music104

|  | Lecturenotes 2 Some useful reference sites Duke University Music Resource Page (great place to explore) Groves Dictionary Lots of listening and scores (Classical.com, Naxos.com, Ebrary.com) Review concepts of interval quality/scale degree quality Quiz on weds: scales The perfect 5th and 4th 5 or 4 letter names, never mix # and b. Both notes must have the same accidental except: if a b and an f is involved, one of them, but not both, will be # or b (either b-f# or bflat-f) There are 6 different 5ths/4ths in any major scale, more than any other interval The first and the 5th degrees of the scale, tonic and dominant Interval 'inversion' Practice singing 5ths and 4ths, using familiar tunes Blackbird Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra (for kicks) Other tunes that begin with 4th or 5th, ( auld lang syne, twinkle twinkle), Brief digression on dotted rhythms Brief history of the perfect 5th In medieval music As focal notes in chant early organum (12th century) practice parking ears on lower voices Perotin (early 13th century) Organum Organum Quatrum Machaut (14th century) Kyrie Treatment of 5ths in Renaissance-Romantic music, notice absence of bald 4ths 5ths Ockeghem, (1410-1497) mass Palestrina, (1525-1594) Tu est Petrus In classical baroque and romantic music, 5ths are structurally important, but you rarely hear them alone as dyads except when referring to earlier music. reference to earlier traditions as in mozart requiem, first movement parallel 5ths are streng verboten. Brahms kept a notebook of transgressions by other composers. example of parallel 5ths that would be marked wrong by Brahms (and in music 105) Beatles- Yesterday Cool 5ths/4ths Janacek Sinfonietta (1854-1928) hearing inner voices Love Me Do, Beatles You're gonna lose that girl Paul Simon, The Teacher Herbie Hancock, Watermelon Man ( source for this ) The Circle of 5ths/4ths (memorize this series) Any 7 note segment is a major scale, bounded by the 7th and 4th degrees of that scale This demonstrates the proximity of scales (number of intersecting notes). Also demonstrates unique multiplicity of intervals in scale brief description of pythagorean comma 4/3 is frequency ratio of perfect 4th in overtone series (4/3)^12 = 31.56929179344461567487 (complete circle of 4ths, c to b#) but, stack of 12 4ths should span 6 octaves, 32 times frequency of first pitch, if enharmonic equivalence is to hold (c is some octave equivalent of b#). The difference between just and equal tempered ratios is called the Pythagorean comma, .2346 of a semitone, or about 24 cents, or about a quarter of a semitone (100 cents per semitone). (The difference between 32 and 31.569 etc is about .2346 of a semitone). This is why it's so hard to tune a guitar Some music using perfect intervals Lamonte Young, Well-tuned piano The tempered tuning we use uses frequency ratios that are powers of 2, an interval x thus has the frequency ratio of 2 ^(x/12). The difference between a tempered third (2^(4/12)) and a just third 5/4, e.g. is about 14 cents, or about 1/8th of a semitone. The perfect 5th (just = 3/2, tempered = (2**(7/12)) differs by only 2 cents, or about 1/50th of a semitone. The wider the distance in the circle of 5ths, the more out of tune it will be examples of a few just intervals Perfect 5th = 3/2 perfect 4th = 4/3 major 3rd = 5/4 minor 3rd = 6/5 major 2nd = 9/8 supercollider tuning demo The fifth as a structural interval Relation between structral significance of 5ths and tetrachord identity. Importance of the 5th harmonically Tonic and Dominant relations (much more on this later) Bach fugue in F#minor mozart requiem, first movement note use of chant in opening note content of final chord The fifth frequently seems to have an external referential aspect Debussy (1862-1918) , Cathedral Engloutie |