Western Music Theory
The goals of this assignment are for you to hone your skills of using musical elements terminology correctly and fluently, and for you to use this terminology as part of advancing a written argument about one or two pieces of music. The final result should be between 800 and 1200 words long.
You can use music from any genre or tradition, but you should not write your paper about a piece on the syllabus. A few approaches are suggested below, but you may invent your own. Regardless of which way you decide to approach the paper, it should consist of two elements: the musical elements that constitute the piece and what makes them significant to you.
1)Music and Text.
Choose one or two songs and put forward your own argument about the interaction between music and text. Your choices can come from any genre you wish. If you choose to write about two songs rather than one, think of what would make a fruitful comparison.
Examples include:
two songs with similar or the same texts but different music; two songs with a similar purpose; two songs with a shared poetic image; or two songs by the same composer that share a musical feature.
2)Music in Film or Television.
Consider music in the context of film or a television show – either the use of pre-existing music or music composed specifically for the film. Suggest the ways that the music adds meaning, significance, or expression to a particular scene and/or to the film as a whole. You might consider narrative, character, setting, cinematography, and/or editing in addition to musical features.
3)Instrumental Music.
How does instrumental music suggest meaning to a listener? Draw examples from one or two pieces to provide specific musical evidence for your argument.
Submit your paper as a response on Mediathread (which will be linked to Courseworks). You must also upload your video or audio tracks onto Mediathread.
In your paper embed links to “selections” from the video; i.e. when you mention a specific passage or musical technique, embed a link to that passage in the track (e.g. “When X *starts singing*, the angelic timbre of her voice dominates the homophonic texture, and the speech-like rhythm and syllabic text setting of the verses makes the words easy to understand.”).
As far as I know, it’s not possible to change the titles of Mediathread selections after you’ve made them or merged them into your text, so think carefully about how you’re titling your annotations as you make them, if you’re interested in having them flow seamlessly with your text. You must embed at least 5 selections in your paper.
Musical Terminology:
This assignment should be a chance to use musical terminology and concepts. For example, being able to say “the dancing triple meter and syncopated, staccato violins make the song sound upbeat” is more valuable than “the song is upbeat.” Your use of musical terminology should be in the service of your ideas.
Describe the music as closely as you can, but the remember that the point of musical analysis is to help you say something about the music and what it does, not just to say what it is made of.
For example, this is an accurate, but useless description of a painting: “This painting by Vermeer uses a little
bit of yellow, some brown, and a lot of burnt sienna. It is painted on a rectangular canvass about 3’ by 6’. It employs perspective, shading, and signification. It is very old, and the style it employs is correspondingly old.”
Flow and Composition:
Your paper should be clear, organized, and coherent. Not everyone is a poet, but the weight of your argument rests on how clearly you communicate.
