Music Appreciation Notes

Chapter 1 Listening To Music
Why do we listen to music?
1. gives us pleasure
2. affects our minds and bodies
3. Intensifies and deepens our feelings
4. heightens the emotional experience
How musical sound and sound machines work.
Listening to music—a physical reaction to disturbance in our environment A sound machine creates a vibration and creates sound waves and processed by inner ear and converted into electrical signals and transported by neurons and primary auditory cortex in the center of the brain and increased dopamine = Mood enhancement
Low pitched sounds vibrate slowly
High pitched sounds vibrate rapidly
Musical sounds tend to be regular in their vibration
Acoustics remain the same but the means of capturing and preserving sound have been constantly evolving.
Up until 900 C.E. Most music was passed down orally. At around this time the Benedictine Monks began to find ways to notate their religious chants
Around 1250 more popular styles of music began to be notated
As the centuries go by the written music or scores become more elaborate with tempo(how fast) markings and dynamics(how loud or soft) Markings.
19th century marks the advent of playback technology with the invention of the phonograph by Thomas eddison (1877) We then move from there to magnetic tape to CD and now completely digital.
Classical Music- Popular Music
Classical Music, High art or learned music, requires a particular set of learned skills to perform and appreciate it.
Popular music, music with a large mass appeal.
Classical music separates itself from popular music in the following ways 1. Relies on acoustic instruments 2. Present musical notation 3. Primarily instrumental and is more about sounds and gestures than relying on lyrics 4. Longer and more demanding to listen to 5. The rhythm or beat varies greatly in importance 6. More abstract and timeless.
Why listen to Classical Music? 1. Relieves stress and is relaxing 2. Centers the mind 3. Provides a vision of a better world 4. Learning opportunity, people, history, the world.
Classical Music is all around you. You may find out you know more of this than you realize, you just did not know what it was called.
Learn to be a good listener, active versus passive learning.
Musical Style
Style, how the elements of the music interact.
Can be separated into 8 main periods
Know the dates for these time periods, as they are really important. 1. Middle Ages 476-1475 (Hildegard: O Greenest Branch) 2. Renaissance 1475-1600 (Palestrina: Sanctus) 3. Baroque 1600-1750 (Bach: Brandenburg Concerto 5,I) 4. Classical 1750-1820 (Mozart: A Little Night Music,I) 5. Romantic 1820-1900 (Tchaikovsky, Romeo and Juliet) 6. Impressionism 1880-1920 Debussy (Voiles: from Preludes) 7. Modern 1890-1985 (Ives, Three places in New England)