Musical Excerpts
Musical excerpts in this chapter performed by Adam Matlock. In most instances, Adam plays the excerpt twice, the first time at reduced tempo. Page numbers refer to the recommended edition.
How to use excerpts: As you encounter each short musical score in the chapter, stop reading and listen to the excerpt using the videos on this page. Listen more than once if you do not recognize, in the music, the idea that Copland is presenting. Then continue reading.
Excerpts for Chapter 8
Page 83
Score for above; click to enlarge.
Page 84
Score for above; click to enlarge.
Suggested example of polyphony:
Page 85, “ Here we must confine ourselves to a single illustration: Bach’s well-known chorale prelude Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Crist.”
Copland says that learning to listen to polyphonic (many-voice) music is the most difficult, and requires repeated listening. Listen to this Bach prelude once while following the top line of the score, or simply listening to the highest voice. Then listen again, following, or just listening, to the faster-moving middle voice. Most difficult (for me, at least), is to listen a third time for the lowest voice, whose pace is more like the highest voice.
You might be able to hear the voices better in Stokowski's orchestral version that Copland recommends in the book (p. 86). You'll need pretty good speakers to hear the bass line in this version and the one above.
Page 88
Score for above; click to enlarge.
Copland's Musical Recommendations for Chapter 8 (texture)
1) Gregorian Chant—The “Sarum” Liturgy
2) Medieval Polyphony—Music of Johannes Ciconia
3) Bach—Mass in B Minor
Click SHOW MORE below the video window to see a set of links that take you to the beginnings of movements. This allows you to sample the music in each part of this work, which is almost two hours long. This is just the thing for a snowy Sunday afternoon by the fire, with a new issue of Scientific American.
4) Beethoven—Symphony No. 7. Or listen to the allegretto movement only, as discussed by Copland on pages 89-90:
Additional, Chapter 8 (texture)
A Composer's Voice: Tone Color, and Texture
Can you hear the composer's voice in these two, very different arrangements of this music.
• Copland -- Quiet City, orchestral version
• Copland -- Quiet City, original chamber version written as incidental music for the play Quiet City, by Irwin Shaw.
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More to Think About
Jazz: A Case Study
Using what you have learned from Chapters 4 through about rhythm, melody, harmony, and tone color, now listen to some jazz. The following comments emphasize what is going on, and what to listen for, during improvisation, which is really the heart of jazz.
Listen to the two jazz pieces below.
In each piece, pay particular attention to the theme, a relatively simple tune played as the first verse. Then try to keep that tune in your head while you listen to how it is modified in subsequent verses, when various players play improvised solos. The theme returns at the end. Can you keep singing the theme over the improvisations? It's not easy.
1) Woody Herman's Band, Tunin' In
The Woody Herman piece gets its name from its lengthy introduction (before the theme is stated), which sounds like a band tuning up by playing the note called "concert A". Once they break into the tune, they state the theme clearly, in aaba form. After that, various soloists or groups improvise one or more stanzas. After you have listened to the whole piece a few times, try to sing the theme along with their improvisations.
2) Thelonius Monk Trio, Blue Monk
The Monk piece states its theme (form is aab) clearly right at the start, and then each player gets an extended solo, featuring improvisations that range far from the theme, but keep to the same chord progression. As is typical, the theme returns at the end. Can you keep singing the theme over the improvisations? (This one's harder !)
Now listen to this little survey of jazz piano styles, all played by Oscar Peterson, during conversation with Dick Cavett.
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