This question will be in two parts.
Part 1. Write a review of the video lecture Major and minor scale. To receive the credit you must include and name any music that Simoncic uses as an example of these scales. https://www.dropbox.com/s/80eumztx0njhqcy/Simple%20scales.mp4?dl=0 Major and minor scale:
Part 2 . Modes: The Renaissance began to move closer to the major and minor scale system. Up to this time and for the first 500 years of “classical music” scales called modes were the foundation for melodies and polyphony.
Interestingly, modes began to resurface again in the early 20th century with French Impressionism by such composers as Debussy and Faure, Ravel, and the Italian composer, Respighi. Some English composers reached back into the modes as well.
Sixty years late in the mid-1960s, rock and roll music groups explored and continue to use the modes. A good and early example in pop music was the song, Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nZ3QIKOMlk
Eleanor Rigby is mostly in Dorian mode. There is a Gregorian chant that has almost the same melody as Eleanor Rigby but without the meter, and of course, it’s in Latin.
Question 1 Part 2: Was the information concerning modes useful? Why or why not?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cukgxuv55c4o389/melodic%20harmonic%20intervals.mp4?dl=0 Melodic and harmonic intervals: We are able to recognize a song “something with lyrics and melody” by its first couple of notes combined with the rhythms of those notes.
Write a review of this lecture addressing both melodic and harmonic intervals. In order to receive credit, you are required to list any music used as an example of melodic intervals.
It was customary in the Late Renaissance and the entire Baroque period for female roles, in an Opera, to be sung by male castrati (An adult male who as a child was castrated before his voice began to change. Of course, he had to demonstrate a good singing voice in the first place. This barbaric and cruel practice lasted only for a short period and only in Italy. It was even condoned by the church. At least half of all the surgeries ended up infected leading to death.
At one time there were over 90 thousand castrati’s in Europe, but only a small percentage, less than 2% made it big in the opera world. The lucky few who made it as opera stars were hailed very much the way we idolize pop, rock, and rap stars and sports “heroes” today. Fortunately, male singers can sing in falsetto much higher than their speaking voice. They may have a baritone-speaking voice but can falsetto like a soprano.
Answer this without being PC: What is your opinion of this practice of castration all for the sake of music performance in Italy? Assume, when answering this question, that the child is your younger brother or your younger son or even you if you are male.
Now for a wonderful example of non-castrati Falsetto song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNFzfwLM72c Men singing in a false and high female range:
Answer this:
Find at least two places where the Bee Gees seem not to be singing falsetto in the soprano range. Use timestamps as indicators and justify your answer. You may come to realize that most of it are in the soprano/alto range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMOMPMzR6oY Word Painting was important in Baroque Opera and is also prevalent in our own pop music and other vocal music: Answer this:
What did you learn about “word painting” from this video? Now when you listen to music that has a melody and words, maybe you will find more meaning to the music and words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLsERiArs0s Now is the Month of Maying:
Phrase A 0:00 to 0:09 is homorhythm (all voice parts use the same rhythm)
Answer this: from timestamp 0:09 t0 0:17 phrase A is again sung, but what is different than 0:00 to 0:09?
Timestamp 0:18- 0: 26 Phrase B (new melody but similar rhythm)
Answer this: is the fa, la, la, section more rhythmically complex or less so than the fa, la, la of phrase A, and why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4v44JdcA-8 this choral work can’t be from the Renaissance period?
Answer this: Provide one musical reason why it can’t?
