is there.
As this is a standard string quartet format we get the two violins, a viola and a cello. The opening section if this piece starts very much like a round were each instrument comes in after the last by a set amount but plays the same thing. Rather like an eco that builds up. Because it starts as a round it produces some rather interesting harmonies and clashes. This is an example of repetition. It appears to be in C minor but it has a huge amount of accidentals making it sound rather dissonant. It is an experimental piece of music that plays around with ideas and artistic licence. It is not very pacey and tends to veer towards a dreamy feeling using drowns and long, low resonate notes. It plays around with volume for emotional effect and works a lot around layering. Again the beginning being a good example. The tune unlike most popular tunes is not memorable or catchy, but then it is not supposed to be. It has odd and unexpected jumps and is tonally often very chromatic. There is not much obvious repetition though repetition is there.
Poulenc -Sonata for Horn, Trombone and Trumpet
This is a brass trio piece that uses some melody and accompaniment, call and answer and some unison. It also has a very clear jump into the keys miner which is used as the transition into a new section. There is a lot of use of arpeggios as accompaniment. The piece has some very obvious use of trills, pauses, accelerandos, tempo changes, silence etc. in this piece we also hear good use of volume change and difference e.g. crescendos and diminuendos. As the piece is in a sonata form we expect there to be three sections: a exposition, a development and a recapitulation. We can hear the changes between sections as they are deliberately not subtle.
Bach, Brandenburg Concerto 4, first movement
Through out the piece we can hear that the tune jumps around between the different sections but resides, as one would expect, mainly in the string and wood wind sections. The tune starts off with the flutes and then goes to the violins. This classical use of woodwind and strings as your tune instruments is very much a thing of the era. Of course there is no brass or percussion (excluding harpsichord). It has a lot of polyphonic runs, but also uses some melody and accompaniment elements. As it is the first movement of a concerto one would expect, as is apparent, that it would be fast and strong with a good sense of rhythm. It is in a steady 3/4 time and has a happy feel about it except for sections that are very clearly minor.
Mozart, Piano Sonata in B flat major
The piece is in 4/4 time and uses a lot of crochets, quavers and semiquavers. Being a sonata it is structured with and exposition (theme 1, then 2 which is usually in a different key), followed by a development in which the original tunes are developed into more complicated pieces. Then the third part of the sonata is the recapitulation which is quite literally a recap of the exposition except that it does not usually change key at the end of the second theme. After or in the final bars of the recapitulation there will often be a coda to finish the piece. Repetition and developed repetition is often used in these pieces as an effective structural element. or things like inversion (where a bar is repeated but effectively turned upside down/reflected on a horizontal plain) or reflection (where a bar is repeated but in reverse/reflected in a vertical plain). Scalic movement and arpeggiated movement is another common feature of this piece. This style also uses things like parallel movement (where the parts in both hands move in the same direction with the same tonal difference between them) and contrary movement (where the two parts in both hands move in opposite directions).