Composition from Essential Intervals

Due Wednesday, November 13

1. Reduction to essential intervals: Reduce a double-period, or other long sentence, of your “favorite melody” to its essential treble-bass framework. The melody should be a sentence from a composition from the 19th century. Your reduction should clarify a “Kaupfton” (that’s the main melodic note being prolonged), intermediary, and cadential melody, but for purposes of this assignment, it should also include about 1-2 melodic notes for approximately each bar of music — (edit for clarification, & see Liszt example in class) … resulting from the elimination of NCTs.

Each melodic note should either be consonant with a bass note, or it should involve an interval such as a seventh or a tritone that resolves clearly to a consonance in the next bar. Turn this in.

(2. Then, form a “precompositional plan” by transposing the essential interval structure into a different key, and write it lightly over a spacious portion of your notebook. Add at least one digression—for example, could one of the prolonged harmonies — an imperfect consonance — by doubled in length with a voice exchange? Could it be quadrupled by applying a dominant to each element in that voice exchange? Could a predominant harmony be extended for a few measures with a linear intervalic progression? Could a deceptive cadence be added to delay the conclusion? Don’t turn this in — bring it for discussion in class.)

Due Wednesday, November 22

3. Composition Draft (turn this in, along with a revision of step 2): Using different NCTs, rhythms, and motives than those found in the original, draft a new melody over your precompositional plan. Be rhythmically flexible—do not retain the same notes and intervals “on the beat” that your precompositional plan (step 2) shows. (Very few good compositions in this style are without accented NCTs!) But on the other hand, make sure to use no more than 2 basic rhythmic ideas in the composition—Romantic music is unified by its limited development of rhythmic ideas.

— Note: for part 2, you will be graded according  to your correct use of least one “digression”. Review our notes on elaborations like passing chords, arpeggiations, voice exchanges, unfoldings, and linear intervalic progressions, to ensure you’ve made sensible use of them.

— Note: for part 3, you will be graded according to Kennan’s guidelines on note-to-note motion, and on two-part writing, so proof your work. (Note: You may knowingly violate the “step-skip” guidelines in this assignment, but you must mark all such instances in your draft with an asterisk.)

Presentation Guidelines

You will present either on Analysis I or Analysis II — each of which have two “steps.” Consider a presentation to be the third and final “step” in your work — and the most important one. The purpose of these presentations is to build experience in communicating clearly about what you hear in the music, and to show that you grasp both the piece in particular, and, more generally, the issues of the course regarding 19th harmony and form.

Basic guidelines for song presentations:

1. Bring 9 copies of a handout including (a) the text and translation (b) the score, and (c) your complete analysis of the song.

Project 1: Analysis graphs need not contain all phrases if there are exact repetitions in the song’s structure.

Project 2: You need only to present “linear/reductive” analysis of 1-2 phrases. You should however present a complete harmonic analysis, and discuss the form of the song as it relates to the text.

2. When your audience has the text and translation in front of them, begin by playing a recording of the song.

3. Briefly describe the text and some of its interesting features, including ambiguities in translation.

(Songs in this genre usually thrive when the text is understood in a fairly simple way. You do not need to “interpret” or “analyze” the poem — but you are welcome to do so, as long as it doesn’t take too much time.)

4. Briefly describe the whole form of the song: how many cadences, what kinds, what kinds of digression are involved, and how it all adds up to a whole piece.

(For example: is there anything purposeful about the path between phrases with strong and weak cadences, or between the home key and other keys tonicized?)

5. Referring to your analysis handout, describe in detail the structure of at least one phrase within the song that you find harmonically or motivically interesting. (Ideally, you should be able to play and sing 1-2 passages from the song in order to talk about what you hear in the music.)

Other questions to consider:

What aspects of the song are conventional:

(especially: conventional cadences in symmetrical phrases, conventional tonal sequences or modulations between close keys)  … versus

… what are surprising?

(especially: sequences that digress to remote keys, prolonging or emphasizing “intermediate” harmony, prolonging or obscuring cadences, unusual non-chord tones or striking elaborations, “individuated” harmony?)

What’s the relationship between the phrase structure of the music and the organization of the text?

What does the composition add to (or subtract from) the text? Are the composer’s means of elaborating conventional harmony successful? Do they make the words more meaningful?

Schumann / Schubert Song Assignments

Franz Schubert				[ PLEASE VISIT the works sign-up sheet to choose your assignment ]
	D. 911	Winterreise
		1		Gute Nacht	d, D, d	2/4
		2		Die Wetterfahne	C	6/8
		6		Wasserflut	e	3/4
		16		Letzte Hoffnung	Eb (eb, c)	3/4
Robert Schumann
	Op. 30	Gedichte von Em. Geibel
		2		Der Page	E	6/8
	Op. 35	Zwölf Gedichte
		4		Erstes Grün	g (G)	4/8
	\	6		Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenen Freundes	Eb	4/4
		10		Stille Thränen	C	6/4
	Op. 36	Sechs Gedichte
		3		Nicht Schöneres	C	6/8

Revision and Extension of a Melodic Sketch (Extra Credit)

Due October 11 (Extra Credit 5 pts):

Following guidelines given in class, and in Kent Kennan Chs. 4 & Ch. 6, use one of your melodic sketches to construct a parallel period that fulfills the following stylistic characteristics of short 18th-c instrumental compositions*:

1. Two phrases, of equal length, consisting of basically the same melody, except in that they reach different cadences. In general, the pair should progress from relatively weak (e.g. a half cadence, deceptive cadence, or non-root-position I.A.C.) to relatively strong (a full cadence, either root-position I.A.C. or P.A.C., sometimes in III or V but usually in I).
2. The melody is shaped in accord with “Whole Melody” guidelines and “Note-to-Note” guidelines adapted from Kennan and Reicha, and discussed in class. 
3. The relationship between bass and treble “chord tones” prior to the cadence, is primarily made of imperfect consonances and conforms to “Two-part Writing” guidelines adapted from Kennan and C.P.E. Bach.