understanding the fundamentals of music, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Understanding the
Fundamentals of Music
Part I
Professor Robert Greenberg
T
HE
T
EACHING
C
OMPANY
®
Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
San Francisco Performances
Robert Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1954 and has lived in the San Francisco Bay area since
1978. He received a B.A. in music, magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976, where his principal
teachers were Edward Cone, Daniel Werts, and Carlton Gamer in composition; Claudio Spies and Paul Lansky in
analysis; and Jerry Kuderna in piano. In 1984, he received a Ph.D. in music composition, with distinction, from the
University of California, Berkeley, where his principal teachers were Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson in
composition and Richard Felciano in analysis.
He has composed more than 45 works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles. His works have been
performed in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy, and the
Netherlands, where the Amsterdam Concertgebouw performed his
Child’s Play
for String Quartet. His numerous
honors include three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and three Meet-the-Composer Grants. Recent
commissions have come from the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress, the Alexander String
Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, San Francisco Performances, the Strata Ensemble, and the
XTET ensemble.
Professor Greenberg is a board member and an artistic director of COMPOSERS, INC., a composers’
collective/production organization based in San Francisco. His music is published by Fallen Leaf Press and
CPP/Belwin and is recorded on the Innova label. He has performed, taught, and lectured extensively across North
America and Europe. He is currently music-historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances, where he has
lectured and performed since 1994, and resident composer and music historian to National Public Radio’s
“Weekend All Things Considered.” He has served on the faculties of the University of California at Berkeley,
California State University at Hayward, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he chaired the
Department of Music, History and Literature from 1989–2001 and served as the Director of the Adult Extension
Division from 1991–1996.
Professor Greenberg has lectured for some of the most prestigious musical and arts organizations in the United
States, including the San Francisco Symphony (where, for 10 years, he was host and lecturer for the symphony’s
nationally acclaimed “Discovery Series”), the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Van Cliburn Foundation,
and the Chautauqua Institute. He is a sought-after lecturer for businesses and business schools, speaking at such
diverse organizations as the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco and the University of Chicago Graduate School
of Business, and has been profiled in various major publications, including the
Wall Street Journal
,
Inc
. magazine,
and the London
Times
.
©2007 The Teaching Company
i
Table of Contents
Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
Part I
Professor Biography
............................................................................................i
Course Scope
.......................................................................................................1
Lecture One
The Language of Music .............................................2
Lecture Two
Timbre, Continued.....................................................5
Lecture
Three
Timbre, Part 3 ............................................................8
Lecture Four
Beat and Tempo.......................................................11
Lecture Five
Meter, Part 1 ............................................................13
Lecture Six
Meter, Part 2 ............................................................15
Lecture Seven
Pitch and Mode, Part 1 ............................................18
Lecture Eight
Pitch and Mode, Part 2 ............................................20
Semitone Chart
.................................................................................................23
Keyboard Graphic
............................................................................................24
Circle of Fifths
..................................................................................................25
Timeline
.............................................................................................................28
Glossary
.............................................................................................................29
Biographical Notes
............................................................................................33
Bibliography
......................................................................................................36
ii
©2007 The Teaching Company
Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
Scope:
Understanding how music is created is comparable to understanding how a language is constructed. Like a
language, music has a syntax, a vocabulary. We start by listening to that language. We first learn to distinguish
different sonic and temporal phenomena; then, we come to understand how those phenomena are interrelated. After
that, we can begin to understand how and why we perceive structural integrity and expressive meaning in a given
section of music.
Given the constraints of a course such as this, we will not learn how to read and write music. This course, then, is
about using our ears, about discovering and exploring musical syntax through our ears by learning what the parts of
the musical language
sound
like, rather than what they
look
like on paper. This is an infinitely more useful skill than
simply learning to recognize musical constructs on paper with our eyes because we can apply such listening skills to
almost any piece of music in almost any style.
The syntactical elements on which we will focus will be those of the European musical tradition, from the time of
ancient Greece through the beginning of the 20
th
century.
We’ll start with those aspects of the musical language that are most easily perceived by eartimbre and meterand
from there, we’ll move on to the more challenging syntactical elements of tonality and harmony. Lectures One
through Three introduce the five basic categories of musical instrumentsstrings, woodwinds, brass, percussion,
and keyboard instrumentsand their individual timbral (sound) qualities. Lectures Four through Six explore the
nature of beat, meter and tempo, including duple and triple meter, syncopation, compound meter, additive meter,
and asymmetrical meter. We will also examine music that is not characterized by a regular meter. From Lecture
Seven onward, we will examine tonality, beginning with its most basic aspects: pitches and the Pythagorean
collection. We will explore pitch collections (modes), the major and minor modes, tuning systems, the anatomy and
function of intervals, key relationships and the circle of fifths, melody, and functional tonality, including harmonic
progressions, cadences, and modulation.
This Western musical language is a rich, varied, and magnificent one. It is a language that pays us back a
hundredfold for every detail we come to recognize and perceive, and it is a language that will only get richer and
more varied as our increasingly global culture contributes ever more vocabulary to it.
©2007 The Teaching Company
1
Lecture One
The Language of Music
Scope:
Music is a language, and like any language, its syntax is constantly changing. In order to deepen the
experience of listening to music, we need to understand some basic syntactical elements, including timbre,
meter, tonality, and harmony. This course begins by discussing the fundamental nature of the five basic
classifications of musical instruments: strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and keyboard instruments.
We will then look at some of the different techniques for producing a variety of sounds on string
instruments.
Outline
I.
The term
music theory
implies that there is a “science” of music, an all-encompassing set of truisms that, once
understood, reveals the essence of music and establishes a set of rules that govern what composers can and
cannot do as they create a piece of music.
A.
As such, the term
music theory
is misleading. We do not grasp musical syntax the way we grasp facts.
1.
Rather, we first learn to distinguish different sonic and temporal phenomena.
2.
Then, we come to understand how those phenomena are interrelated.
3.
After that, we can begin to understand how and why we perceive structural integrity and expressive
meaning in any given section of music.
4.
Learning musical syntax is much like learning a language: We start with rudiments and gradually
accumulate understanding as we comprehend that language in ever more sophisticated ways.
5.
Music is an art, not a science.
6.
What constitutes the art of music is a syntax that is constantly changing, based on the time, place, and
aesthetic taste of a particular composer and the expressive
reason-to-be
of a particular piece of music.
B.
The goal of this course is to provide the intellectual tools and listening skills necessary to deepen
immeasurably the experience of any music you might encounter, including concert music.
1.
The nature of this course precludes instruction in musical notation. We will not learn to read music,
but this is a blessing in disguise, because we will, instead, learn to use our ears, an infinitely more
useful skill than simply learning to recognize musical constructs on paper.
2.
Indeed, we will learn to build a musical vocabulary that includes timbre, meter, tonality, and harmony.
C.
The course will focus on musical syntactical elements of the European musical tradition from ancient
Greece through the 20
th
century.
D.
Our working definition of music is “sound in time” or “time ordered by sound.”
1.
When we talk about the
sound
aspect of music, we will be discussing everything from instruments and
instrumental combinations to melody, harmony, texture, and tonality.
2.
When we talk about the
time
aspect of music, we will be discussing some aspect of rhythm.
II.
We begin with that most easily perceived aspect of musical language, timbre: the physical sound produced by
individual instruments and combinations of instruments. Instruments are classified by how they initiate and
maintain their sound. There are five such major classifications.
A.
Stringed instruments produce sound by bowing or plucking.
1.
Bowed stringed instruments are the most numerous in the modern orchestra.
2.
Plucked instruments include the harp and the guitar.
B.
Woodwind, or wind, instruments initiate and maintain their sound when air is blown into a generally
cylindrical instrument.
1.
Air may be blown directly through the instrument, as in the case of the piccolo and flute.
2.
Air can be blown into the instrument indirectly, through a thin piece of cane called a
reed
, as in the
case of the clarinet and saxophone families.
3.
Air can also be blown indirectly into the instrument through two small reeds clamped together with a
small space between them, as in the case of the double-reed instruments: oboe, English horn, and
bassoon.
2
©2007 The Teaching Company
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