Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and exercises for Music for Secondary education

String Instruments

These instruments produce sound through the vibration of one or more strings.

Depending on the vibration technique, we distinguish bowed, plucked, and struck strings.

Bowed String

Sound is produced by rubbing the strings with a bow. They typically have four strings and a similar shape.

• Violin: Smallest, highest pitch.
• Viola: Slightly larger than the violin, middle pitch.
• Violoncello: Larger, lower register, played sitting with an endpin.
• Double Bass: Largest, very low register, played standing.

Plucked String

Sound is produced by plucking the strings with fingers, a pick, or a plectrum.

• Harp: Has 47 strings.
• Guitar: Has six strings and a fretted neck.

Struck String

Sound is produced by striking the strings with hammers activated by a keyboard....

Renaissance Instruments: A Detailed Look

The instruments described are as follows:

Wind Instruments

• Bugler: A curved wind instrument made of wood, with a cup-shaped mouthpiece.
• Crumhorn: A rod-shaped instrument consisting of a capsule timber in which is inserted a double reed. It produces a soft and sharp sound.
• Sackbut: A metal instrument that produces a rounded and less bright sound than current trombones.
• Trumpet: A blowing tool with metal coils, whose sounds are produced by the position of the lips.

String Instruments

• Viola: A bowed instrument with six and seven strings, of great importance in the Renaissance. Their sound was soft and veiled. It was held in front of the body and not under the chin. It had three sizes: soprano, alto, and tenor.

Cinquecento: Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) produced few works, but of very high quality. His major technical contribution was the sfumato technique, applied in works such as The Last Supper and Mona Lisa.

Michelangelo

Michelangelo (1475-1564) displayed special interest in nudes, movement, variety of poses, drawing, and the depiction of volume. His main work was the series of frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.

Raphael

Raphael (1483-1520) achieved great perfection in drawing, color, and composition. His principal work was The School of Athens.

The Birth of the Baroque

The Baroque arose during the 17th century in response to papal patronage in Rome and spread across the rest of Europe. Artists continued the artistic traditions of the Renaissance....

Folk Music and Ethnomusicology

Folklore encompasses the traditional beliefs, stories, customs, and art of a community. Ethnomusicology is the study of traditional music, dance, and instruments, with Béla Bartók as one of its founders.

Examples of folk music include:

• Lullabies
• Love songs (serenades)
• Music for festivities and rituals (Christmas, Easter, funerals)
• Work songs
• Play songs
• Dance music

Musical Phrases and Repetition

A musical phrase is a meaningful segment of a melody. Repetition is common in music, such as:

• Canon: A composition with several parts repeating the same melody.
• Ostinato: A repeated accompanying pattern.

Call and response is a participatory pattern found in various African cultures, involving a leader and a group response.

Traditional

Classical Opera and Its Reformation

We delimit Classicism between the years 1730 and 1820 approximately. During this period, opera underwent a significant change, eliminating the excesses of the Baroque era and bringing plots and characters closer to the new bourgeois audience.

Opera Seria

In Opera Seria, the initiator of this reformation was the German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, who laid the foundations of the new opera in 1762 with the work Orpheus and Euridice.

Opera Buffa

Opera Buffa became the favorite genre of Classicism. The main composer was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with The Marriage of Figaro (written in Italian) and The Magic Flute (written in German).

The Role of the Orchestra Conductor

The progressive complexity of orchestral...

Every musical instrument has its own timbre. It is very important for a composer to know about the timbres and expressive qualities of them.

Romanticism in Music

Romanticism feels a passion for everything that is distant, magical, and unreal. Romantic music, leaving the balance of classicism for a direct and passionate expression of feelings and emotions. Music occupies a place of honor in this period; it is more abstract than others.

Musical Forms

• Vocal Music: Opera, Mass, Oratorio, Lied.
• Instrumental Music: Symphony, Symphonic Poem, Sonata, Concerto, Trio, Quartet, Quintet.

Symphonic Poem

A symphonic poem is a work of a genre that develops from a fact of imagination.

The Orchestra

Instruments: Percussion, drums, trumpets, horns, trombones, tuba, harp, clarinet, bassoon, oboe, violins, and basses.

The Lied

A Lied is a song in a romantic style and with a very stylized German language, interpreted...

Ancient Greek Music: Key Characteristics

1. Music and Dance: Art Dissemination

Music and poetry were the primary means to disseminate art.

2. Heterophonic Monody Texture

Instruments introduced small heterophonic ornaments, imitating the melody.

3. Music System Based on Modal Scales

Tetrachords are four sounds that overlap on the octave. Two tetrachords combine to form descending modal scales, creating an ethos.

Ethos: Scale Tone Distribution and Feeling

The distribution of tones and semitones in the scale caused different feelings:

• Dorian mode: Sublime
• Phrygian mode: Mild
• Lydian mode: Tears and sorrow
• Mixolydian mode: Passionate

4. Alphabetic Code for Pitch and Metric Feet for Rhythm

Letters were used to reflect pitch. Metric feet were combinations of long...