Carolyn Wilson Digital Collections (Lipscomb Univ.)
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The Babbler Volume 89 (2009)
Get PDFThe 2009-2009 volume Lipscomb University\u27s The Babbler student newspaper, which ran from September 2009–December 2009. It had 9 issues. This was the last volume of The Babbler before it was discontinued.https://digitalcollections.lipscomb.edu/bab/1073/thumbnail.jp
Bridging Common Practice and the Twentieth Century- Cadences in Prokofiev\u27s Piano Sonatas
Get PDFIn the typical freshman-sophomore theory sequence, space is a precious commodity. This is especially true in degree plans where more advanced courses are available to students only on an elective basis. The desire of theory instructors to incorporate a broad range of musical styles into these two years must always be measured against the need to give students a strong grounding in tonal music of the common-practice era. A fundamental curricular dilemma is that the students, while steeped in the routines of classical tonality in theory classes, are at the same time studying and performing a much wider variety of music in applied lessons and ensembles. While we may not be able to make room for the independent coverage of many different styles, taking the opportunity to discuss elements of those styles within the context of traditional tonal practice can help students begin to develop an understanding of the connections, as well as the discontinuities, among different approaches to tonal composition
Teaching Non-Functional Tonality - A Part-Writing Approach
Get PDFOver the past two decades, many theorists have been inspired by the work of Hugo Riemann, applying a modern transformational approach that is commonly referred to as neo-Riemannian theory. This work seeks to explain chord progressions in what will be referred to here as non-functional tonality: music with a harmonic language that is tertian, but which is not reliant on fundamental bass progressions for its syntax. While the initial work by David Lewin has sparked an explosion of research, little of this research has been in the area of pedagogy. One notable exception is Nora Engebretsen and Per F. Broman\u27s 2007 article in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, which outlines and defends an introduction to neo-Riemannian theory within the context of an undergraduate theory curriculum. This article is similar in many ways, in that it also outlines an approach to introducing concepts associated with neo-Riemannian theory in an undergraduate theory curriculum, but the focus here will be on a graduated series of part-writing exercises governed by parsimonious voice leading rather than on the transformational analysis of triadic progressions. Further, while Engebretsen and Broman\u27s approach to analysis involves the mastery of three different neo-Riemannian transformations, Tonnetz representation, binary generated cycles, and ternary generated cycles, this article will suggest an alternative approach to analysis that requires the mastery of fewer key concepts, and thus can be covered in a shorter span of time. Finally, while Engebretsen and Broman\u27s approach dealt exclusively with major and minor triads, this article advocates an approach that also includes dissonant triads as well as seventh chords, and thus is applicable to a much wider range of musical contexts
The Idea & Value of Book - A Comparative Review of Sound in Motion - A Performer\u27s Guide to Greater Musical Expression by David McGill & Deepening Musical Performance through Movement - The Theory and Practice of Embodied Interpretation by Alexandra
No full textI would like to begin with a short, personal story. As a music major, I spotted a German book called Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, the enticing title of which translates as The Musical Masterpiece. Intrigued, I showed this library book to my tutor, who advised me to leave it alone. Schenker is toxic were his precise words. To a youngster of the post 1968 era, a forbidden idea just made it all the more alluring, and so I discovered what few of my generation seemed to be being taught. Admittedly, piano studies involved a venerable lineage through Heinrich Neuhaus of Moscow, who had taught many of the great teachers teaching my generation, back through such as Liszt and Czerny, all the way to Ludwig van Beethoven himself, who seemed to have more or less invented everything that mattered in piano virtuosity. Into the conceptual void strode Dr. Schenker, opining in his evocative Gothic script about how music fits together, so that you could think about it and know what it was you were thinking about. I sensed, at that moment, that I had been allowed at last to read, and not only hear, some of the secret knowledge of classical music that otherwise could be garnered only somehow intuitively, and for me only half-understood, in the studio
The Evolution of a Styles Simulation Course for Graduate Theory Students
Get PDFIn the teaching of collegiate music theory the accessibility to a wide range of literature afforded by anthology collections has in recent years shifted the pendulum away from such writing skills courses as counterpoint, stylistic simulation, or composition toward an emphasis on purely analytical techniques. Indeed, the only compositional decisions required of most current graduate theory majors are the pushing around of a few white notes in two-voice species studies. Therefore, when the Eastman School of Music decided to inaugurate a master\u27s degree in Music Theory Pedagogy some years ago, it recognized that the teaching of undergraduate theory necessitated the acquisition of correctional pedagogical tools that went beyond the mere detection of parallel fifths in partwriting assignments. For more creative student projects, such as melody harmonization, prospective teachers not only needed the knowledge and ability to state whether this choice or that choice was better and why it was better, but also the compositional skills to demonstrate other options that might produce more musical results. Toward this end the faculty initiated a new one-semester course entitled Advanced Harmony and Composition, whose content was designed to rectify two deficiencies in the department\u27s then current graduate offerings. This seminar essentially represented the resurrection of a styles practicum, in which students attempted to simulate characteristics of various historical periods or even specific composers through the assignment of compositional exercises and projects. It also explored the realms of harmony and tonal design during the late 19th century, an era that until recently has been unduly neglected
A Pedagogical Approach to Minor Pentatonic Riffs in Rock Music
Get PDFThe college teacher of rock music is fortunate to have excellent pedagogical contributions covering topics such as form, melody, and harmony. One central feature of rock music that has yet to receive pedagogical treatment is the riff, which J. Bradford Robinson defines as follows: In jazz, blues, and popular music, a short melodic ostinato... The blues-influenced rock bands of the late 1960s and 70s and subsequent heavy metal groups often used riffs [to] confirm the tonic throughout the verses... Riffs were also an integral part of funk and other forms of dance music
Mapping Voice Leading from Four through Forty Voices- A Tool for Pedagogy
Get PDFThis article describes a tool for exploring voice-leading options in pre-tonal and tonal harmonic contexts: the voice-leading map. Like many tools, voice-leading maps may be adapted for a number of different uses and applied to a variety of materials. In order to convey something of this multivalence, the description that follows will be divided into three sections: (1) an introduction to maps using 4-voice examples, such as any student might encounter in first- and second-year theory; (2) an application of maps to 8-voice compositional exercises in a late 16th-century style; and (3) a brief exposition of the kind of analytical insights that maps afford, using a 12-voice example by Palestrina and a 40-voice example by Tallis
Writ in remembrance more than things long past - Cadential Relationships in Fauré\u27s Mirages, op. 113
No full textFauré\u27s musical language changed significantly during his long composing career. Towards the end of his life, his works are characterised by sparser textures and simpler sonorities. Example 1 illustrates with a reduction of the opening phrase of Danseuse in Mirages, op. 113.1 The stark simplicity - to the point of austerity - of the music is striking and almost unsettling, particularly to those familiar with Fauré\u27s chromatic mid-period works like La Bonne Chanson, op. 61. Unease and frustration frequently accompany analytic forays into this repertoire. Unease arises from a lack of certainty concerning how to interpret this simple yet enormously expressive music; frustration develops as a consequence of realizing that a verbal articulation of the music\u27s expressive eloquence is stymied by Fauré\u27s musical economy. The music continues to speak, but our ability to put our understanding of its communication into words seems to have been lost to us