April 8: Milhaud, Weill, and Hindemith

Darius Milhaud: La creation du monde (The Creation of the World), Op. 81a: First tableau [NAWM 185]

• ballet
• jazz style with winds, strings, brass, and percussion, but also piano, lots of percussion, and saxophone
• brief fugue in three sections (inspired by blues scales and rhythms as well as polytonality and polyrhythm)
• piano/percussion share a 4-measure long rhythmic ostinato grouped as 3+3+3+3+4, similar to ragtime
• beginning begins somewhat sparse but gradually more timbres are added in to build intensity

*

Kurt Weill: Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera): Prelude, Die Moritat von Mackie Messer [NAWM 186]

• opera in German; translation: the “Ballad of Mack the Knife”
• strophic song in a mock-popular style, over a light accompaniment “in the manner of a barrel organ”
• entire melody derived from two-measure phrase with a lilting dotted rhythm leading to two even half notes; repeated and gradually varied, at first with rising skips and steps and then with falling steps and sevenths
• short phrases, frequent rests, lilting rhythm

*

Paul Hindemith: Symphony Mathis der Maler: Second movement, Grablegung (Entombment) [NAWM 187]

• symphony
• flows like a single thought
• aided by a pervasive rhythmic figure (quarter note, eighth rest, and eighth note [or, its equivalent, dotted quarter and eighth]) which shows up in almost every measure
• neotonal harmony: open fifths, triads, chords built on fourths, dissonances of a second or seventh

April 6: Gershwin, Smith, Oliver, and Ellington

George Gershwin: I Got Rhythm, from Girl Crazy [NAWM 181]

• Broadway show song
• opens with instrumental introduction, beginning with hi-hat and following with some very obviously Gershwin-esque music
• music becomes very sparse when the female Broadway singer begins singing–very obviously Broadway because of the harshness (for lack of a better word) of the voice
• in English–sings the title as well a list of other things she has besides rhythm, repeating “Who Could Ask For Anything More?” pretty often
• basis for Rhythm Changes

*

Bessie Smith: Black Water Blues [NAWM 182]

• blues
• female voice (English) accompanied by ragtime sort of piano
• strophic; 12-bar blues

*

King Oliver [Joe Oliver]: West End Blues [NAWM 183]

• begins with Armstrong’s trumpet solo, then trombone solo, skatting voice and clarinet play off one another, piano solo
• slow tune with emphasis on each quarter note

*

Duke Ellington: Cotton Tail [NAWM 184]

• jazz composition (contrafact)
• fast swing; Rhythm Changes chords

Primary source research

http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A02EEDF133BEE3BBC4051DFB066838E659EDE

This is a New York Times article reviewing the 1945 movie Rhapsody in Blue, a Warner Brothers film about Gershwin’s life. I think its pretty relevant because it shows not only that Gershwin was such a household name that one of the biggest creators in film recreated his life in a movie (years after his death), but also that their poor and unrealistic portrayal of Gershwin was received so badly–both in this article and in another source written by Duke Ellington, it seems as though people jumped to fiercely defend the real Gershwin and almost seemed to take personal offense to this made-up echo of the real man, something I would assume they would do only for someone they sincerely loved and valued (and further showing the impact Gershwin had on the average American).

Rhapsody in Blue in the Media

Here is the United Airlines commercial featuring Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (with encouraging comments such as “best airline commercial ever,” “loving the Gershwin,” etc. from random YouTubians, which further proves my argument of this piece’s lasting influence):

The commercial was aired during the 2008 Summer Olympics, according to the article below. It was one of five commercials debuted that day that used emotions to convey the comfort and luxury one might experience flying United. So, not only did the Rhapsody in Blue commercial air at a time when viewers are more patriotic than usual (rooting for the USA team in the Beijing Olympics), but it was also used as an emotional marketing scheme, meaning advertisers thought Gershwin’s piece was so telling of the American experience (or maybe more the American dream, since the commercial was aimed more toward first class passengers concerned with comfort and luxury) that it could evoke those feelings in its audience.

http://0-search.proquest.com.libcat.uncw.edu/docview/199787400?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:wcdiscovery

Two book sources

There’s a pretty cool chapter in the Duke Ellington Reader (p. 114) about Ellington’s response to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess… though this doesn’t have much to do with Rhapsody in Blue, I’m incredibly interested in looking at the different viewpoints of Gershwin and Ellington, when it comes to race and jazz (the two seem so intermingled in my research it feels impossible to leave out, especially when comparing and contrasting the two musicians), and there is a boatload of awesome insight into Ellington’s perspective (from his own mouth) through an interview in this book.

Likewise, there is a chapter in the George Gershwin Reader (p. 300) which I’d like to check out as well, though unfortunately I wasn’t able to locate a preview of this one to decide whether or not it is pertinent to my writing. However, the UNCW library has both of these (woot!) so I’ll be checking them out in the very near future.

April 1: Bartok and Ives

Bela Bartok: Mikrokosmos: No. 123, Staccato and Legato [NAWM 178]

• etude for piano
• exercise in playing legato and staccato in alternation within each hand and simultaneously between both hands
• synthesis of peasant music and classical music

*

Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta: Third movement, Adagio [NAWM 179]

• symphonic suite
• begins (and ends) with a metric modulation on a high F of xylophone (sounds like claves actually), glissandos on timpani (in tritones), low string tremolos (tritones again), figures in violas and violins that snake through chromatic space
• neotonal
• solo violins and celesta share a theme, accompanied by an eerie background of trills in strings and parallel major sevenths articulated by the piano, violin glissandos, and string tremolos
• two glissandos and two mutually exclusive pentatonic scales played rapidly in harp, piano, and celesta, over which a twisting theme in parallel octave tremolos gradually rises

*

Charles Ives: General William Booth Enters into Heaven [NAWM 180]

• text in English (by American poet)
• song; performing forces piano and male voice
• imitates drum beats as dissonant chords on the piano
• ostinatos, parallel dissonant chords, modernistic sounds
• rising and falling whole-tone scale in voice; repeating ostinatos in piano
• repeating motive in voice–first mostly diatonic passage in the song, slow, soft, dignified (representing Jesus’ serenity)

March 30: Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring: Excerpts [NAWM 176]

• ballet
• uses unusual timbres like low alto flute, high clarinet in D and Eb, trumpet in D, mutes, flutter-tonguing, frequent staccatos, detached playing

A) Danse des adolescentes (Dance of the Adolescent Girls)

• strings use double stops and downbows on every chord; reiterate a sonority that includes all seven notes of an Ab harmonic minor scale
• unusual pattern of accents in horns destroys any feeling of metrical regularity
• English horn ostinato (four-note figure common in Slavic music) over arpeggiated triads in bassoons and cellos
• throughout, pounding chords return as does the ostinato, and the two are played over top of one another or juxtaposed or superimposed
• fanfare of stacked fifths in brass and clarinets, repeated with an embellished running idea in flutes and violin 1 over ostinatos
• melody based on Russian folk tune in bassoons, repeated and varying each time
• English horn ostinato returns, passed to other instruments, until the end
• increases intensity to end by building up layers of sound–solo horn melody, repeated by flute and varied, another melody in cellos in parallel thirds, crescendoing to end.

B) Danse sacrale (Sacrificial Dance)

• constant changes of meter
• repeating dissonant chords interspersed with rests in unpredictable ways

*

Symphony of Psalms: First movement [NAWM 177]

• choral symphony (SATB chorus and orchestra)
• text in Latin–from Latin psalms
• combined his own “trademarks” with echoes of styles/genres/forms of music from the 18th century and older
• sudden discontinuities and juxtapositions of material; sudden changes of meter; unpredictable rhythms and rests that emphasize elemental pulsation rather than meter
• ostinatos and superimpose multiple layers
• less dissonant than Rite of Spring; frequent references to the language and styles of the past (triads and diatonic scales, imitation of liturgical chant in vocal lines)
• neotonal: establishing a tonal center not through traditional harmony but through repetition and assertion
• some sections primarily diatonic; others octatonic
• avoidance of emotionalism associated with Romantic music–exclusion of violins and violas from orchestra, avoidance of tempo markings which suggest mood

Pattern 17

1. After many years of hard work the painter realized that he finally achieved what he’d always wanted.

2. What Grace did amused her sisters and brothers.

3. What runners lack in endurance, if they’re fast, they can usually manage.

4. That assignment became easier for me to understand after I thought about it.

5. How often she hiccupped shocked not only me but the rest of the class as well.

More research–draft 2

Found another useful source for comparing Ellington and Gershwin (and it was a seriously interesting read). A eBook called Dvorak to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America’s Music and it’s African-American Roots, it is centered around the issues concerning race and jazz. With two sections on Gershwin alone and three on Ellington alone, there is some incredibly relevant information I can use in my paper–and from this, eventually deduce my own opinion and voice. In one part, Ellington insults Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, calling it “Gershwin’s lampblack Negroisms,” which I found interesting and would like to try to research more Ellington’s reaction to Gershwin if possible (and conversely, Gerswhin’s to Ellington). Another where Ellington credits Paul Whiteman for popularizing jazz, though he made it “whiter.” Written by someone who actually collaborated with Ellington (to create a symphonic arrangement of “Black, Brown, and Beige,” among other things), there is some super cool insight into Ellington the person and in general the way jazz was composed at the time, etc.

http://0-site.ebrary.com.libcat.uncw.edu/lib/uncw/reader.action?docID=10087303&ppg=20

Research for Draft 2

Found an old NY Times article before Ellington’s performance in Carnegie Hall in 1943. There is a paragraph where Ellington is quoted mentioning Paul Whiteman and his respect for him despite the fact that his popularization of the symphonic genre of jazz (Ellington preferred to call his own music “Negro music”) was much different than the way he viewed his own approach to music. Might turn out to be useful for a Gershwin-Ellington compare/contrast.

http://0-search.proquest.com.libcat.uncw.edu/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/106529993/46E5DBF998EC425DPQ/20?accountid=14606