Music Listening Journal #1

One lives their life through and by reaction. It is one of the most consistent forms of behavior in human existence. Everything I have witnessed in the world around me happens as a result of a reaction or will call for reaction in one form or another. It is how the world naturally works. This idea of reaction has been popping into my head as my knowledge of music history grows. When I listen to one of my favorite rock and roll songs, I cannot help but think about how music got to this point. Where did the abrupt usage of these instruments, strange sound effects, and harsh vocal lines come from? I can only accredit it to music being a reaction to itself as it evolves.
As I listened to the six female composers on Lucille Field Sings Songs by American Women Composers, I noticed something strikingly different in them from any other composers I have listened to thus far. All but one of these twentieth-century female composers present the idea of dissonance and what one can do with it. Since each piece is written for female voice and piano they are easy to pick apart and analyze. Atonality is heard all over their music and can easily be called out. These composers prove that dissonance does not have one generic sound through the different ways they use it in musical characteristics and outcomes. However, It is all for the same purpose; to create music that expresses something, whether it is an idea or an emotion. The use of dissonance as means of conveying these ideas and emotions was a reaction to how they had previously been depicted in the romantic period.
The composer of the first five pieces in this compilation, Patsy Rogers, uses an array of various techniques, harmonies and chords to convey the imagery in the text. Known as one of the top twentieth-century American composers, Rogers seems to have a real connection with words. It is proven that others see her artistry with music and words through how many popular American poets she has set poetry for. The first song, “Sunny,” begins with a directionless, broken, atonal chord that gives way to a picture of shining beams of sunlight. The text reads, “Sunny, luminous child, grasped for the sun by reaching out to everyone.” The way the chords are arpeggiated makes it sound as if something unreachable is trying to be attained. It gives the listener a sense of unsettledness. Throughout the rest of the songs in this cycle, Rogers tends to use dissonance in this way. When the text depicts desperation, the music sounds incomplete. Another example of unpeaceful sound imagery is in the fourth song, “Healing.” As the text reads “Her death has given me a thousand eyes,” Rogers notates an octave jump from “her” to “death” and on “thousand” to “eyes.” The leap is very abrupt and even disturbing going right along with the text that creates an image of death and seeing into souls. This is one crucial way that expressionistic composers use dissonance. They are wanting a feeling of uncertainty to manifest through a particular sound that doesn’t seem to fit within itself or the confines of standard harmony.
The most intriguing song cycle in this compilation is Nancy Van De Vate’s “Songs for the Four Parts of the Night.” Each song is short and direct. There is the same sense of uncertainty that is heard in Patsy Roger’s songs. However, this uncertainty goes further into confusion. Vate’s texts are more about the unknown. She sets music to poetry about the senses. Whatever is heard is unseen and whatever is seen is not attainable or touchable. Her use of atonality compliments this confusion well in “In the Dark I Enter.” The text reads “I can not make out what I see, in the dark I enter, I can not make out what I see” as the piano lightly creeps along an ascending and descending motion. It sounds like footsteps are carefully making their way through the dark. Again, the expressionistic composer uses this quality to move the affections towards a sense of feeling lost.
As I got closer to the end of this disc I was relieved to finally come to a composer who had a pleasant, tonal text-setting. Not all composers at this time reacted to the previous time period through atonality. There are no boundaries on the evolution to music if it is a response to a previous type of music. I prefer a bit more clarity and order. That is exactly what is received in Florence B. Prices’s music. While listening to her “Four Songs,” I automatically assumed that the mood of these four pieces was light and happy because of the melody and harmonies that are used. The text has more direction than previous pieces and is centered on more delightful ideas. This is portrayed well through Price’s delicate writing style that stays within the key. I find it funny how music has the ability to move one’s mind into thinking certain thoughts or manipulating one’s hearts into having certain emotions whether the text is known or not. In expressionistic music, where ideas are exaggerated or sometimes even distorted through the music, one can pick up on the mood of the piece simply by listening. In “Travel’s End” the whole piece is outlined with blocked chords containing ornamentation every measure or so. The poetry reflects on memories from a time sweetly missed. The harmonies in this song sound pure with out even the slightest hint of uncertainty or urgency. It is interesting that Price was writing like this in a time where everyone seemed to be going against the norm. Out of all of the composers in this compilation, Price’s music is the easiest to trace back to the romantic period. I do not really sense a reaction to the previous period in her music.
I chose to listen to these pieces because I knew they offered variety through their modernism. I thought it would be easy to just describe them as a reaction to the Romantic period. However, I now know that music can not be summed up in such broad terms. I think there are elements of these composer’s writing style that definitely reacted and went against the romantic period. However, listening to someone like Florence B. Price makes me realize how much twentieth-century composers held onto from the romantic period. I think this compilation should be included in the canon because it shows significant development towards where we are musically in western culture today.

Journal Entry #2


Before I first listened to Sir William Walton’s Façade, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Little did I know that these thirty-one fantastical songs are actually compositions of spoken poetry over whimsically and colorfully notated music. Each piece is written for the voice accompanied by a small ensemble of two cellos, a clarinet, flute, saxophone, trumpet and percussion. Written, at first, in the 1920’s, Façade took on different shapes and forms for twenty years as Walton repeatedly revised and edited it. His deep interest in giving the poetry and giving it the best musical accompaniment is why it took so long for the completion of this piece.
The first song of Façade, entitled “Hornpipe,” is an upbeat and hopeful march. At the sound of a trumpet and the beat of a snare, the speaker comes in with the first verse of the poem. It is almost predictable what he is going to say because of the attention that the uprightness of the music calls for. The text proclaims, “Sailors come to the drum out of Babylon.” Wind instruments float around the words as if they are dancing with each other. The text then continues on into more imagery using tongue-twisting words that add an element of what one would suppose is nonsensicalness. The rest of the verse reads, “Hobby-horses foam, the dumb sky rhinocerous-glum watched the courses of the breakers’ rocking-horses and with Glaucis, Lady Venus on the settee of the horsehair sea!” By this point, the text began to strike me as different and unique because of the interesting combination of words. For instance, the sky is “dumb” and the sea is not just any sea, but a “horsehair sea.” I am not even sure if I know exactly what that means. So, I anxiously skipped ahead to read text of the other song. I realized that they were all detailed and depictive in this way. This music is set apart from what other composers were doing at this time because it is all centered on the text and what is being proclaimed. I feel like other composers of the time based their music around having an avant-garde style of melodic motion for their text which, for me, is distracting from what is being declared. Maybe I feel this way because the poetry in these pieces is being spoken rather than sung. William Walton’s way of setting text is more direct than other composers I have heard.
One explanation of why Walton decided to let the poetry in these pieces be spoken opposed to setting it to a melody is because of content of the poetry. Earlier, I wrote that one may think that style of writing is nonsensical with its very developed, wide range of vocabulary and the descriptive pictures that each word draws. However, I think it is too thoroughly written to be only for the sake of laughs and fun. I believe that the poet, Edith Sitwell, is actually letting us into her life by what she conveys in her writing. In fact, it seems as though she is drawing on specific personal experiences. Although most of what she writes about does not make sense to me, her style is so defined that there has to be something deeper behind it all. In the song, “A Man from a Far Countree,” Sitwell writes, “Though I am black and not comely, though I am black as the darkest trees, I have swarms of gold that will fly like honey-bees, by the rivers of the sun I will feed my words until they skip like those fleeced lambs...” During this text, Sitwell discloses intimate information about how she views herself. It is much deeper than it leads itself on to be. Taking a look into her childhood, one will note that she did not have the greatest relationship with her parents which. She didn’t like the way she was treated by them which definitely attributes to how one views oneself. There is obviously much to be revealed throughout Sitwell’s poetry. Because of the content, I think Walton refrains from doing anything musical that may interfere, as in creating a radical, experimental melody. These pieces are not music-based texts but poetic-based songs. .
The fact that William Walton chooses to accompany Edith Sitwell’s poetry in the way that he does says a lot about him as a composer. I feel like he has taken a step back and realized the significance of the text. Since he recognizes the significance of the poetry so instead of trying to make the text known through the music he chooses to let the text write the music. “Gardener Janus Catches a Naiad” is the perfect example of how the poetry paints a picture for the music to follow. The first two verses are exactly the same as far as musical notation goes. Sitwell is describing what is around her in nature through the senses. She writes about baskets of ripe fruit, bird-songs, hairy green leaves and laughter. The music is barely even noticed because it fits so well with the text. Walton writes a light, falling, triadic melody for the flute and clarinet as the speaker highlights these things around him. Suddenly, the structure of the poem changes. As the meter of the poem shifts to a more abrupt declaration of observances the meter of the music changes as well. Walton brings out the horns and the drums to emphasize this. This use of musical imagery, that is not too overpowering, puts Walton in a different category than other composers of his time.
I feel like this work should be included in the canon. I have not heard too many pieces like this which leads me to believe that music was not conducted in this way too often. Even though it was not common it is still important to study it because it has beauty. and it was a sign of the modern times. So, to study Walton’s music is to get another angel of where music was coming from and where it was going. I do not feel like this piece necessarily made extremely significant contributions to the evolution of music in the twentieth century but it is still unique and should be recognized for that, at least.