Meters
• Simple meter:
• Duple, Triple, Quadruple
• Compound meters:
• Sextuple = Compound Duple
• 6 beats BUT with accents on 1 & 4
• Compound Triple
• 9 beats BUT with accents on 1 & 4 & 7
Harmony
• simultaneous happenings in music
• Vertical space (depth)
• What happens underneath the melody
• like the illusion of perspective or depth in
painting
• AKA: movement and relationship of
intervals and chords
Harmony
• Intervals, distance between any two tones
• Horizontal--melodic
• Vertical--harmonic
• Scale, collection of intervals
• Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do
• Chord, combination of 3 or more tones
(usually from the scale)
• Do/mi/sol or 1/3/5 = major chord
Harmonic behavior
• Tonic, “do” of the scale
• the chord built with “do” as the root
• “Aka” “keynote”
• greatest gravitational pull
• Chords exhibit in a hierarchy, with the tonic at the
top
• Major tonality (tonic is a major chord)
• Minor tonality (tonic is a minor chord)
• dissonance, chords that sound unstable
• Create motion (often toward tonic)
• consonance, stable, at rest
FORM
• Form is defined by repetition and
contrast
• Repetition (A A)
• Contrast (A B A)
• Variation (A A1 A2 ...)
FORM
• What is the form of “Twinkle, Twinkle
Little Star?
• ABBA
• What is the form of “Goodbye, Old
paint?”
• ABA
NAMES OF BASIC FORMS
• BINARY ( A vs. B)
• Greensleeves (variation & binary)
• A (a a1)
A1 (a a1)
B (b b1)
• TERNARY (A B A)
• Goodbye Old Paint
• A
B
A
• STROPHIC (many verses sung to
the same music)
• “Yesterday” (Beatles)
• “Yesterday all my troubles … (A)
• “Suddenly there’s a shadow … (A)
Building Blocks of Form
• Theme
• A melodic idea used as a building block of
form.
• Thematic development: elaborating or
varying a musical idea
• Example of thematic development:
Beethoven’s fifth symphony
Texture
• the interaction of musical lines (musical fabric)
• 1. Monophony/monophonic single line
• Gregorian chant
• Native American traditional music
• 2. polyphony -more than one melody together
• Imitation: a common form of polyphony
• Canon & round (“Row, row, row your boat”)
• Rimsky Korsakov Capriccio Espagnol
• 3. homophony- one melody with supporting
harmony
• Shall We Gather at the River
Texture
• What texture are these examples?
• Stravinsky
• Mozart Piano Concerto
• Hungarian traditional song
• Billings, “Chester”
DYNAMICS
• Relative Quietness or Loudness
Piano
p
Forte
f
(quiet)
(loud)
DYNAMICS
• The relative gradation scale:
Pianissimo Piano mezzo-piano mezzo-forte forte fortissimo
pp
p
mp
(quieter)
• decrescendo-getting quieter
• crescendo-getting louder
mf
f
ff
(louder)
TEMPO
• Speed of the pulse
• SLOW
adagio
Fast
presto
TIMBRE
Properties of Sound
• Pitch
• Duration
• Volume
• Timbre
GENRE
• The category or type of music
• Often related to performing forces