Prof: All right.
 
Let's proceed with our
discussion of musical style.
And this is going to be mostly
a comparison of musical style in
different style periods.
 
And we've put the titles of
those style periods up on the
board there.
 
Once again, this is a typically
Western exercise that we are
dealing with here.
 
We love to organize material so
that we can simplify it and we
can deal with it--
whether it's attributing to an
individual,
things that a large number of
people do,
whether it's grouping random
units of pulses into meter,
or whether it's taking a highly
complex group of phenomena and
putting them particular style
periods,
we like to do that because it
allows us to deal with the
material in some kind of
organized fashion.
 
So we've got our various
periods up here.
As mentioned though,
we won't going into the
post-modernist in any
significant way here.
Now what you'll be asked to do
is identify the period in which
a particular piece is written,
and if it turns out that on our
final test,
we happen to play for you a
piece that's on the list of
pieces that we give you,
then you're responsible for
identifying the name of the
composer and the name of the
piece.
If the piece we play is not on
your list, then all you would be
asked to do is identify the
style period.
However, you're asked to do
something even more important
than that and that's to tell us
why it's in this particular
style period.
 
It does no good--I don't
think--just to say
"Romantic"
and then going to walk away
from it.
 
What I would ask you to do is
give us three or four specific
points that you hear in the
music that corroborate your
decision with regard to the
style period.
Now, you may wish to take a
look at your textbook there,
around page sixty-seven,
sixty-eight,
sixty-nine, where there's an
introduction to musical style
and a checklist,
as I call it--checklist of
musical style by period.
 
And that'll kind of get you
thinking in these sorts of ways.
The Baroque music,
for example,
tends to have rather long,
asymmetrical themes but very
driving sorts of rhythm.
 
So you could learn that
checklist for each of these
periods,
but the important thing is that
when we play the music you have
got to hear in that music that
particular phenomenon or
characteristic that you list on
your group of three or four
factors that lead you to your
conclusion.
 
For example,
you may recognize the piece of
be--as being of the Romantic
period and say that it has lots
of low brass in it.
 
It may not have any low brass
in the music we're playing at
all, so that wouldn't be doing
very much for us there.
So we want to hear the music
and we want to take things out
of the music that we're actually
hearing.
So maybe we'll start with a
piece here.
Now what we've got is a series
of six,
seven--depends on how many you
want this morning--
particular pieces chosen to
exemplify these various style
periods.
 
 
 
Now, what are you going to be
listening for here?
I was thinking about that this
morning.
What's the most important thing
when trying to identify style?
What will allow you to get to
the answer quickest?
What do you think it is?
 
What are you going to be
listening for?
Let's go back to the radio in
the car business--or you
suddenly turn on some sort of
streaming FM,
middle of the piece.
 
What is it that's going to give
you the most information?
Roger.
 
Student: Instrumentation.
 
Prof: Instruments,
right, absolutely.
Okay.
 
It's the instruments,
because if you hear lots of
percussion and xylophones and
things such as that banging away
in a dissonant fashion,
those instruments just weren't
there in time of Mozart,
for example,
so you know it's got to be
probably late nineteenth-century
and on.
 
So instrumentation is the
single most important factor,
but some instruments are common
to many different periods.
The piano operated roughly from
when to when?
If you hear a piano,
what does that tell you about
the time period of the music
that you're--classical music
that you're listening to?
 
It's got to be roughly after
what?
After--or after who?
 
When did the piano really
become the principal keyboard
instrument in Western culture?
 
Roughly 1770 or so, 1760,1770.
 
As I've said,
Mozart was the first to really
use the piano exclusively,
so if you hear a piano,
it can't be Renaissance or
medieval;
it can't be Baroque.
 
It could be Classical,
Romantic, Impressionist,
or Modern, and then on the
basis of other things you would
come to a conclusion about the
style period.
What might something else be?
 
Roger, with the help of
Caroline there,
was able to tell us that
instrumentation was very
important here.
 
After instrumentation,
what is it that we might be
listening for?
 
Marcus.
 
Student:
>
Prof: Okay.
 
Yeah, the volume,
the size of it.
That in some way--Yeah.
 
So, specifically speaking,
it's not just the instruments.
It could be volume as well and
the later--what's the pinnacle
in terms of volume?
 
What would you say?
 
Is it all just a straight-line
ascent to present day in terms
of volume?
 
When's the biggest orchestra
around?
We talked about that.
 
Marcus.
 
Student: It was Romantic.
 
Prof: Okay. Romantic.
 
Can you refine it any further
than that?
Student: Late Romantic.
 
Prof: Late Romantic,
Mahler, Strauss,
that kind of thing.
 
Mahler wrote a "Symphony
of a Thousand,"
he called it.
 
He had almost a thousand
performers in it.
So it's late nineteenth,
early twentieth century,
and then it sort of,
in an odd way,
declines thereafter.
 
So volume is important.
 
Just to move things along here,
I think the harmony is
important too,
and you can pick out,
sometimes, chords,
not necessarily the specific
chords,
but does it kind of sound plain
vanilla harmony or does it sound
a little bit surprising,
or--not shocking,
but bracing,
unexpected?
 
Well, the more unexpected it
becomes probably the later you
are, the more into the Romantic
period you are.
And most importantly I think,
maybe even more important than
that, is the element of
consonance versus dissonance.
When do we begin to get a heavy
component of dissonance in high
art music in the West?
 
Classical period?
 
Romantic period?
 
Impressionist period?
 
A little bit.
 
Yeah, I see Kristin.
 
Well, maybe. Okay? Yeah.
 
So a little bit in the
Impressionist period and then
heavy in the Modernist period,
and then it actually backs down
in the Post-modern period,
but we're not going there.
Roger.
 
Student:
>
Prof: Good point.
 
It can be present in Medieval
music, so in an odd way,
yeah.
 
The notion of consonant
harmonies really didn't get
formed until the fifteenth
century so if you're listening
to things before the fifteenth
century,
sometimes you can find rather
bracing and biting dissonance in
Medieval music,
and then it sort of smoothed
itself out for five hundred
years.
Okay.
 
So I think we have our first
selection queued now so let's
just listen to this,
and these are going to be
rather long as they will be in
the test.
>
 
So we've heard that much.
 
Right off the bat,
some things should be ruled
out.
 
So what do we want to rule out
here?
Douglas in the back.
 
Pick--and I'm going to cold
call people today.
Yes, Doug.
 
What would we rule out there?
 
Student: Classical.
 
Prof: Okay. Classical.
 
Mozart, Haydn, even Beethoven.
 
We would rule out classical,
and in ruling out classical,
that sort of wipes out what?
 
Basically everything else
before.
So it can't be anything
after--excuse me--before--well,
it can't be anything really
before 1800, so we'll start with
Romantic.
 
So, still in the game here:
Romantic, Impressionist and
Modernist.
 
Any thoughts about that:
Romantic, Impressionist,
Modern?
 
Caroline.
 
I don't--just tell me--don't
tell me the--what you think the
answer is.
 
Just tell me what you heard
there.
Student:
>
Prof: Louder, please.
 
Student:
>
Prof: Okay.
 
So may--possibly some
strange-sounding scales and some
bells you said?
 
What were--did you hear--what
else did you--a big orchestra,
a little orchestra?
 
Student:
>
Prof: I beg your pardon.
 
Huge orchestra?
 
Huge orchestra and huge sound.
 
Okay?
 
So where does that put us in
the spectrum here,
1800-2000?
 
Well, we talked about that.
 
Probably around 1900 or so,
with an orchestra that big,
and you heard voices in it,
which is interesting to comment
on also.
 
So then you might ask yourself,
"Well, is this
Beethoven?"
 
Well, it's too big for
Beethoven.
It's too--there's too much of
it.
It's too rich for Beethoven.
 
Is it Wagner?
 
It's probably even too rich for
Wagner;
it's just bigger.
 
So we're pushing on here after
1850.
Let's listen to a bit more
and--because the excerpts that
we will have on next Wednesday
will be longer.
Let's listen to a bit more and
see if we can gather some
information here.
 
>
 
What are we hearing there?
 
A very important piece of
information there.
 
 
What was that?
 
What instrument was playing?
 
Oboe was playing. Daniel.
 
Student:
>
Prof: Okay.
 
They had the melody,
and what about that melody?
How did it go?
 
>
 
What's that?
 
Yes, Kristin's got it out
there.
Nice and loud, please.
 
Student: Ostinato.
 
Prof: It's an ostinato.
 
So what does that tell us if
we're trying--
which one of the three of these
style periods does that knock
out of the box:
Romantic,
Impressionist or Modern?
 
We talked about that in a
lecture on Impressionism,
but by the same token,
your Listening Exercise
forty-two on Stravinsky
foregrounded precisely this
phenomenon of ostinato.
 
So there we have Romantic being
taken out of the mix here and
this idea of stasis is not part
of the aesthetic of Romanticism.
Romantic flows,
it grows, it expands,
it contracts,
but it doesn't constantly
reiterate one phenomenon.
 
So we--we're down to
Impressionist or Modern here.
Let's go on and listen to just
a little bit more.
>
 
So what did we hear there?
 
Anything more that we could add
to our list of identifiers?
Oscar.
 
Student:
>
Prof: Good.
 
Parallel motion,
>.
Those woodwinds were all going
up and down in the same
direction, parallel motion.
 
Excellent.
 
There's one other thing here.
 
At the very end we heard what
played by a harp?
Caroline.
 
Student:
>
Prof: A glissando,
that kind of wash.
So based on that,
obviously we are dealing with a
piece of Impressionist music.
 
This is Ravel's Daphnis and
Chloe, ballet music for one
of those Diaghilev ballets that
we were talking about in section
last time.
 
So what would we say here?
 
Well, we would say large,
colorful orchestra.
Actually, there was also the
use of the human voice here
which we heard in Debussy as
well.
We would say also that it's
essentially a consonant and not
a dissonant--essentially a
consonant environment.
We would say that we have
parallel motion,
as Oscar pointed out.
 
We would say that we have,
possibly--
if you wanted to throw this
in--scales that are not
traditional--
although that's a little bit
hard to hear--
but certainly we had the
glissando.
 
So if you're looking for four
sound bites here or four bullet
points to put on your paper:
large,
colorful orchestra,
consonant backdrop,
parallelism,
and--what did we say?
The glissando at the very end.
 
And you're finished,
you're out, you get a hundred
percent.
 
Okay.
 
So that's piece number one and
that's sort of the thought
process that I hope you would
use while working through this
particular exercise.
 
Let's go on to piece number two
which I think--<<music
playing>>
 
That's a good example of what?
 
Chant, just Gregorian chant,
>
chant incipit there.
 
 
 
>
 
>
 
That's really beautiful.
 
It's weird, but it's beautiful.
 
That's a setting of--well,
you tell me what period it
comes from.
 
I'm going to move--skip around
a little bit.
Let me go to Emily,
please, behind.
Student: Medieval and
Renaissance.
Prof: Medieval and
Renaissance.
We had chant there and on the
same CD we have an example
of--this is actually sort of
right between the two.
It's written by Thomas Tallis
in England, but England was sort
of slow to catch up to the
Renaissance, so it's late
Medieval, early Renaissance.
 
What specifically did we hear
here that leads you to that
conclusion?
 
Jennifer? Jessica. Sorry.
 
What?
 
Student: Angela.
 
Prof: Angela.
 
Sorry.
 
Okay.
 
Student: We heard
multiple
>
 
Prof: Okay.
 
We heard multiple unaccompanied
voices.
What kind of texture was being
employed there?
Student: Mostly
polyphonic.
Prof: Mostly polyphonic,
and we said within the textures
we had imitative and
non-imitative polyphonic
textures.
 
Was this imitative or
non-imitative?
Student:
>
Prof: Everybody agree
with that?
Anyone disagree with it?
 
Some people are shaking their
head.
It was non-imitative--or
no--excuse me--it was imitative.
If I had time to play it again,
you could hear one voice would
come in, >
 
and then somebody else would
come in, >
and then the third voice and
the fourth voice,
but you're right to say
multiple voices unaccompanied.
So you sort of get two points
for that, and what do we call
that unaccompanied style?
 
Student:
>
Prof: Yeah.
 
So--but we don't get a separate
point for a cappella.
Unaccompanied a cappella
style would be one marker there.
The idea of imitative voices
would be another.
You might even pick up on the
text, I suppose--that it's in
what language?
 
Latin, yeah.
 
What else there?
 
That it's not particularly
rhythmic.
No strong rhythms or meters.
 
It flows gently like Gregorian
chant,
and, as mentioned,
we have this texture that's not
only polyphonic but highly
imitative,
and those are all hallmarks of
late Medieval,
Renaissance music.
 
That particular piece was
written by an English composer,
Thomas Tallis,
but more interesting,
in a way, it's a setting of the
old "Lamentations of
Jeremiah"
out of the Old Testament that
laments the fall of Jerusalem.
 
So it's a particularly dark,
heartfelt text and exquisitely
set there in that Renaissance
vocal style.
Let's go on to another one now.
 
 
 
>
 
Sometimes you can figure this
out in about three seconds.
It doesn't take much more than
that.
So with just that,
and we'll be playing a lot more
than three seconds--many minutes
and, depending upon the
particular piece,
probably more than once.
So what did you hear there?
 
And we may go back and hear
just that much.
What did you hear there?
 
Let's talk about what you heard
and then we'll conclude about
the period in question.
 
So someone get us started.
 
Nicole.
 
Student: A lot of
percussion.
Prof: A lot of
percussion.
Okay.
 
Very--definitely,
particularly the tympani.
Marcos.
 
Student:
>
Prof: A lot of
dissonance.
That was very prominent.
 
It started out okay.
 
It could have been a kind of
John Williams "Star
Wars" type sound up until
the--
about the third iteration of
one particular figure,
but the level at--the pitches
at which it was brought in
produced a very dissonant moment
there.
So initially you say, "Oh,
maybe John Williams and
Romanticism knockoff kind of
thing," but when that
dissonant enters,
then that takes you in to a
slightly different realm.
 
Daniel.
 
Student: There's a lot
of blaring brass,
and it's kind of in a
percussive way.
Prof: Okay.
 
A lot of brass,
and even if they were not
percussion instruments,
those instruments were being
used in a kind of percussive,
in-your-face way.
Yeah.
 
So those are three good things.
 
Roger, you got another one?
 
Student: There were lots
of ostinatos.
Prof: I beg your pardon.
 
Student: Lots of--
Prof: Yes,
there were lots of ostinatos
right at the beginning.
I almost forgot about that,
and may have only been just two
notes going back and forth.
 
So already we've got our four,
and maybe that's all we need.
Let's listen to just the--it's
not a long excerpt.
Let's listen to the beginning
of this again.
>
 
Could be Romanticism
>
with that entry right there,
very dissonant <<music
playing>>
 
and the ostinatos of course.
 
Percussion, >
dissonance, more dissonance,
>
brasses as percussion
instruments, <<music
playing>>
 
more percussion,
pounding dissonance.
>
 
And a lot of Modern music has a
kind of intensity to it:
"Stop.
 
I give up."
 
Okay?
 
"I surrender."
 
It's got that element to it.
 
There's an intensity to it here
so that could be even a fifth
component in our thinking.
 
So all of this leads us to the
conclusion that this is a piece
of twentieth-century music by
the woman composer Ellen
Zwilich,
and you have Ellen Zwilich of
course as the basis of your
Listening Exercise forty-five
that you've done.
 
This is simply another piece
called "Celebration."
It's a pretty--so far a pretty
intense celebration by Ellen
Zwilich written in 1984,
so it's a fairly recent piece
of music in the Modernist
style--
not Post-modernist,
but Modernist.
Okay.
 
Well, I'm going to--I think
variety is always useful in
life.
 
I'm going to--and I asked Lynda
yesterday,
"Lynda,
you prepare a piece and--
but don't tell me what it is
'cause I want to go through the
same thought processes that
other people have."
So Lynda has prepared a piece,
and I don't know whether she's
going to use the piano or
whether she's going to use the
audio player.
 
 
 
>
 
Lynda: What are you
hearing?
Who has any thoughts on this?
 
Student: Regular meter.
 
Lynda: Regular meter.
 
All right, that's a very good,
important point for this
particular meter.
 
What else?
 
What kinds of instruments?
 
Student: A lot of
strings in the foreground.
Lynda: Uh huh,
strings in the foreground,
so this means we have,
probably, an orchestra
of--what--well,
okay.
Before we get there--okay.
 
Strings in the foreground in
this particular ensemble.
Can anybody tell us what the
solo instrument was?
Student:  Bassoon.
 
Lynda:  Right, bassoon!
 
Prof:
>
What a coincidence.
 
>
 
Lynda: So we've got
regular meter,
strings in the foreground,
a solo instrument.
What might you say about the
relationship between the solo
instrument and the bigger
ensembles?
I think it may be pretty
obvious but--
Student: I guess
>
Lynda: That's true.
 
There seems to be at about a
similar level.
It doesn't seem like the
ensemble is very big and you
have them playing one after the
other,
which is a characteristic of
something that we learned about.
Rhythmically,
this goes with meter,
is it regular,
irregular?
Pretty regular.
 
You could tap your foot to it.
 
You could hear a melody.
 
I'll just play a couple more
seconds.
>
 
So the solo instrument is
playing something kind of simple
or something kind of virtuosic,
impressive?
It's pretty impressive.
 
You should hear lots of little
trills and weeping all over the
place?
 
It's showing off and this is a
feature of something we learned
about.
 
So who would like to guess what
period we're in--
Student: Romantic
>
Lynda:  Close,
yeah.
Yeah, I guess I can see why you
might--why might you say
Romantic?
 
Student:
>
Lynda: Which makes me
realize that it can't always
fall inside of the orchestra.
 
Sometimes it's better to listen
for some of the more abstract
features, such as what the
orchestra is doing.
The harmonies,
how about the harmonic
language?
 
Is it pretty surprising or a
little more expected?
Maybe it's just--maybe it's
something that's going to help
you zero in a little bit more.
 
Yeah, pretty expected,
not very surprising harmonies
Does anybody else have another--
Student:
>
 
Lynda: Little bows tied
up at the end of a phrase.
What does that suggest to you?
 
Student: A cadence.
 
Lynda: A cadence.
 
Very good,
>
which is very strong in what
period?
Student: Classical.
 
Lynda: Classical. Yeah.
 
These things do happen in other
periods, but this is sort of a
quintessential classical,
very particular genre.
Does anybody know what genre
we're in?
Student: Concerto.
 
Lynda: Concerto.
 
Exactly, so this would be
Mozart's "Bassoon
Concerto."
 
Who knew that Mozart wrote a
bassoon concerto?
It's one of the bassoonist's
biggest pieces in the
repertoire.
 
He felt the bassoon was sort of
amusing instrument;
that's why he wrote a lot of
leaps in it.
He felt it sounded like a clown.
 
Anyway, so that's a concerto
example for you which is not
piano or violin.
 
Yeah.
 
Student: What is the
main difference between Romantic
and Classical?
 
Lynda: That is a great
question.
I wonder if I ought to defer to
Professor Wright.
Prof: Well,
let's work through this
together.
 
One we have been all over this
morning,
and that is the size of the
orchestra,
and we talked when we had the
lecture on nineteenth-century
orchestral music,
how all of these instruments
come in.
 
So in Romantic music the
orchestra has many more and many
varied instruments in it ranging
from top piccolo down to middle
English horn down to bottom
contrabass,
bassoon, tuba and things like
that.
So it's the orchestra,
particularly low brasses and
that kind of sound,
that typifies the sound
generally for orchestral music
in the nineteenth century.
Then, whereas Daniel was
talking about bow tie,
they're tied together,
you don't--what he was
intimating there perhaps was
that we have this kind of paired
phrasing or neat little units of
phrasing that can be tied
together.
 
That's a component of Classical
music.
As you go into the Romantic
period,
the themes, the melodies,
become much more expansive,
and someone I think said
earlier on here it has--
maybe the first point was
there's pretty regular meter in
this particular piece of
Classical music by Mozart,
the "Mozart Bassoon
Concerto,"
K.
 
191.
 
Is that right?
 
And so the regularity of the
themes and the balance and
symmetry is part and parcel of
the Classical period.
You move into the Romantic.
 
You have expansive themes,
but by way of contradistinction
there,
then the rhythm becomes not
necessarily more flaccid,
but more loose,
and we talked about this
phenomenon of rubato,
for example.
 
So flexible rhythms,
flexible tempos,
less clear meters in the
Romantic period.
And, not to overdo it,
but maybe this idea of just
"beautiful melody,"
and it is of course in the
nineteenth century that we get
the whole idea of the bel
canto sound.
 
Anybody read
Rothstein's--no--Anthony
Tommasini's article that I
pointed you to about bel
canto?
 
He said, "Actually,
the beginning of that starts
back with the composers of piano
music of that same period and
then the opera composers begin
to go into it."
So who wrote this?
 
>
 
A lovely melody,
huh?
Isn't that beautiful?
 
Well, the whole idea of
beautiful melody--yeah,
Mozart wrote a lot of beautiful
melodies too.
So did Bach.
 
But somehow,
"beautiful melody,"
this warm, rich melody,
is very important in Romantic
music.
 
So this is a good example of
>
kind of rich harmonies,
a broader palette and--than the
classical period.
 
I could play one other piece
here just to differentiate
Romantic piano music from this
sound.
>
 
So that's a piece by Mozart.
 
You could say that the melody
is just as beautiful.
That's a gorgeous melody too.
 
That's lovely.
 
You could use that as film
music just as well as you could
the other piece.
 
So the first piece that I
played <<plays
piano>>
 
>
 
is by--any takers on that,
who--piano music of the
nineteenth century?
 
Anybody--if you've peeked
through the textbook--Thaddeus.
Student: Chopin.
 
Prof: Good.
 
Yeah, Chopin--Frederic Chopin,
so that's a
classic--quintessential moment
of Chopin that's become a
classic.
 
Indeed it became a kind of--
Judy Garland used to sing this,
"I'm Forever Chasing
Rainbows."
It got turned into a pop song
in the twentieth century because
it's such a drop-dead beautiful
melody,
but the difference here is
the--in the pianos the terms of
expansion.
 
Here is the Chopin sound
>.
Here is the--and the chords,
sometime they go <<plays
piano>>
 
, sort of interesting harmonic
shifts, but the Mozart by
comparison is very plain
harmonically <<plays
piano>>
 
and very limited in terms of
the range and limited somewhat
in terms of the texture.
 
What kind of bass is this?
 
We're talking about how we
identify style.
All you really have to do is
listen to about one second of
this >.
Well, I know what that is.
 
That has to be what?
 
Emily.
 
Student: Alberti.
Prof: That's an Alberti
bass and Alberti bass is used
only in what period of music
history?
Classical. Okay?
 
So you hear that and it's got
to be in a forty-year period,
roughly 1770 to 1810 or so,
and then they stopped using it.
How do you know that this is
specifically Mozart?
This is above and beyond the
pale.
The--if put down Beethoven for
this, it'd be great.
If you put down Haydn for this
it would be great;
Schubert for this would be
great;
Mozart for this it would be
great.
How we do know it's Mozart?
 
There's one little moment here
>
that when he takes that line
and nobody else would have
>.
 
He loves to do that.
 
What did he do there?
 
He inserted what?
 
>
 
What kind of scale is that?
 
>
 
Yeah.
 
Emily says chromatic.
 
So he inserted just a little
bit of chromaticism there and
that's a fingerprint of Mozart
so that--
we're parsing this out a little
bit more fine than we need do,
but that's the--kind of the
next step on this.
Okay.
 
Where are we?
 
Let's do one more piece.
 
 
 
Anybody want to ask a question
while we're queuing this up?
Oscar.
 
Student: Just the idea
of the use of ostinato music in
Modern music.
 
>
 
Prof: Beethoven wouldn't
really use so much of an
ostinato as he would just sit
there--
I see your point though--on one
chord and kind of hammer you
over the head with that,
but I--that's an--it's a good
point.
 
It's more sophisticated in a
way that we need get into in
here, but I wouldn't say
Beethoven uses ostinato so much
as iteration.
 
And admittedly it's a fine line
between ostinato and iteration
but kind of sitting on something
and just kind of repeating
that--
maybe that chord--over and over
and over again in a way that
Mozart or Schubert,
being fundamentally
constructors of melody,
wouldn't necessarily do.
 
Student:
>
Prof: Okay.
 
Yeah, that's true.
 
You could look upon the--that
>
as an ostinato,
but people don't normally do
that, but that's just fine and
dandy.
It may be something particular
to Beethoven rather than the era
generally, but yes,
you're right about that,
so good for you.
 
Oscar: one, Craig:
nothing at this point.
Any other question?
 
All right. Let's go on.
 
We'll hear one last piece and
then I'll let you go although
it's a fairly long one.
 
 
 
Any other questions as
we--Angela, go ahead.
Student:
>
Prof: Well,
you could use him as a swing
player.
 
In other words,
if you hear a piece that you
think is Beethoven and you put
that down as Classical that's
fine.
 
If you put that down as
Romantic, that's fine too.
 
 
>
 
Now there should be one thing
there that's a dead giveaway in
terms of period,
and what would that be?
Zach.
 
Student: The harpsichord.
 
Prof: The harpsichord,
okay, because we've said before
that really the harpsichord
doesn't get much in the way of
legs in the history of music
until the Baroque period and
then it disappears as it's
replaced by the piano,
for the most part,
in the Classical period.
So the Baroque period is
all--it can be readily
identified here simply by the
presence of the harpsichord.
But what else did we hear in
these admittedly very short
excerpts?
 
Well, let's go back to the
beginning, then,
and listen to the rhythm.
 
>
 
Could you dance or march to
this?
>
 
It sounds like almost a pompous
entry of some kind.
You can see the king coming in
to court or something
>.
 
So, highly regular rhythm here,
and this rhythm and this
particular sound goes on and
goes unchanged for about a
minute and thirty-five seconds
or so,
and that's another aspect of
this--not only regular rhythm
but a regular ethos in the music
of the Baroque period.
Now let's listen to this last
component here and then we'll
stop with this.
 
 
 
>
 
So what are we hearing here and
why is this further evidence of
music coming from the Baroque
period?
Mary Pat.
 
Student: It's a fugue.
 
Prof: It's a fugue,
okay, and we studied the fugue
and we said the fugue came into
being in the Baroque period,
principally under the aegis of
J.S. Bach.
So there we've got our four
bullet points or four pieces of
supporting evidence for the
conclusion that we came to
rather early on,
as Zach pointed out,
by the presence of the
harpsichord there.
Any final questions before we
stop?
If not, I have a request.
 
You may have heard that
unfortunately our good friend,
Richard Lalli,
has had a serious medical issue
that he is dealing with.
 
And he was--he is always such a
wonderful guy and this was going
to be the highlight of his
career.
He was going to take over the
mastership of Jonathan Edwards
College and unfortunately this
happened.
So I'd be very grateful to
you--and we've got a couple of
get well cards out there and
Richard is always very much
interested in our Yale students,
and it would be great if on the
way out,
you would be good enough to
sign your name there on those
cards and we'll be sure that
they get over to Richard.
 
Okay.
 
Thanks very much and I'll see
you next Wednesday,
six days from now.
 
 
 
