Highlighted Musical Pieces Flashcards
Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms
> Artist: Thomas Moore
Date: 1808
Genre/Style: Parlour Songs
Form: repeated AABA form, each with 8-bar sections.
Standard Features: melody and lyrics (written for amateur, family singing), and simple accompaniment.
simple harmony (I, IV and V chords). A one-octave range.
It is in 3/4 metre
Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms
> Signifigance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms
> Signifigance: an early form of popular music.
Cultural Context: It was sold as sheet music to be consumed primarily by families: for young women to play the music at home while the family would sing along.
Context within the centre-periphery model: The piece is an example of popular music characteristics that have been relatively standardized in popular music:
Oh, Susanna
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
> Artist Stephen Foster > Date (1847) > Genre/Style: sheet music > Form: ABAB with 8 bar sections > Standard Features: 4/4, simple.
Oh, Susanna
> Signifigance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
> Signifigance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model: Represent the “mixed bag” of black and white music. famous banjo tune with lyrics about a white man playing the banjo. The important part for now is that the banjo was an African American signifier.
The banjo is now associated with the hillbilly from the Appalachian mountain region.
Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
> Artist Stephen Foster > Date (1852) > Genre/Style: Minstrelsy > Form: A/B, Verse-Chorus form > Standard Features: 4/4, 8 Bar sections
Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground
> Signifigance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
> Significance
Cultural Context:
It is a minstrel tune, and an example of how white composers began integrating more with African American culture. These composers, beginning to understand the racism inherent in the music, began integrating those themes into some of their pieces. “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground” is sung by a minstrel who portrays a slave. The theme is a lament for the death of the slave owner: an ironic statement from the point of view of plantation slaves.
> Context within the centre-periphery model: From the centre taking a twisted view of the periphery.
After the Ball
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
After the Ball
> Artist Charles K. Harris
Date (1892)
Genre/Style: Parlour Music, Tin Pan Alley
Form: the overall form is verse-chorus. The verses, however, have an imbedded form of AABA
Standard Features: 3/4, 8 bar sections.
After the Ball
> Signifigance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
After the Ball
> Signifigance: It sold two million copies in its first year. In total, this piece has generated over five million units sold.
Cultural Context: Tin Pan Alley bestseller
Context within the centre-periphery model: from the centre.
Maple Leaf Rag
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
Maple Leaf Rag
> Artist Scott Joplin > Date(1898) > Genre/Style Rag Time > Form > Standard Features
Maple Leaf Rag
> Significance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
Maple Leaf Rag
> Signifigance: Joplin recorded this on a piano roll (he was the performer) in 1916
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
Try a Little Tenderness
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
Try a Little Tenderness
> Artist: Bing Crosby > Date: 1933 > Genre/Style: Crooning, Jazz > Form: AABA > Standard Features: 4/4
Try a Little Tenderness
> Significance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
Try a Little Tenderness
> Significance: early example of the advent of crooning.
Cultural Context:a crooner could create an intimate atmosphere, sounding as though the performer was singing directly to you
Context within the centre-periphery model: Centre. Tin Pan alley
Castle House Rag
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
Castle House Rag
> Artist Europe’s Society Orchestra (James Reese Europe) > Date (1914) > Genre/Style: Ensemble ragtime > Form > Standard Features
Castle House Rag
> Significance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
Castle House Rag
> Significance
Cultural Context: named especially for the dances the Castles were doing
Context within the centre-periphery model
Tiger Rag
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
Tiger Rag
> Artist: Original Dixieland Jazz Band > Date (1918) > Genre/Style: Rag > Form > Standard Features: polyphonic textrure, It also has a lot of riffs
Tiger Rag
> Significance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
Tiger Rag
> Significance: This is somewhat of a novelty tune. The novelty parts come from the wood blocks (rather than drums), and stylistic trademarks. Listen to the section beginning at 0:15. When the full group stops, the clarinet has a “cheezy” bent note.
Cultural Context:This was an acoustic recording (electronic recording wasn’t invented yet). We generally don’t hear the drums. The percussion of the drums has been replaced, mainly by wood blocks.
Context within the centre-periphery model
West End Blues
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
West End Blues
> Artist Louis Armstrong
Date: (1928)
Genre/Style: Jazz
Form: 12-bar blues: a repetition of verses (or choruses), which is a certain type of strophic form
Standard Features: slow tempo in 4/4 time, basic chord progression that every 12-bar blues is based on, and that progression is based on I, IV, and V chords.
West End Blues
> Significance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
West End Blues
> Significance: starts with a famous unaccompanied solo by Louis Armstrong.
In the first chorus, we hear something different than other New Orleans style recordings: homophonic texture. The instruments are mostly providing chords for Armstrong to play the melody in the trumpet.
Cultural Context: This performance was likely originally improvised and honed during repeated live performances, so when they entered the recording studio, they knew what was going to work.
Context within the centre-periphery model: By 1928, record companies had all adopted electric recordings, allowing for better sound (and to capture the nuances of the voice like Armstrong’s scat singing).
Whispering
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
Whispering
> Artist Paul Whiteman > Date (1920) > Genre/Style: Symphonic Jazz > Form > Standard Features
Whispering
> Significance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
Whispering
> Significance > Cultural Context: Musically: this is from 1920, only three years after the first jazz recordings. It shows a deliberate action of changing black music to a consumable product for white audiences. Musically: it demonstrates a departure from the polyphonic texture of New Orleans jazz into urban dancing styles. The homophonic texture in symphonic jazz was important for later bands, including Louis Armstrong. Historically: jazz was originally African American folk music. The change to “symphonic jazz” signals a wider appeal for white listeners, and a growing interest in other types of jazz (including music by black performers). > Context within the centre-periphery model: Culturally: the industry believed that the best consumers were those with money, and those people were white. Popular music was being written and performed for a middle- and upper-class white demographic. The music they were hearing was black music. That sound was stolen and filtered through a music industry that catered to the tastes of mass culture.
Deed I do
> Significance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
Deed I do
> Significance: this piece is performed by a woman. Early recordings featured women prominently, and live performances included many women until the 1930s. Although women did not have much economic control of the industry, they were very visible and respected as important parts of the music industry.
Cultural Context:
the form is apparent when you’re reading along but the transition between the verses to the chorus might be difficult for you to hear. Not so for listeners during the 1920s.
Context within the centre-periphery model: the music and lyrics were written by two people: typical Tin Pan Alley pieces were written by teams of two—one for music and another for lyrics
Deed I do
> Artist > Date > Genre/Style > Form > Standard Features
Deed I do
> Artist performed by Ruth Etting (1926)
Date (1926)
Genre/Style: Tin Pan Alley
Form: Verse AABA repeated. Standard Form
Standard Features: The introduction is 8 bars long, the verses are two sections of 8 bars each, and the AABA form has 8 bars for each of the A and B sections: a string of 8-bar sections
April Showers
> Significance
Cultural Context
Context within the centre-periphery model
> Significance: The 1921 version has Jolson singing in the “old” style—a louder volume to compete with the band, and a nasal timbre (like speaking while holding your nose): having a sharper sound that can carry over instruments better.
Compare with a later version that has a changed vocal delivery: the vocals aren’t as strained to compete with the band (due to the microphone), and the nasal timbre is less (at least on some words)
Cultural Context: Changes due to technology
Context within the centre-periphery model: very popular centre music.
