Christopher Davis

Many people suggest that analysis is basically accounting for all the notes on the page. That is, fitting those notes into the abstract structures defined by harmony or melodic devices or motivic development. The next step — the one that gets skipped — is figuring out what the composer meant by the stuff on the page.

This is really easy to do when there’s text. Why? Because the poem literally tells you what the song (or in this case, Motet) is about. It’s just a matter of looking at the music and see how the composer uses the musical elements imply things.

I often take the approach of looking for something interesting. So when I find it, I examine that section and focus on it. In the piece above, the section 1:48 – 2:24 is very interesting to me. Below is a bit of what I wrote about the piece.

Here Mouton repeats a three measure musical idea three times: each voice repeats the same three measures three times. In addition, the cantus imitates the soprano for the measures, and, again, the closely spaced imitation dissolves to homophony by the end of the third measure.

The text at this point translates as, “With peaceful joy let us celebrate the Nativity of Blessed Mary.” Two important things stand out in the text/music relationship. First, the portion where the narrator discusses peace and joy is set to the repeating fragment. And indeed, the musical effect of this section is strikingly peaceful — the contrapuntal drive heard in the previous sections is lost and the section seems to be in stasis. Second, on the celebremus (celebrate) Mouton abandons three-measure fragment creating a sort of musical celebration. Here the forward momentum returns, driving to the first cadence in all voices without textual overlap in measure 67.

A lot of medieval music theory is based on Bothius‘ De Musica (On Music). Many of the concepts of what is a consonance, and the just tuning system are all from it. The treatise is mostly a summary of Greek sources (Pythagoras, etc.).

Naturally, because I’m a nerd, I wanted to read some of Boethius’s writing to see what everyone back in the day was so excited about.

Anyway…

[when two notes] are struck at the same time, and they produce an intermingle sweet sound, and the two sounds agree together as if joined in one, then that is what we call consonance. On the other hand, when the [notes] are struck at the same time and each one desires to go its own way, and they do not impress the ear as a sound which is sweet, and as one sound made from two, then this occurrence is what we call dissonance.

The second part is pretty interesting to me. “When the [notes] are struck at the same time and each one desires to go its own way … this occurrence is what we call dissonance”

Tendency tones are are melodically or harmonically unstable tones that desire resolution. Sing Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti (as in a major scale) and stop. Ti wants to go to Do– Ti is a tendency tone. Dominant function chords have tendency tones: the leading tone again, and the seventh (if one is present).

Seems like Boethius was talking about tendency tones a long time ago.
_______
Translation from:

Bower, Calvin Martin. “Botheius’ The Principles of Music, an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary.” Diss. Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, 1967.

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That’s a little chunk of Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy. It comes back several times throughout the piece.

How I’m approaching it:

• Rhythmic Variations
• Slow/Fast Alternation
• I learned it early on with chaining

So far it seems to be working okay. I’ve never done anything like this before (huge melodic arpeggios) so it’s very unfamiliar. Need to perform it soon to see how it really holds up and evaluate from there.

When you study music for a long time, you analyze music almost without thinking. You tear things apart and generate formal, melodic, and harmonic maps of pieces almost without thinking. I was teaching a webcam lesson earlier this week on the Merlin Suite Del Recuerdo, and without thinking about it I had analyzed the melody and form.

This is a good thing in the sense that it makes it very easy for me to have something to say about a piece when teaching, even if I’ve never played it before (as was the case with the Merlin: I’d never looked at the sheet music before). On the other hand, this makes it very hard to listen to music while doing anything else. I can’t listen to music when I read; I can’t listen to music when I write blog posts or papers. About the only time I can listen is when I set aside time specifically for that or late at night.

It’s kind of a cool development, like the last six years of music training* has finally started to catch up with me. I can’t even imagine what goes through veteran musicians’ heads when they hear a piece of play through it for the first time. I have to think that the level of analysis that takes places unconsciously is amazing.

*That’s a long time–25% of my life so far has been spent in college/grad school.