Old lady dies (see other post)

[MrGongGong]

The other thing I never understand is why some composers use double sharps and flats in their notation. Why can't they be decent human beings and just notate the pitch a major second up or down: it would make sight-reading so much easier!!!

There are several reasons for this
such as ........ Spelling , in the same way that in language one can spell things rong

and also (something I frequently have arguments with students about) some notes which are given the same key on the piano are actually different
so B# isn't the same note as C even though on the piano they share the same key

if one stops thinking that ALL music follows the "rules" of harmonic western art music then one realises that some things are much more complicated (and others more simple)

We have a convention that we call some different sounds by the same note letter name so that Middle C is a C as well as the other C's on a keyboard or other instrument , which is useful as having 128 different names would make it hard to remember which was which.

BUT (and this is something that I often think is missed in much conventional music education and learning) they are obviously NOT the same note at all or even the same sound BUT rather have a relationship which is to do with harmonic language. One hears this evidently with compound intervals , intervals which might in conventional ways be considered "discords" are nothing of the sort (even by the norms of relatively mainstream music) when played as compound intervals ...... and even by different timbres..... and so on

There is a big difference sometimes between notating something as "playable" and notating it "correctly" in terms of its harmonic function ........

There are also some interesting things about major and minor 5ths which we have "lost" in this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Equal-Te.../dp/0393334201......

[Serial_Apologist]

Does this contain a rising 5th, or a rissole or perhaps a faggot?

Right at the very start, beef oven, but no rissole or faggots, and I can't see any mushy peas.

That's a very smart shop interior in that shopping arcade!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Oh; and a rissole is what Economists use to communicate with.

[Richard Barrett]

I've just realised that RB almost certainly fell foul of an inadvertant double-negative.

Guilty as charged.

[EdgeleyRob]

An apoggiatura (unlike an acciaccatura, which is a Grace Note, or Crushed Note in its Sunday best and should all be played/sung as fast as possible) can be as long as it likes. Up 'til about the late 19th Century, the convention was for it to be half as long as the rhythmic value of the note that followed it; by the time of Mahler, it could go on forever!


This is tricky without manuscript paper, but the easiest way of dealing with this is to hear a triad of C major. If the very lowest note that you hear is a C (any C, in any octave, so long as no other note is lower) then it's in Root Position. If it's a triad of C major with the lowest note E (any E, no matter what the octave, so long as no other note is lower) then it's Cmajor in First Inversion. If it's a C major triad with G the lowest note (any G ... etc etc) then it's C major in Second inversion.

Third Inversions can only occur in Seventh chords (say G7 = GBDF: if it's a G7 chord with F as the lowest note then it's G7 in Third Inversion.


Yes, this is all correct. Chords are regarded as "Vertical" entities, Intervals as "Horizontal".

At least; this is how I've understood it (with some "fine tuning") for the past forty years: if anyone knows any differently, please break the news to me gently!


Ah! But it would be Tonally wrong: in G# major/minor, the leading note is F double-sharp, not G natural (just as in G major, the Leading note is F#, not Gb). Good players of "proper" instruments and singers instinctively make a different pitch - it's only on Keyboard instruments that F# and Gb (or F double sharp and G natural) are "the same"!

Yep, that's what I thought ferney.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yep, that's what I thought ferney.

Phew!

[Richard Barrett]

in G# major/minor, the leading note is F double-sharp, not G natural (just as in G major, the Leading note is F#, not Gb). Good players of "proper" instruments and singers instinctively make a different pitch - it's only on Keyboard instruments that F# and Gb (or F double sharp and G natural) are "the same"!

I'll never understand this modern music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'll never understand this modern music.

[Serial_Apologist]

Many many thanks indeed for going to the trouble to explain these things, ferney and MrGG - I shall bring my mini Casio in here tomorrow and work it all out.

[Pabmusic]

I'm not going to be drawn into a discussion of whether it's "classical" or not, but the first two notes of Bernstein's "Maria" are an augmented fourth or tritone.

Indeed they are. It's a good example because it goes on (third note) to arrive at the fifth, demonstrating that the augmented fourth of the second note had been obtained (in a sense) by striking the interval of a fifth below the correct note, creating a sense of longing to reach the fifth. Of course, that's a purely melodic trick, but composers became very adept at doing similar things with harmony, such as using 'diminished seventh' chord (much overused by Dvorak in the New World to increase tension - or by cinema pianists as Mary Pickford or Fay Wray were tied to the track) that allowed easy transitions into remote keys.

[Richard Barrett]

Indeed they are. It's a good example because it goes on (third note) to arrive at the fifth, demonstrating that the augmented fourth of the second note had been obtained (in a sense) by striking the interval of a fifth below the correct note, creating a sense of longing to reach the fifth.

I reckon that Bernstein was thinking of "Le roi de Thulé" from Berlioz' Damnation de Faust when he wrote that song, since both begin with the same sequence of intervals.

[Beef Oven]

Many many thanks indeed for going to the trouble to explain these things, ferney and MrGG - I shall bring my mini Casio in here tomorrow and work it all out.

May I second that. It has helped enormously with a piece I've been working on 'Fairway to Devon' on my Stylophone.

[Pabmusic]

An apoggiatura (unlike an acciacatura, which is a Grace Note, or Crushed Note in its Sunday best and should all be played/sung as fast as possible) can be as long as it likes...etc.

Beautifully put, Ferney.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The tritone appears regularly throughout West Side Story: it's prominent at the start of Maria, but it's also in Tony's previous solo Something's Coming: the notes on "could be" at the start are the same intervals as those of Ma-ri-a, but with the first note displaced an octave. The Music lets us know that the "something" Tony was expecting is Maria.

Mind you, it's also there in Cool, too. And the Prologue.

[mangerton]

Quite! I was not aware of that - but I ken noo!