Musical Excerpts
No musical excerpts in Chapter 7
Copland's Musical Recommendations for Chapter 7 (tone color)
1) Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34, by Benjamin Britten -- with Peter Pears (illustrated)
This version allows you to navigate easily to any instrument or group you want to hear. Just below the video, click "Show More" to show the links. This provides a nice way to hear instruments playing alone. Photos of each instrument accompany the music and narration.
2) Mozart—Sinfonia Concertante for Solo Winds and Orchestra
and Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra
3) Ravel—Bolero
This version focusses sharply and closely on each instrument as it enters the piece, which begins with quite snare drums, and adds instruments step by step until the music reaches a full throated, but still very precise, conclusion. Pay attention to how Ravel intensifies the music as the theme is repeated. Note how player intensity grows, and player techniques change to produce more and more violent music. The producer choses cameras and camera angles as the piece progresses ---- do you think the producer is reading the score?
Additional, Chapter 7 (tone color)
Pay particular attention to tone color in these three versions of the same work.
• Debussy -- The Girl with the Flaxen Hair (piano)
• Debussy -- The Girl with the Flaxen Hair (string orchestra)
• Debussy -- The Girl with the Flaxen Hair (trumpet and piano)
* Also see Additional, Chapter 8, below, The Composer's Voice
• Duke Ellington, with Ella Fitzgerald -- Take the A Train,
Try to figure out what instruments are playing in each stanza.
• Duke Ellington -- It Don't Mean a Thing If if Ain't Got That Swing
A little blurry, but you can see the voices here. A whole album of Ellington video HERE.
• Beatles -- A Day in the Life
---- Notice the two "noise passages" that follow the line, "I'd love to turn you on." What's going on?
---- This is a simple example of sectional form (more in Chapter 9 and following): first section, ending with the "noise", second second, a different melody, "noise", then repeat of first sections (different lyrics). We can call this form A-B-A. Why?
---- Musically, how might the melodies of this song be related?
MORE Additional Material for Chapter 7
Copland says that each instrument provides characteristic opportunities and demands for composer and performer:
• Special demands of the cello. (Watch beginning at 3:40 and ending at 4:30.)
Copland used the piano as an example. In the course I taught from this book, we used the clarinet as another example. A friend who plays classical clarinet visited, performed, and answered questions about the special characteristics and roles of this instrument. This remainder of this page is resources from that visit. It provides a deeper look at a single instrument than Copland's discussion of the piano. (Copland said that a text on orchestration would have a chapter on every family of instruments.)
The clarinet is a wind instrument that is essentially a closed tube. Remember, that means closed at one end, in this case, at the upper end (where it has a mouthpiece, but no opening like that of a recorder; see Science of Music, Unit 3).
Read more about the clarinet HERE.
Learn more about any instrument that interests you by looking it up in Wikipedia.
In the 2018 offering of the class I taught from Copland's book, guest clarinetist Steve Schiffmann demonstrated the clarinet and talked about the opportunities and constraints that the instrument provides for the player and composer.
Additional Listening Suggestions
The following works were mentioned during the class presentation. You might enjoy them.
• A. Copland -- Clarinet Sonata This was Steve's composer puzzle at the beginning of class. The clarinet in this performance is custom made of boxwood. If you know Copland's most popular work, "Appalachian Spring", you will hear reminders of it in this beautiful piece. Steve's performance was my first experience of this musics, and I tickled that he brought it to our attention.
• A. Copland -- Clarinet Concerto, Benny Goodman, clarinet
• W. A. Mozart -- Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Concerto, Benny Goodman, clarinet
• R. Strauss -- Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (watch for clarinet parts -- staying with this score is tricky!
• O. Messiaen -- Quartet for the End of Time Look up the history of this piece at Wikipedia. Movement 3 is the one that Steve mentioned after describing Messiaen's fondness for bird songs.
And here are a few more clarinet pieces that Steve recommended:
And here are a few more clarinet pieces that Steve recommended:
• Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet (first movement). Harold Wright (died in 1994) of the Boston Symphony, one of the best clarinetists of all time.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nEmX2dE3iSQ
• Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet (second movement). Note especially the “gypsy” middle section.
• “Abyss of the Birds” movement from Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time”. (Great register leaps are approximately 4 minutes in, but other amazing effects abound).
You might also enjoy this video about the clarinet, featuring the principal clarinetist of the Nashville Symphony. Here and in Steve's demonstration, you will see that, as with all musical instruments, there is more to it than plug and play.
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More to Think About
Instrument Tuning
Perhaps you have heard a trumpet called a "Bb trumpet", or a French horn called a horn in F. As this suggests, not all instruments naturally play in the same key.
When a piano plays the note C, does it correspond to the C of the violin, oboe, trumpet, french horn? If the orchestra is instructed to sound a C, do all instruments finger their C and produce the same note, or must different instruments play different notes on their own that have the same pitch as the C of the piano?
The answer: When is comes to tuning, there are two types of instruments -- non-transposing and transposing instruments. All the strings are non-transposing, which means their C is the same as C on a properly tuned piano (call it concert C). Many of the wind instruments are transposing, which means that their natural key is not C. The trumpet is a Bb instrument, which means that when the trumpeter fingers and blows C, we hear Bb, an interval of one major first lower than C. So to play a concert C, the trumpet must finger and blow D, one major first above C. The natural key of the French horn and English horn is F, a major fifth below C. So to play concert C, these horns must finger and blow G, a major fifth above C.
Question: Just before beginning to play a musical piece, the orchestra usually tunes to concert A, at 440 Hz. Usually a violin plays its A, and then an oboe, which is easier for the other players to hear, matches it, plays it louder, and everyone else tunes to match the note. What note must each of the following instruments play to match this pitch and hear whether they are in tune? The Bb trumpet? The F French horn? The Eb alto saxophone? The C flute?
Don't peek until you have tried to answer.
(Answers: to play concert A, each instrument plays as follows: trumpet, B; French horn, E; alto sax, F#; flute, A)
For more, see Instruments and Transpositions.
Try to answer this question with a web search: Why are some instruments designed in keys other than C? So far, I have not found an answer that I find completely satisfying.
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