Prof: Okay. Good morning.
 
Over the weekend,
you were assigned material from
chapter one of the text and it
dealt really with three famous
beginnings of pieces of
classical music.
Somebody tell me at the outset:
what were those three famous
pieces?
 
Young lady down here.
 
Student: The first was
Beethoven's.
Prof: Okay,
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
What was the second one?
 
Student: I believe it
was Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto
Number One.
 
Prof: Yeah,
Piano Concerto Number One of
Tchaikovsky, and the third one?
 
Student:
>
Prof: Yeah,
this piece by Richard Strauss
with this funny sounding German
name.
We'll just call it
Zarathustra, this
prophet, Zarathustra.
 
So those are the three pieces
and the issues there had to do
with musical genre that we're
going to talk a little bit more
about in a moment,
and the instruments.
And you went ahead and worked
with the Listening Exercises
nine through eleven to engage
the musical instruments a bit in
those particular exercises,
and we have performers here
today that are going to,
as you can see,
demonstrate some of these
instruments for us.
Let's make one point very clear
at the outset.
Oftentimes I get student papers
that refer to "Beethoven's
fifth song"
or "Tchaikovsky's first
piano song."
 
Is that right?
 
No, that's not good at all.
 
Are these songs?
 
What do you have to have to
make something a song?
Student: Lyrics.
 
Prof: Lyrics.
 
You've got to have a text and
so we don't have--in eighty
percent of classical music--we
don't have lyrics;
we don't have a text.
 
Well, yes, with opera of
course, but the other eighty
percent is purely instrumental
music.
It works its magic,
again, through purely
instrumental means,
so we can't really call those
songs, and this puzzled me.
 
One day I was sitting there at
iTunes and I wanted to buy an
interior movement of a Mozart
serenade so I was all set to
purchase this and it said,
"Buy song."
Boom.
 
That told me the answer.
 
That's where this terminology
comes in to play because on
iTunes we buy songs.
 
It could be purely instrumental
but it's called "buy a
song," but we don't want to
use that sort of parlance.
We want to be more--a bit more
sophisticated than that,
if you will,
and use other terms,
so we'll talk generally about
Beethoven's composition or
Beethoven's piece or Beethoven's
work or his master work or
chef d'oeuvre or however
fancy you want to get with it.
We could also go on and be a
little more precise and say it
belongs to a particular genre.
 
We could use the name of a
genre, and I'll be talking a lot
about genre in this course.
 
"Genre"
is simply a fancy word for
"type"
or "kind"
so what genre of piece is this
by Beethoven?
Well, it's a symphony.
 
Symphonies generally have four
movements.
What's a movement?
 
Well, a movement is simply an
independent piece that works
oftentimes--
if there are multiple movements
in a symphony or concerto--
works with other movements.
They are independent yet they
are complementary.
Think of, for example,
a sculpture garden.
You might have four independent
sculptures in there,
but they relate one to another;
they make some sort of special
sense one to another.
 
So symphonies have these four
movements and they usually
operate in the following way:
A fast opening movement;
a slower, more lyrical second
movement;
then a third movement that's
derived from dance;
and then a fourth movement
that's sort of again "up
tempo," fast,
emphatic conclusion.
Let's see how these play out by
means of a quick review of
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony so
all we're going to do here is
going to go from the beginning
of the track for the first
movement to the second movement
and so on,
and well, let's just start here.
 
Let's just, by way of
refreshing our memory,
the beginning of Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony.
>
 
Let's pause it there,
and as we said last time,
it operates >
in that fashion,
and that beginning gives us a
good opportunity to make a
distinction between two types of
melody,
between this idea of a motive
and a theme.
 
Both are sort of subsets of
melody, if you will.
As I say in the textbook there,
the beginning of the Beethoven
Fifth is something like a
musical punch in the nose.
Right?
 
>
 
Sort of grabbing you here,
hitting you in the face,
whatever, musically.
 
It's not a very long idea.
 
How many notes is in this
opening gambit here?
How many pitches?
 
Four, >
 
short, short, short, long.
 
Okay.
 
So that's a classic example of
a motive.
A motive is just a little cell,
a germ, out of which the
composer will build other
musical material.
Now let's contrast that with
what happens in the second
movement of Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony where we have a
lyrical, long,
flowing theme.
Okay?
 
>
 
Okay. We'll stop there.
 
All right?
 
So that went on--If we heard
the whole thing,
it actually goes on for 32
notes as opposed to just four so
motive versus longer theme.
 
Themes tend maybe a little bit
more lyrical.
Now let's go on to the third
movement.
We said the third movement was
dance derived,
but in this case with Beethoven
it's a very strange dance if it
is dance derived.
 
It's just a little bit
different than most of these
third movements,
but let's listen to it anyway
because I'd like you to--
when the brasses come in--think
about what you're hearing and
think about that
vis-à-vis the
first movement,
so let's hear the third
movement now.
>
 
Okay.
 
So what happened there when the
brasses came in?
How did that relate to the
first movement?
Yes? Student: Four notes?
 
Prof: Four notes,
something as simple as that,
>
 
, same rhythmic idea,
so that's the use of a motive
there and that's how these
movements are tied together a
little bit.
 
Let's go on to the finale now,
and as we listen to the finale
let's think about what we heard
at the very beginning and talked
about last time,
>
about the mood that the
beginning of the Fifth Symphony
created for it.
 
We have these adjectives up
here, "negative,"
"anxious,"
"unsettled."
Well, how do we feel now about
the finale and why?
>
 
So why do we feel differently
about that?
I think we do.
 
What do we feel there?
 
Well, sort of upbeat, positive.
 
What's turned all of this
around, what specifically?
Well, with the first movement
we said he's generally going
>
 
and that kind of idea,
but now it's <<music
playing>>
 
and we'll explore this when we
get to harmony,
this idea of major and minor so
we're going <<music
playing>>
 
and now >
and that's a change from the
dark minor to the brighter
major.
 
We were going down in the first
movement.
Now we're going-- >
It's going up and instead of
having just the violins playing
we have the trumpets,
the heroic trumpets,
so it sounds very triumphant.
 
So in this 40-minute interval
we've gone sort of through an
emotional musical journey here
from despair,
despondency,
uncertainty,
to whatever- to personal
triumph,
and in a way that mirrors some
of the things that were going on
in Beethoven's life.
 
Okay.
 
Let's go on to talk about the
second piece.
We finished with this idea of
the genre, of the four
movements, so then let's go on
to talk about the piano
concerto.
 
Concertos are generally in
three movements.
The concerto is another genre.
 
It's a genre in which a soloist
will confront the orchestra and
there'll be a kind of give and
take--a spirited give and
take--between the two.
 
So now we are going to listen
to the beginning of the first
movement of Tchaikovsky's Piano
Concerto.
You've worked with this already
so you're a little bit familiar
with it, and at the outset here
I have two questions for you.
Is the beginning here played by
the brasses or the strings?
In other words,
what--or the woodwinds--
what family of instruments is
playing here and is Tchaikovsky
using a motive or is he using a
theme at the very beginning of
this concerto?
 
>
 
So what about that?
 
Theme or motive at the
beginning?
Student: Motive.
 
Prof: Motive. All right.
 
So here it was I think.
 
>
 
How many notes in our motive?
 
>
 
Same as in the Beethoven.
 
Why isn't it the same?
 
Well, we've got a skippy
Beethoven <<music
playing>>
 
but here with Tchaikovsky he's
coming down, just straight down,
>
 
down consecutive intervals
there for the most part.
And both of them are,
however, minor.
>
 
With the Tchaikovsky they--all
the intervals are the--the
durations are the same,
>
but with the Beethoven,
>
short, short, short, long.
 
So Tchaikovsky is a little bit
more neutral in terms of the
rhythm.
 
Okay.
 
So then we go on and the piano
enters.
What is the piano doing?
 
So let's hear the piano come in
just a bit.
>
 
So what's the piano up to?
 
Well, the piano is just playing
chords, <<music
playing>>
 
playing them in octave
successions, and we'll talk
about that a little bit more
too.
So what do we have here in this
next section?
Do we have a theme or do we
have a motive and which do
this--are the violins playing?
 
Are they--Do they have the
theme or the motive or does the
piano have the theme or the
motive?
Let's listen.
 
>
 
So was--what the--what were the
violins playing?
Theme or motive?
 
Theme. What was the piano doing?
 
Student:
*.
Prof: Yeah,
just the same chords
>
 
>
 
in that fashion.
 
I'm singing the melody.
 
They're playing a chordal
accompaniment against it.
All right.
 
Let's listen to the next
iteration of this theme.
We've identified this as a
theme.
Who's got the theme now?
 
Is it exactly the same?
 
And what are the strings up to
in terms of string technique
here?
 
>
 
So who had the theme?
 
The piano now,
but was it exactly the same?
Not really.
 
It was kind of noodling around
with it, varying it a little
bit.
 
What were the strings doing?
 
They were playing the
accompaniment,
and what string technique were
they using?
I think we mentioned that in
the first chapter of the book
there.
 
Yeah, you've got it.
 
Nice and loud please?
 
Student: Pizzicato..
 
Prof: Pizzicato.
 
Good.
 
Okay, pizzicato.
 
We could write that--Did we
write that as a term up--Yeah.
Okay.
 
We've got it up there,
pizzicato.
That's a help.
 
So in that particular case
we've switched the roles around.
We're going to move this along
just a little bit here.
As we come back in to this,
I think we've got a situation
where the piano keeps playing
the four-note motive,
>
 
the part like he was building
it up for tension.
Then there's a cascade and then
the theme comes back.
Let's see what happens here,
>
just the motif,
one, two, three,
four, three four,
one two, <<music
playing>>
 
and then the theme.
 
>
 
The piano is playing
>
, ornamenting.
 
All right.
 
So that's an introduction to a
three-movement piano concerto.
It happens to be the first of
these three movements and it's
pretty spectacular music.
 
I hope you like that music.
 
It's one of the great melodies
of all time.
It's a wonderful example of a
theme.
Having talked just a little bit
about genres,
we could conclude by saying
there are other kinds of genres
in music of course.
 
We've been introduced to this
idea of the tone poem.
The Strauss Zarathustra
is a tone poem.
That's a one-movement work in
which the composer tries to tell
a story or play out an historic
event or,
in the case of the Strauss,
to give us the beginning of the
contents of a philosophical
novel through music.
So tone poems are one in
movement, and we have got other
kinds of genres in music.
 
We've got opera.
 
We've got cantatas,
sonatas, ballets,
things such as this,
and we'll get to each of those
in turn.
 
So that's the end of the
discussion of genre.
Let's go on now to talk about
instruments and how instruments
produce sound.
 
Eva Heater, come on up.
 
This is my friend,
long-time colleague,
music librarian extraordinaire
and professional French horn
player,
Eva Heater, who will
demonstrate here--
Come on over here right in the
center.
 
Gene Kimball is in the basement
somewhere recording all of this.
Eva Heater:
Oh, my..
Prof: Oh,
yeah.
It's very exciting here.
 
What a time to be alive, huh?
 
Eva Heater: Yeah.
 
Prof: So Eva is going to
just demonstrate the physical
process of playing the French
horn.
Eva Heater:
The horn obviously is a
brass instrument and what makes
the sound is a vibrating column
of air.
 
In this case,
the basic column of air is
twelve and a half feet long and
there are something called
"partials"
or the "harmonic
series" that happens in
anything,
on a string instrument or
whatever,
but on the horn it's very
distinct and that's what makes
the different notes.
 
Let me demonstrate to you the
harmonic series.
>
 
Now I didn't use--no
hands--that was just the notes
that are naturally on the twelve
and a half-foot length of
vibrating air.
 
That's the harmonic series
that's on that,
and what the valves do is they
shorten and lengthen that
vibrating column of air very
much like the cello string on
the fingerboard.
 
A cellist is always shortening
and lengthening the strings.
I'm doing the same thing.
 
I'm just doing it with a series
of switches instead of a
fingerboard, which we obviously
don't have--
Prof: Okay.
 
That's fine.
 
That's great.
 
That's the principle,
and when she said she was
"overblowing"
what that means is,
and we'll keep emphasizing this
point today--
these partials--that when a
sound is made you have not just
one sound but that tube is
dividing up into sections,
and all kinds of little
sections of that one tube are
sounding,
not just the big sound but the
partials or the overtones,
the intervals in the harmonic
series.
 
So it's a whole series--when we
listen to a single tone it's a
whole series,
and what Eva was doing there is
playing out the notes in that
series successively,
and we'll keep banging on that.
 
Now if you would,
Eva, play just the beginning of
the Zarathustra or the
trumpet part.
Can you do that?
 
>
 
Go, Eva. Go.
 
>
 
One more time.
 
>
 
Okay, and that's another note.
 
Thank you very much.
 
Thank you. Thank you.
 
Okay.
 
Now Eva has another gig out in
Gilford this morning so she's
going to run off,
and I'm going to show you,
maybe, if we can get our slides
up,
this overtone series stuff.
 
Okay?
 
Eva Heater:
Okay.
It's a mathematical thing too.
 
It's all math.
 
Prof: What we've got
here is the following,
this idea of partials that Eva
was talking about with ratios,
two to one, three to two,
four to three,
five to four,
six to five and so on,
and the point here is that the
way we differentiate between
instruments.
 
Can anybody tell me this,
why--You tell me this.
It's always better when
students answer.
Why does a trumpet--If I asked
a trumpet to play this pitch,
a trumpet played,
and then I asked an oboe to
play it, the sound would be very
different.
Why is that the case?
 
Gentleman here?
 
Student: Different
overtones?
Prof: Different
overtones.
Well, actually they all have
the same overtones in a way,
the same frequencies will
sound, but you've got
it--ninety-nine percent of it.
 
It's which partials are
particularly prominent,
have extra punch or extra
volume to them.
The oboe may have the seventh
partial very strong and the
third partial very strong
whereas the trumpet--
I'm just making all of this up
of course--
the trumpet may have the second
partial and the fourth partial
and the sixth partial.
 
So it's which of these partials
are sounding within each of
these instruments,
and the physical properties of
each of these instruments are
different.
It's the particular blend.
 
Here's a really dumb analogy.
 
Any Scotch drinkers in here?
 
No, of course not.
 
You're way too young to do
that, but think about a blended
Scotch.
 
You've got a little of this,
a little of this,
a little of this,
and it makes up whatever it is
that you end up with,
the particular recipe for that
liquid.
 
Well, we have a particular
recipe for instrumental timbre
or instrumental color and it's
the intensity of the overtones
with--
or partials--within each
particular instrument that
creates that.
Okay.
 
Now we're going to go on and
talk about a woodwind instrument
here so Lynda,
come on up.
Lynda is a bassoonist.
 
This is Lynda Paul who will be
one of our principal TAs here.
She is a PhD candidate in the
department of music,
just passed her qualifying exam
with flying colors,
so here she is to demonstrate
the bassoon for us,
lowest member of the woodwind
family.
Lynda Paul:
All right.
So you probably read in the
book that the bassoon is a
double reed instrument,
and so just to show you what
that looks like--
You've probably seen it but if
you haven't,
two pieces of wood vibrate
together when I blow through
them.
>
 
I always check it out before I
play any notes.
And, as you will probably
suspect, by the length of the
bassoon it can play very low
notes <<music
playing>>
 
and if I put a little rag in
the top I can get it even a
little bit lower than that--
I didn't bring one--but
actually, amazingly,
it's a very versatile
instrument and can also play
very high notes.
As you can see,
there are a lot of keys in it.
There are nine keys for my left
thumb alone so I'm kind of
switching between these on the
back here and many others,
and because of that I can go
very high and I'll just
demonstrate that.
 
>
 
So that's just to give you a
sense of the range.
Because of the sort of
particular character of the
bassoon sound,
it's often used to play sort of
funny, little low-note
characters in the orchestra.
For example,
if you're familiar with
Peter and the Wolf,
the different instruments play
different characters.
 
The bassoon is the grandfather.
 
>
 
Prof: Cool. Okay. Great.
 
Thanks so much.
 
That--That's really fun.
 
Now Jacob Adams is a
professional violist here in New
Haven.
 
What's the name of your
quartet, Jacob?
Jacob Adams:
I'm a member of the
"Vinca String
Quartet."
Prof: The "Vinca
String Quartet"
so keep an eye out for them.
 
They're based here in New Haven.
 
So come on out, Jacob.
 
And he is a violist,
not a violinist,
but the principle here is
pretty much the same,
so tell us about the
construction of the instrument.
Jacob Adams:
Okay.
So obviously we've now seen a
little bit of the brass family
and the woodwind family,
and the other principal section
of the orchestra would obviously
be the string family.
The viola is very similar to
the violin so anything I say
about the viola applies to the
violin as well,
and of course you all are
probably familiar with violins
and the size.
 
The violas are a little bit
bigger.
This particular one is about 16
inches long.
Violins are--maybe--go up about
to twelve inches.
They have a slightly smaller
body to them but violins and
violas have the same general
construction.
All of the sounds are produced
by the strings on the instrument
and how the bow is pulled across
the instrument.
The bow is made out of,
typically, horse hair from the
tails of horses.
 
The strings are now metallic
but sixteenth,
seventeenth to eighteenth
century they would have been
made out of cat or sheep gut.
 
That was much more common,
and still some people--
Prof: Okay. So I'm sorry.
 
We've got lots of things going
on here this morning so just
play a scale quickly and then
vibrato, pizzicato and tremolo
for us.
 
Jacob Adams:
So again this is on a viola
so it has a deeper,
darker timbre than a violin but
here's a scale.
 
>
 
Prof: Wow.
 
You did something there at the
end.
Did you have too much coffee
this morning?
You started shaking over there.
 
Yeah.
 
So tell us about what you were
doing there at the end.
Jacob Adams:
So there are all sorts of
different little technique
things you can do to create
different colors and sounds on
all string instruments,
so this applies to any of them.
 
One of them is the technique
you saw me do with my left hand
where I wiggled it a little bit.
 
It's called vibrato.
 
You hear it in human voices as
well.
You can do it on other
instruments but on a string
instrument it's the difference.
 
I'll play a melody without
vibrato and with vibrato so you
can see the difference.
 
>
 
So that's without vibrato,
not that interesting in my
opinion, so with vibrato.
 
>
 
And you can vary the width and
the speed and the length.
There's a lot of varieties
which--
Prof: Okay.
 
And then just quickly play a
pizzicato for us?
Jacob Adams:
Sure.
>
 
Prof: Okay,
and then finally tremolo.
Jacob Adams:
Tremolo,
yes.
 
>
 
Prof: So adds a little
excitement or a little filler to
the music sometimes.
 
Jacob Adams:
Uh huh..
Prof: All right.
 
Great.
 
Thank you, Jacob, very much.
 
 
 
What I wanted to show you was a
clip that actually my daughter
brought to my attention just
this past weekend.
She was watching television,
"America Has Talent."
Does anybody watch this,
"America Has Talent"?
And she said,
"Dad, you've got to watch
this.
 
This is the most amazing thing.
 
They've got these two guys on
here called Nuttin' But
Strings."
 
So I did.
 
I--And I went to--She sent me
the link to YouTube here.
>
 
All right.
 
So obviously the violin is not
just this stodgy old thing from
the Renaissance.
 
It has some legs today,
used in folk music.
Sometimes you see it in
Nashville playing with country
music, that kind of thing.
 
Is this a travesty to use a
violin with hip-hop here?
I guess this is hip-hop.
 
Of course not.
 
This is wonderful.
 
This is the best thing that has
happened to the violin in the
last hundred years.
 
There will be millions of kids
out there now that say
"Gee, I'd like to learn to
play the violin too."
So this is wonderful,
this sort of cross-semination
of genres here,
bringing this particular
instrument,
the traditional classical
violin, into the popular realm.
 
All right.
 
So let's put that aside.
 
We've talked a little bit about
sound production here.
I've got two pieces I'm going
to work with here for the end of
our session.
 
We have 15 minutes left and
here are these two pieces.
The first, you can see on the
board up there,
is by another Russian composer,
Modest Musorgsky.
It's called "Polish
Oxcart" from his work
Pictures at an
Exhibition.
What happened was he had a
friend.
The friend died.
 
The friend was an artist.
 
The friend left these pictures
as an homage to the
painter.
 
Mussorgsky sat down and tried
to come up with,
create a musical response to
each of these paintings that
were on display.
 
Now this is a piece that's
always interested me because the
painting is very pedestrian.
 
It's of an old Polish oxcart
sitting on some godforsaken road
in rural Russia somewhere.
 
So how do you make that work as
music?
How do you turn that visual
image into music?
How do you turn that into a
sort of live sonic-scape?
And I should say at the
outset--I'm going to prejudice
your listening here just a
little bit.
I hear this as me being in the
center and this oxcart
starting--It could start at
either side.
It doesn't matter.
 
Every written thing usually
moves left to right so I'm going
to hear this moving left to
right.
It comes in front of me,
almost rolls over top of me,
runs me down,
and then disappears to my
right,
so as we listen to this,
you think about what are the
techniques by which Musorgsky
creates this musical action
scene.
You should be able to come up
with two pretty good ideas here,
two pretty good answers.
 
All right. Here we go.
 
>
 
Now the instrument is--that
is--playing is a low tuba,
a low brass instrument.
 
It doesn't sound much like a
tuba because it's actually
playing in the higher register
of the instrument,
but it is a tuba.
 
>
 
Okay. Now the strings.
 
The strings come in with a
counter-idea,
a complementary idea.
 
>
 
Okay.
 
Give me one pretty
straightforward way this
happened.
 
What did he do there?
 
Yes, young lady out here please.
 
Student: Crescendo?
 
Prof: Okay,
crescendo.
From beginning to end?
 
Student: Got louder,
then softer.
Prof: Yeah,
so like a giant wedge,
that's why the cart seems to
move in front of you,
so we're talking about musical
volume here.
It started very quietly,
it built up to this huge center
in which we had the bass drum
pounding away there and the
snare drum coming in to give the
effect that the entire earth is
rattling at that particular
point,
and then as it passed by
you--the thunder passed by you--
and off it went into the
distance, quietly into the
distance.
 
We'll come back to that,
but how did that happen?
We'll listen to the end of that
in just one moment.
It's kind of a disintegration
of the sound at the end.
So that's one big way this
happened.
That's probably the big-ticket
item here.
There's another way,
a more subtle way.
Any thoughts about that?
 
Yes?
 
Student: The
instrumentation?
Prof: Yes,
the instrumentation.
Can you elaborate on that?
 
Student: Yeah.
 
It starts with low instruments
and then moves to higher ones,
and then back to low ones.
 
Prof: Great. Right.
 
So there's a kind of wedge
shape with regard to the
instruments too.
 
He started with the lowest
instruments and then goes to the
high instruments and then back
to low instruments at the end.
Let's just review--Well,
no, we won't review this.
Let's not review that. Okay?
 
We don't have time to review
that, but let's go on to say the
following,
that what Musorgsky knew there
was a very basic principle of
acoustics,
and what is that principle?
 
Yeah?
 
Student: Doppler
principle..
Prof: I beg your
pardon?
Student: Doppler
principle.
Prof: Well,
to some extent.
I'm going to give an example
or--example of that--of the
train kind of going by you,
and the sound heading off in
the other direction.
 
Yes, to some extent it is that,
yes,
but what I was thinking about
here is this idea that the
lowest sounds create the longest
sound waves,
and they last the longest.
 
The lowest sounds create the
largest sound waves and they
last the longest.
 
The lowest sounds last the
longest.
Why might this be the case?
 
If we're not having too much
luck with our slides this
morning, I went ahead and put
this one up on the board here.
Here is one pitch.
 
Here is the pitch in--of--a
string an octave higher so you
can see it this way.
 
As you probably know,
if you take a long string and
pluck it,
it's going to take that long
string a long time to pass that
sort of cycle,
if you will,
just one pass through that
cycle.
 
The string half a length will
pass through that cycle two
times so that you can kind of
graph these up here as one long,
low sound or one faster
vibrating sound an octave
higher,
so again low sounds or low
frequencies travel farther.
 
Now you've experienced this in
your own life.
You're standing on a street
corner here in New Haven.
In the distance what do you
hear?
An automobile approaching with
a souped-up audio system in it,
and what sound do you hear at
the very first?
>
 
That kind of thing.
 
Then maybe >
and then maybe some kind of
melody will come in and then
it'll all come together right in
front of you and it'll kind of
disappear in the distance.
 
You're at a football game.
 
You've probably experienced
this too.
The band is marching on the
field.
Suddenly they do the Doppler
effect where they turn their
backs to you,
in a way, and they're marching
away from you and you hear very
little sound.
What instrumental sound do you
hear?
>
 
The bass drum and the tuba or
in the marching band it would be
a sousaphone they would call it,
the bass drum and tuba.
So Musorgsky knew this law of
acoustics because he was a
professional musician and was
playing off of it to create this
rather unusual and remarkable
musical sound-scape here.
Okay. I have five minutes left.
 
I'd like to do one last piece.
 
It's another piece by Richard
Strauss.
It kind of brings us to the end
of Richard Strauss,
our discussion of Richard
Strauss.
We'll say good-bye to him here
in our course.
It's called Death and
Transfiguration,
and I hear this as a companion
piece, a kind of pendant to the
Zarathustra.
 
One sort of opens up the
beginning of life here and the
other closes it down through a
referencing of death.
There's an interesting anecdote
about Strauss,
and that is that on his
deathbed he said to his
daughter,
Alice--He said, "Alice,
it's the funniest thing.
 
Dying is exactly as I composed
it in Death and
Transfiguration."
 
What an odd thing to say,
but in any event
>
 
here is how this works.
 
We've been talking about this
overtone series with
Zarathustra.
 
Eva played this overtone series.
 
He's basically working up to
the upper partials.
Now he's going to work down the
partials.
He's going to close it back
down here with death and he's
going to close it back down
using a process that we
frequently encounter in music,
and that is this idea of
dissonance resolving to
consonance.
Here is a dissonance.
 
>
 
Here is a consonance.
 
>
 
There are precise technical
reasons why these are the way
they are, but let me try to cut
to the chase here.
With dissonant intervals they
tend to be frequencies that are
sounding right next to each
other, very close-by
frequencies.
 
They sound dissonant.
 
If you allow a little bit of
spacing,
a little more space between
your frequencies,
they're a little bit farther
apart,
then you can move from
closeness <<plays
chord>>
 
to >
 
spacing and you get the
consonance.
Generally speaking,
dissonant intervals have ratios
such as nine to eight for the
whole step or seventeen to
sixteen for the half step.
 
They're irrational numbers and
these irrational numbers like to
move to rational numbers;
they like to move to
consonances;
they like to move to intervals
that are based on things such as
two to one and three to two or
maybe four to three.
 
So that's the principle of this
idea of dissonance resolving to
consonance.
 
So we're going to listen now to
the end of Strauss's Death
and Transfiguration,
and again we've got the idea of
the octave,
then the fifth, then the fourth.
We're working up farther and
farther in these partials and
we've got some of these notes
right next to each other and
they want to move to the stable
notes so we're going to be
hearing a lot of a note right
above the tonic wanting to pull
down to that tonic note.
 
We're going to hear a lot of
the note right above the
dominant wanting to pull down to
the dominant.
So let's listen to this.
 
We have about three minutes I
think.
We'll hear it and I'll comment
a bit as we go.
>
 
Okay.
 
First question:
What string technique is being
used here?
 
Tremolo.
 
Just sawing away there.
 
>
 
Now just working with the
four-note motive here--
>
 
Whoah.
 
A strange little dissonant
chord there resolving to
consonance.
 
>
 
>
 
And here it's all just tonic,
just the basic primordial note
upon which all these other tones
are built.
>
 
Okay.
 
So that's Richard Strauss's
approach to death,
not particularly relevant to
you young people but for older
gentlemen such as Professor
Kagan and myself we're getting
close to that.
 
Right, Don?
 
>
 
So thank you all for staying
with this this morning.
I hope you enjoyed that music.
 
We'll see you in section
starting this Thursday.
If you have any questions,
come up and see me or send me
an e-mail.
 
 
 
