Music Wise

This week, I now wrote answering melodic phrases for examples supplied by the Open College of the Arts during the Music Foundations course. For each two bar bar example, I wrote a two bar answering phrase to create a four bar melody. Here are my solutions: I am pleased with the line from bar 5, I thought the trill was a nice touch. I also wanted to emphasize the heroic character of the line by adding two intervals. It was inspired from my listening to Baroque music. This music contains many of such embellishments. Another assignment involved the composition of a two bar answering rhythm to an opening rhythm taken from the OCA Course guide . Then I expanded on this rhythm, creating an eight bar rhythmic theme. The aim was to create balance and a sense of completeness. This is the result: Next, the rhythmic theme was taken and converted to melody. The course guide recommended I start by establishing a framework, setting some variables using my  knowledg

1. Stuff done this week Reading about Opera in A History of Western Music (Burkholder et al., 2014), chapter 14. Please find my notes below. Practicing Sonatina in C Major (first part) by Ludwig van Beethoven on mandolin. 2. Listening done this week Ludwig van Beethoven composed this delightful mandolin composition in the key of C major. Each new line starts with an arpeggio. This performance is by mandolist  Bryce Milano  and fortepianist Sylvia Barry. 3. What I have learned The Invention of Opera Here are my first notes from Chapter 14 of  A History of Western Music  (Burkholder et al., 2014): Opera was the quintessential art of the 17th century .  It consists of a libretto (text, literally meaning "little book" in Italian) , a play usually in rhymed or unrhymed verse, combined with continuous or nearly continuous music, and it is staged with scenery, costumes, and action. Opera was on one hand a new invention. It was a contemporary a