WEEK 1 [due October 5]
(Optional) — If you feel like you could use a confidence boost for basic tonal analysis, please seek my feedback by completing exercises D, F, and G in the free online web resource for Chapter 19 of Laitz, Stephen G. The Complete Musician: An Integrated Approach to Tonal Theory, Analysis, and Listening. (Cambridge/New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
(Required) — Instrumental Counterpoint Exercise — Compose melodies conforming to stylistic characteristics of short 18th-c instrumental compositions, over each of the two given figured bass lines in the assignment above. To help, my own overview of typical guidelines for instrumental counterpoint might be helpful:
1. Two-part writing and Note-to-note guidelines: adapted from the early chapters of Kent Kennan’s Counterpoint Based on Eighteenth-Century Practice (Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999; see esp. these excerpts from Kennan’s Chapter 4, and Chapter 6), and the Mitchell translation of C.P.E. Bach’s [1759] Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (London: Eulenburg, 1974).
2. Whole melody (/well-formedness) guidelines, also adapted from Kennan (ibid.) and from Reicha’s [1814] Treatise on Melody, trans. E.S Metcalf. London: E.S. Metcalf, 1896.
{Here are the week 1: examples for in-seminar discussion, including my solutions to the two counterpoint exercises and Handel’s solution to one of them. }
WEEK 2 [due October 12]
READ—
(1) Forte & Gilbert Ch. 1 “Melodic Diminutions”. Choose two of these five exercises: Ex. 3, 4, 6, 7, and 9 (pp 38-40) to complete.
(2) London, Justin (1990). ”Riepel and Absatz: Poetic and Prosaic Aspects of Phrase Structure in 18th-c Theory.” In Journal of Musicology, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 505-519. Prepare 2-3 questions and lead discussion on at least one. [use UCSC Libraries’ Off Campus Access login instructions to access this article when not on eduroam or cruznet).]
(3) Two brief passages concerning 18th-c aesthetics: (3a) Lippman, Edward. “Imitation and Expression” [Just read pp. 83-98: the introduction and “France”] in A History of Western Aesthetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1992, and (3b) Ora Frishberg Salanon (1989). Chabanon and Chastellux on Music and Language, 1764-1773 — concentrating on pp 114-118. In International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 109-120. (For background, also consider reviewing Grove’s entry on La Guerre des Bouffons.)
ANALYSIS—
(1) Complete a “harmonic reduction” graph*, and offer a brief formal description of Eubie Blake’s “Memories of You”, Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right With Me”, or Leo Robin, Clarence Gaskill, and Russ Columbo’s “Prisoner of Love”, in the course score directory; model it after this harmonic reduction of Irving Berlin’s “Always” (with just a few chords left blank for later discussion).
***
{ Week 2 — in-seminar examples: Forte & Gilbert, Riepel notes, etc., }
WEEK 3 [due October 19]
(1) Read: Cadwallader & Gagne Ch. 2 “Melody and Counterpoint” (pp 15-24). Complete Two additional exercises among those listed in week 1 for Forte & Gilbert Ch. 1 “Melodic Diminutions”; with additional notations of “PD” (predominant), and elaborations discussed in class.
Kofi Agawu, “How We Got out of Analysis, and How to Get Back in Again,” in Music Analysis, Vol. 23, No. 2/3 (Jul. - Oct., 2004), pp. 267-286.
Optional exercises: Cadwallader & Gagne Ch. 3; Forte & Gilbert Ch. 6 “Some Common Secondary Structural Features”.
(2) Complete a foreground graph of a Mozart Sonatina movement — let us know which one you’re doing so no more than two of us do the same one; the scores are also linked to that sign-in sheet. We’re using an edited collection of “Six Viennese Sonatas”; you can choose anyone you like except those I’ve used for demonstrations in class. Consider these steps as a summary of our discussion on Tuesday.
{ October 12 lecture materials, amended: - Finally, here’s a copy of our handout from last week with additional notes added; the first two pages now have scale-degree markings and more directly model what’s intended with this assignment. (The last page also has been modified in the same way, although the music is simpler and not quite as relevant to the Sonatina assignment.)
WEEKS 4 & 5 [October 26, November 2]
(Due October 26)
i. Complete Step II of the Sonatina Analysis. (That links to both steps; scroll down for step II.)
ii. Select a song from the Project Scores folder for your 19th-c analysis project, or propose a different work employing significant formal challenges to tonal design (a work of about the same scale as those among the selections in the folders). Sign-up for your chosen song on the “Chromatic (Tonal) Art Song” tab (second tab) of the song-assignments spreadsheet. Begin your harmonic analysis of the work, identifying structural features — you might follow the guidelines for "Step 1" of the Sonatina Movement assignment, and apply them to this work.
Read:
(1) Ewell, Phlllip. “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame.” In Music Theory Spectrum, Volume 43, Issue 2, Fall 2021, Pages 324–329
(2) Forte & Gilbert Ch. 8 “The concept of prolongation”
***
(Due November 2) Excerpts from Carl Dahlhaus’s “Issues in Composition” in Between Romanticism to Modernism. Translated by Mary Whitall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
To read the Dahlhaus effectively, please listen to, and read, examples from the literature discussed within the text. Bring to seminar (to turn in) a 1-2 paragraph description of harmonic or thematic issues you find in at least one work relevant to Dahlhaus’ argument. This is an open-ended assignment, but you should attempt to describe a passage of music in order to clarify, or dispute, a claim that Dahlhaus makes.
Optional: Mathis, Michael. Arnold Schoenberg's "Grundgestalt" and Gustav Mahler's "Urlicht". International Journal of Musicology Vol. 5 (1996), pp. 239-260.
Expand on your harmonic reduction due October 26 (step ii above), with foreground and background graphs—i.e. ensuring you comprehend not only the harmonic progression, but the difference between foreground elaborations and elements like prolongation, intermediation (precadential harmony—which in these pieces can be quite long), and cadence.
***
WEEK 6.5 - 7 [Week of November 8 + Tuesday November 16]
Nauert, Paul. Notes on PC-Set Theory, pp. 1-13
Straus Ch. 2 “Pitch-class Sets”
Although there is overlap between these two readings, complete them both. After reading the Nauert, make sure you have grasped the concept of “Tn prime form” as applied to 4-5 common pitch sets, including some chords with which you’re familiar from tonal or vernacular traditions. Consider finding your own words for the distinction between “Tn” and “TnI” prime form, and come to class with at least a preliminary, intuitive understanding of how the terms relate to one another.
When reading the Straus, note that he uses the term “Prime form” in place of Nauert’s (more precise) term “TnI prime form.” (Nauert’s tutorial presumes that in some cases “Tn” set classes—smaller classes of sets transpositionally but not inversionally related—are a relevant distinction in the structure of a work.)
Complete the Straus exercises on pp 44-45.
WEEK 8 [November 23]
Nauert, Paul. Notes on PC-Set Theory, pp. 14-26
Richard Bass (1991), “Sets, Scales, and Symmetries: The Pitch-Structural Basis of George Crumb’s “Makrokosmos” I and II,” in Music Theory Spectrum Vol. 13, No. 1
Post-tonal analysis project, step 1 [Due Nov. 23]: Listen attentively to works listed in the Analysis Projects spreadsheet - most are available on YouTube.
Then:
Examine scores, and choose one song; after more careful listening, identify 3-5 pc sets that you consider salient as a group. The group should not only be connected perceptually somehow, but perceptually distinct, in at least one way, from any events that you don’t include.
Identify each group as a pc set (using the “normal form” label), as a Tn set class, and as a TnI set class.
For each pc set, write all 11 transpositions, and all 11 indices of its inversion.
Write all of the pitch classes in the work—tedius, but it will start to go quickly once momentum sets in. (You can either label the score with clear ink, or simply write the pc-intergers on a blank sheet, in spatial arrangements resembling the score, so that you can easily connect the two.
Scanning your pc-set description of the piece, identify any occurrences of transformation or variation of the original 3-5 sets that you identified. Come to class prepared to discuss either the invariance, or variation, of pc-sets in the work.
WEEK 9 [November 30]
1. Nauert, Paul. Notes on PC-Set Theory, pp. 27-32
2. J. Daniel Jenkins (2009), “After the Harvest: Carter’s Fifth String Quartet and the Late Late Style,” in Music Theory Online Volume 16, Number 3.
3. Straus Ch. 5 “Basic Twelve-tone Operations”
FINAL PRESENTATIONS MEETING
Wednesday, December 8⋅4:00 – 7:00pm