Tritone Essays

“The Rite of Spring” was certainly the most controversial piece of orchestral music of its time. The piece, composed by the Russian Composer Igor Stravinsky, included a great deal of uncommon musical elements. But was it really that uncommon? The world-changing ballet, “The Rite of Spring” was so controversial when it debuted in 1913, because it completely contradicted the common rhythmic and harmonic languages of the music at the time. The choreography and costumes were a main part of the reason

Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet is a classic love story about “two star-crossed lovers” who are battling love and hate between each other and their families. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet are deeply in love, but even with all of this love, there is still a brawling hate between the two families. The Montagues and Capulets are known to be the two families who have had a long lasting feud in the city of Verona, where in this story this “ancient grudge breaks to new mutiny”. Romeo and Juliet

“The Rite of Spring” was certainly the most controversial piece of orchestral music of its time. The piece, composed by the Russian Composer Igor Stravinsky, included lots of uncommon musical elements. But was it really that uncommon? The world-changing ballet, “The Rite of Spring” was so controversial when it debuted in 1913, because it completely contradicted the common rhythmic and harmonic languages of most of the music at the time. The choreography and costumes were also a main part of the reason

Musical theatre performance, which presents fictional plots and impresses audiences with show-stopping dance and song, unites dramatic works across the globe. American musical theatre, specifically, draws inspiration from European straight plays, burlesques, and operas, while dramatizing American topics. Nineteenth-century musical comedies use entertaining situations, rather than plot, to frame performances involving song, dance, and humor. For example, George M. Cohan’s works, although inspired

On Saturday, November 11, I attended a performance of Cabaret at Dutchess Community College. This musical is set in Berlin, 1931 Germany pre World War I as the Nazis are rising to power. It takes place in a nightclub, the Kit Kat Klub and revolves around an American writer named Cliff Bradshaw and his relationship with an English cabaret performer, Sally Bowles. The cast features six major characters: Sally Bowles, the headlining British singer at the Kit Kat Klub, the Emcee, or the Master of Ceremonies

and G natural, which is the interval of the augmented fourth, or tritone. (EXAMPLE) The tritone, which contradicts the concept of diatonic tonality, is used as Debussy’s basic structural principle in Prélude a l'après midi d'un Faune. The opening melody establishes a brief sense of E major in bar 3 but resolves to the dominant seventh of E flat major in bar 84. (EXAMPLE) This progression is extremely unusual and demonstrates the tritone relationship of the root of the dominant seventh chord B flat,

In “Maria” Tony sings an ascending tritone, which is then resolved up to a perfect fifth, creating a sense of hopefulness, unlike the tritones previously referenced in the prologue (Bernstein 138). This runs parallel to the plot of West Side Story, where Tony sings to Maria, for her love. Bernstein’s other works, while not as mainstream as

implements an E Augmented chord at bar 8 to introduce instability and tension early in the piece, complicating the standard dominant-tonic resolution. Having Eaug consisting of the notes E, G# and B#, gives a notably different feel as it creates a tritone interval as opposed to a straight E-A progression. Kander then uses an interrupted cadence (V-VI) to further deny resolution by moving from E7 to F7. This highlights the exciting and new, yet unstable zeitgeist of the roaring 20s and generates

Directors Association. The title “Marche Diabolique” specifically the March part indicates towards a march style piece. Balmages borrows elements from concert marches and puts them in a contemporary framework. Balmages also uses the Tritone. He surrounds the Tritone with spooky harmonic language. The piece is loosely based on A B A form but with a big finale right before the end rolls around. There are not a lot of tempo or speed changes

Sarena Chandler Dr. Wakeman Orchestration & Arranging Listening #3 The Music For Strings, Percussion, and Celeste written by Bartok, is theoretically unique and composed in a very different way. This piece is in four movements, Bartok intentionally makes the first and third movements slow, and the second and fourth fast.The first movement is a slow fugue, with a time signature that changes abruptly. The piece was written without a key signature, and is instead centered around the note

The 1950’s in my opinion was probably the most impactful decade on Rock music. The emergence of the crossovers was probably the best thing to happen in the music scene thus creating rock and roll. The social impact of music in the 1950’s specifically hit the teens appealing to their style and even expressing their frustrations. The music in the 50’s consisted of mainstream rock, rockabilly, and soft rock. Mainstream Rock was upbeat and mainly stuck to the 12-bar blues pattern. Most of the instrumentation

Jazz and Civil Rights “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swingin ' in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hangin ' from the poplar trees. “Strange Fruit” initially performed by Billie Holiday depicts one of the inceptive repercussions of the civil rights movement‒ a lynching. Holiday’s expression of the event delivers an overall timbre and mood for jazz in the coming era. The development of the Civil Rights movement and opposing factions

Polymodality in Dave Brubeck’s Compositions After returning from the army service in 1946, David Warren Brubeck (1920-2012) enrolled to study with Darius Milhaud (who he met before enlistment) at Mills College in Oakland, California. Through Milhaud, Brubeck became involved with polyrhythms and polymodality, and they developed a relation of friendship until Milhaud’s death in 1974. Brubeck emerged as one of the most significant figures in West Coast jazz of the 1950s and beyond. Deborah Mawer states

accepting of radical thought. The worldview of the time, stuck to what was mostly agreed upon. Regardless, Salome was a hit. The opera did not follow common norms of classical music at the time, and it even opened with a piece including a key change a tritone away, the diabolus in musica (Ross 7). The sudden shift from the key of C# major accompanied by Gershwin-esque melodies to a key a devil’s tone away,

In 1968 in Birmingham, England were there resided band members Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward of the famous and first ever heavy metal rock bands, Black Sabbath lived in for most of their lives in poor conditions of life as children and teenagers to soon turn what they hated about it into music of which England's working class soon fell in love with due to its contrast from the upbeat theme happy of all the other songs from the 60’s. This cause a revolution in rock and roll

Counterpoint can be defined as the combination of different melodic lines in a composition. Good counterpoint requires both a logical harmonic relationship between the lines as well as a degree of individuality and independences within the lines. Theorists have emphasized the vertical aspects of species counterpoint by defining the certain note combinations that are dissonances and consonances and prescribing where both should occur in both strong and weak beats. To contrast this, many great composers

Development of music history from Medieval period to Baroque Period Music exists in every known cultural group of the world and it is likely to have existed among the ancient ancestral communities. Music may have started in Africa, having existed for at least 55,000 years before evolving into an essential constituent of human life. Different people have different perspectives towards music. For instance, some may take music as jazz set, an orchestral symphony, an electronic beat or even a simple

Junwen Jia Dr. Jacqueline Avila Musicology Paper I 9/27/2016 From Medieval to Renaissance: The Motet in Transition During the Medieval and Renaissance Periods, the Motet became the most well-developed form of polyphonic vocal music. The motet was created based on the Magnus liber organi (Great Book of Organum) of French composer Leonin (fl. 1169-1201). In organum, a second voice part (the discant clausula) was added above existing Latin chant texts. This later came to be known as “motet,” from

INTRODUCTION Debussy and his love for the mysterious realm of the antique are epitomized in his piano duets Six Épigraphes Antiques. The work evolved over an extended period to become a prime example of his style of composition. The poems Chansons de Bilitis written by his close friend Pierre Louÿs (1894) inspired Debussy to compose firstly Trois Chansons de Bilitis (1898) three songs for soprano and piano, then Chansons de Bilitis (1901) instrumental music to accompany the reading of a selection